Broad mites? What is this pest?

[highonmt]

Hey bug slewths, well here is another one for you. We have been fighting RA and Spidermites and now we are being over-run with this. At first I thought it was a mosaic virus as the leaf margins are curled up and the surface is leathery. Are these broadmites? or something else? I've never seen them before in 20+ years of growing so that makes two new pests in as many years. I find myself wishing for western flower thrips. or just plain ole spidermites. The bodies are white several sets of legs at the front end the bodies are ringed like a grub. No other forms like adult thrips and no black spots or chlorotic paths like thrips. I'm thinking they must be broad mites from the type of damage they are doing. The have all but killed a couple moms so we just culled all the infected plants last night. please any input is appericiated. The "large" clear things in the photo are trichomes for scale.

The damage they cause is extensive and completely unlike thrip damage that I've seen before. They are very small; the above micrograph is at 30x. Neem is like bath oil to these bad grubs. no effect.

Anyone seen this before?
Thanks,
HM

 

[Stress_test]

Damn that's a new one to me too...

 

[greenmatter]

looking in "Garden Insects of North America" while they don't have an actual picture of broad mites they say it is closely related to cyