attila76
Member
Answer: Fungus gnats. not a big deal at this stage in the game. Peroxide wont effect them much. Try creating a barrier between the root zone and the air/plant zone. Mosquito dunks may help. also yellow sticky cards.
Fungus gnats or WINGED ROOT APHIDS???
- Thread starter spleebale
- Start date
LadyFlores
New member
update
update
Its been a few days since I've treated my girls with the Bayer Complete Insect Killer. I added 5ml/ gal to my res and let them feed for a day. I'm pretty sure that the critters are dead.
Prior to the Bayer treatment, I had 3 girls die on me. And now a 4th one is dead as of today. When I lifted the pot off the table, I expected the roots to still be attached to the mat, but there was no attachment. The roots were rotten. I just got done dissecting the root system - separating the roots and hydroton rocks to see if I could find any critters. (I am SURE that I had root aphids because I clearly identified the adult fliers. I also had gnats, and some other unidentified worm-like things. I found these 2 worm looking creatures (about 1.5 inches in length) floating in the res after I did the peroxide treatment). Anyway... I didn't see any creatures in the root system. Just a mass of unhealthy roots that were pinkish / brownish. From what I've read on this thread it appears that I have some sort of a secondary infection that's living off and killing the root system.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to get the rest of my girls healthy again? I have one more plant that looks like its going to die... I'm 17 days from harvest. So if I can just get the roots healthy enough to last another 17 days we'll be ok!
I'm adding aspirin to the res per RetroGrow's suggestion. But does anyone know how I can get my roots healthy and white again? Perhaps another peroxide treatment to help fight off secondary infections???
update
Its been a few days since I've treated my girls with the Bayer Complete Insect Killer. I added 5ml/ gal to my res and let them feed for a day. I'm pretty sure that the critters are dead.
Prior to the Bayer treatment, I had 3 girls die on me. And now a 4th one is dead as of today. When I lifted the pot off the table, I expected the roots to still be attached to the mat, but there was no attachment. The roots were rotten. I just got done dissecting the root system - separating the roots and hydroton rocks to see if I could find any critters. (I am SURE that I had root aphids because I clearly identified the adult fliers. I also had gnats, and some other unidentified worm-like things. I found these 2 worm looking creatures (about 1.5 inches in length) floating in the res after I did the peroxide treatment). Anyway... I didn't see any creatures in the root system. Just a mass of unhealthy roots that were pinkish / brownish. From what I've read on this thread it appears that I have some sort of a secondary infection that's living off and killing the root system.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to get the rest of my girls healthy again? I have one more plant that looks like its going to die... I'm 17 days from harvest. So if I can just get the roots healthy enough to last another 17 days we'll be ok!
I'm adding aspirin to the res per RetroGrow's suggestion. But does anyone know how I can get my roots healthy and white again? Perhaps another peroxide treatment to help fight off secondary infections???
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=55259
Check out that thread, and see if the pictures look familiar.
Check out that thread, and see if the pictures look familiar.
ive flowered and harvested before with minor aphid infestation. buds came out normally..they didnt seem to affect too much, except sometimes ou would have see dead gnats on the fan leafs that get cut off... use sticky tape to catch the winged ones..and flush the medium with gnatrol. then watch all the dead ones fall into the flood trays. i had bad problems with aphids when i used coco, but lately with soil i only see a few at a time and they never get too bad/ *knocks on wood
LadyFlores
New member
Hi RetroGrow, I checked out the pics.
My roots didn't have any slime. They were just brown / pink and rotten. One spot they were very dark pink.
And the plant itself was visibly dying (leaves dropping and the plant got very dehydrated. It was obviously being starved to death due to rotting roots.).
I'm doing to do a h2o2 flush tonight to hopefully eradicate any fungus or bacteria. And then give them plenty of nutes and hygrozyme right away to encourage new root growth.
I hope the survivors will be ok. 16 days til harvest and counting!
My roots didn't have any slime. They were just brown / pink and rotten. One spot they were very dark pink.
And the plant itself was visibly dying (leaves dropping and the plant got very dehydrated. It was obviously being starved to death due to rotting roots.).
I'm doing to do a h2o2 flush tonight to hopefully eradicate any fungus or bacteria. And then give them plenty of nutes and hygrozyme right away to encourage new root growth.
I hope the survivors will be ok. 16 days til harvest and counting!
LadyFlores
New member
Thanks again RetroGrow
Thanks again RetroGrow
I will definitely be checking it out. I know Physan 20 is pretty effective, but I didn't know it could be applied to plants.
I'll report back on my results.
Thanks again RetroGrow
I will definitely be checking it out. I know Physan 20 is pretty effective, but I didn't know it could be applied to plants.
I'll report back on my results.
reckon
Member
bayer complete takes TWO MONTHS to dissipate,....if you are harvesting in 17 days, you will be smoking imdacloprid. (not good)
the bayer fruit and veg will dissipate in less time (I believe 21 days)
flushing won't do anything, the imidacloprid, is SYSTEMIC, your plant will have absorbed this into all of it's tissue.
hopefully, I misunderstood your post, and you dosed them way before this.
the bayer fruit and veg will dissipate in less time (I believe 21 days)
flushing won't do anything, the imidacloprid, is SYSTEMIC, your plant will have absorbed this into all of it's tissue.
hopefully, I misunderstood your post, and you dosed them way before this.
It seems that the Bayer T+S or variants are the best way to go. But is the IMID only work against the winged root aphids or does it also work against Fungus Gnats?
Would be awesome if it was effective against both since the two are so hard to distinguish
Would be awesome if it was effective against both since the two are so hard to distinguish
reckon
Member
works GREAT against fungus gnats, I just cleared out THE worst infestation I have ever had in 30 years of growing cannabis
3 applications of Bayer Complete (has a contact killer AND the imidacloprid @ 10ml/Gal (2 TEASPOONS per gal, NOT 2 TABLESPOONS) over a 2 week period, and as I write this, I can only find one or two adults a day.
you HAVE to look for OTHER breeding sites in the immediate area and treat those as well, because as soon as you pour the Bayer on the girls, and they can't lay eggs in the soil/coco/hydro medium, they will be looking for your clones and mums in the other room, shower or sink drains, the air vent in your toilet, the moisture trap in your A/C unit, the old onion you forgot fell behind the shelf 3 months ago, dampness UNDER plant drain trays, etc,...so you gotta look around and think like a gnat for a while.
so to GET RID of the gnats, you have to do two things
1) break the egg-larvae-pupae-adult-cycle
2) remove or treat ALL breeding sites in the area (you can use more severe insecticides in houseplants, drains, etc,...)
AND I'll add you have to repeat whatever treatment you decide on at LEAST 3 times a 3-4 days apart or you won't break the cycle.
good luck
SUPER ROOT APHIDS FINALLY DEAD!!
SUPER ROOT APHIDS FINALLY DEAD!!
AS I POSTED EARLIER I HAVE A VERY HEARTY ROOT APHID http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_ZxqcV3iCs
I FOLLOWED SPLEEBALES WELL RESEARCHED ADVICE AND I TRIED TO USE BAYER TREE SHRUB KILLER I USED 15ML/G AND SOAKED FOR 10MIN THIS DID NOT KILL MY ROOT APHIDS.
I WOULD LIKE TO NOTE THAT I HAVE HAD GREAT SUCCESS WITH BAYER KILLER ON NORMAL ROOT APHIDS.
OUT OF DESPERATION I USED ORCHARD INSECT KILLER (LAMBDA-CYHALOTHRIN .05%) THIS IS MEANT TO BE USED AS A SPRAY BUT I USED IT AS A SOAK I USED 1 TBS PER GALLON AND SOAKED FOR 10MIN. IT HAS BEEN TWO WEEKS SINCE THE SOAK AND NO BUGS!! AND ALL MY PLANTS LOOK FINE, NO NOTICEABLE SIDE AFFECTS.
I DONT HAVE ANY INFO ON HOW DANGEROUS (LAMBDA-CYHALOTHRIN .05%) IS, BUT I AM VERY GRATEFUL THIS FINALLY WORKED!!
SUPER ROOT APHIDS FINALLY DEAD!!
AS I POSTED EARLIER I HAVE A VERY HEARTY ROOT APHID http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_ZxqcV3iCs
I FOLLOWED SPLEEBALES WELL RESEARCHED ADVICE AND I TRIED TO USE BAYER TREE SHRUB KILLER I USED 15ML/G AND SOAKED FOR 10MIN THIS DID NOT KILL MY ROOT APHIDS.
I WOULD LIKE TO NOTE THAT I HAVE HAD GREAT SUCCESS WITH BAYER KILLER ON NORMAL ROOT APHIDS.
OUT OF DESPERATION I USED ORCHARD INSECT KILLER (LAMBDA-CYHALOTHRIN .05%) THIS IS MEANT TO BE USED AS A SPRAY BUT I USED IT AS A SOAK I USED 1 TBS PER GALLON AND SOAKED FOR 10MIN. IT HAS BEEN TWO WEEKS SINCE THE SOAK AND NO BUGS!! AND ALL MY PLANTS LOOK FINE, NO NOTICEABLE SIDE AFFECTS.
I DONT HAVE ANY INFO ON HOW DANGEROUS (LAMBDA-CYHALOTHRIN .05%) IS, BUT I AM VERY GRATEFUL THIS FINALLY WORKED!!
reckon
Member
DIDYOUKNOWTHATYOURCAPSLOCKISSTUCKON?
I had dosed bayer tree and shrub two weeks back, it seemed to get rid of all of them.
Then I transplanted some into coco, and a week later the transplanted plants are crazy infested. Tons of the white micro bugs crawling all over the tops of the pots, and I saw a few flyers too. Will hit with imid again, hopefully that will do it.
I suspect that the infestation came in on a bag of botanicare cocogro, a week or two after an earlier transplant is when I started to notice problems, and now this. It is possible the bugs got in at the hydro shop.
This problem seems to be pretty common in coco, maybe that is part of the reason it is spreading so widely.
Then I transplanted some into coco, and a week later the transplanted plants are crazy infested. Tons of the white micro bugs crawling all over the tops of the pots, and I saw a few flyers too. Will hit with imid again, hopefully that will do it.
I suspect that the infestation came in on a bag of botanicare cocogro, a week or two after an earlier transplant is when I started to notice problems, and now this. It is possible the bugs got in at the hydro shop.
This problem seems to be pretty common in coco, maybe that is part of the reason it is spreading so widely.
I wish I had found this thread/forum, when i started my research on these things. Saw them crawling around my seedlings about a week, 2 weeks ago. Not my first round at things, so I normally would be able to identify pests, but these had me stumped. Also, since I started with seeds, I had no idea where they came from. Turns out was in the Coir I bought from my local store. Bag is infested with these.
I actually came to the conclusion these were root aphids after many, many, many hours of investigation, then came across this thread. Well, I just got done reading all 54 or so pages. So, with all this info, BTW, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED AND THE AUTHOR OF THE THREAD, and since my plants are only about 8 inches and still in 16oz cups, I decided on the Bayer Complete Insect Killer.
What had initially tipped me off was a weird, what seemed like nute deficiency, which was weird, as it started at only 3 weeks of age with fresh seeds, so there really should of been zero deficiencies at that early of a stage. Leaves were yellowing and rusting, just like the symptoms in this thread and matched a lot of the pictures. I saw the occasional, what I thought at the time were fungus gnats, flying around. I noticed however, that these things were a bit harder to kill, as they seemed to see me coming, and had a bit more control in their flight. Fungus gnats to me, are fairly easy to track down and clap outta the air, not these buggers. So looking closely at a couple I could grab, they didnt look like fungus gnats, and thorough investigation of the soil did not turn up any fungus gnat larvae, which to me are fairly recognizable, just these weird little aphid looking things that were super, super small.
Heres what I did. I pulled all the plants out of their 16oz cups, dusted off all loose soil i could into a sealed container, then drenched the leftover root ball with the bayer mixture, then transplanted into 2 gallon pots, then redrenched and left about an inch of perlite on the top of the soil afterwards, to hopefully promote a drier top soil. I did leave a few in the original 16oz containers, as they were in a different stage, and still fairly small.
Well, about an hour now has passed, and normally when looking at the 16 oz plants after a watering, there are the root aphids all over the soil running around like crazy. I currently don't see a single one, and hundreds are dead in the pan. I only had 3 or 4 of the fliers, and have yet to see even any of those. I know it's a bit soon, but this is a good first step. Will prolly retreat again in a week or so with the spectracide to grab any that i missed in the correct cycle, since they are still very very young (only 38 days old since being put into medium), and will most likely never be flowered, as they will be made mothers.
I had never tried coir before and was going to give it a try... bad bad mistake. So all plants were transplanted into foxfarm and perlite mix.
I'm a budget, medicinal grower, that really does not have the option of starting over, so I had to take drastic steps by using Imid. This has essentially exhausted the remaining of my budget for this particular grow, so something had to be done cheaply. I know, I know, medicinal use a systemic etc etc. I get it. But monetarily, time wise, I had no other option.
On a side note, for the Merit vs Bayer argument, on my bottle, it says that imid is the chemical name for Merit. So yes, they are the exact same thing, just diluted in the Bayer, and much, much cheaper for the small/budget grower ($12.95). Up the mixture ratio, and you have the same thing as Merit, using Bayer.
I actually came to the conclusion these were root aphids after many, many, many hours of investigation, then came across this thread. Well, I just got done reading all 54 or so pages. So, with all this info, BTW, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED AND THE AUTHOR OF THE THREAD, and since my plants are only about 8 inches and still in 16oz cups, I decided on the Bayer Complete Insect Killer.
What had initially tipped me off was a weird, what seemed like nute deficiency, which was weird, as it started at only 3 weeks of age with fresh seeds, so there really should of been zero deficiencies at that early of a stage. Leaves were yellowing and rusting, just like the symptoms in this thread and matched a lot of the pictures. I saw the occasional, what I thought at the time were fungus gnats, flying around. I noticed however, that these things were a bit harder to kill, as they seemed to see me coming, and had a bit more control in their flight. Fungus gnats to me, are fairly easy to track down and clap outta the air, not these buggers. So looking closely at a couple I could grab, they didnt look like fungus gnats, and thorough investigation of the soil did not turn up any fungus gnat larvae, which to me are fairly recognizable, just these weird little aphid looking things that were super, super small.
Heres what I did. I pulled all the plants out of their 16oz cups, dusted off all loose soil i could into a sealed container, then drenched the leftover root ball with the bayer mixture, then transplanted into 2 gallon pots, then redrenched and left about an inch of perlite on the top of the soil afterwards, to hopefully promote a drier top soil. I did leave a few in the original 16oz containers, as they were in a different stage, and still fairly small.
Well, about an hour now has passed, and normally when looking at the 16 oz plants after a watering, there are the root aphids all over the soil running around like crazy. I currently don't see a single one, and hundreds are dead in the pan. I only had 3 or 4 of the fliers, and have yet to see even any of those. I know it's a bit soon, but this is a good first step. Will prolly retreat again in a week or so with the spectracide to grab any that i missed in the correct cycle, since they are still very very young (only 38 days old since being put into medium), and will most likely never be flowered, as they will be made mothers.
I had never tried coir before and was going to give it a try... bad bad mistake. So all plants were transplanted into foxfarm and perlite mix.
I'm a budget, medicinal grower, that really does not have the option of starting over, so I had to take drastic steps by using Imid. This has essentially exhausted the remaining of my budget for this particular grow, so something had to be done cheaply. I know, I know, medicinal use a systemic etc etc. I get it. But monetarily, time wise, I had no other option.
On a side note, for the Merit vs Bayer argument, on my bottle, it says that imid is the chemical name for Merit. So yes, they are the exact same thing, just diluted in the Bayer, and much, much cheaper for the small/budget grower ($12.95). Up the mixture ratio, and you have the same thing as Merit, using Bayer.
Is it possible that the reason these pests have not been identified or noticed in the past is the original infestation came in on coco coir from the countries it is being harvested and processed in? Then it spread through clone trading and more people buying infected coir? Coco only became common in marijuana growing in the last 5 years or so, and has exploded in popularity recently, just like infestations of these bugs seem to be becoming much more common.
It seems pretty obvious we are dealing with a pest that has fairly little official information about it, there are either different stages or completely different species of it, and no one seems to know the actual species of any of them.
Obviously this is all a completely untested hypothesis, but maybe we would find out what these were if we looked toward bugs in sri lanka and other coco producing regions.
It seems pretty obvious we are dealing with a pest that has fairly little official information about it, there are either different stages or completely different species of it, and no one seems to know the actual species of any of them.
Obviously this is all a completely untested hypothesis, but maybe we would find out what these were if we looked toward bugs in sri lanka and other coco producing regions.
Well, I can definitely tell you, that in the 15+ years I've been doing this, I've never heard of, or seen these before. It's all because I thought I'd do something different and try the coir mix instead of soil. My lack of research is only my fault and I bought infected coir. And as for my problems, almost 24 hours later, no fliers and no aphids I've been able to see in the soil as of yet!!! Plants already look happier, have darkened a bit already. Big step forward. Although I got really really lucky as I caught them so early, and my infestation is probably nowhere near some others here.
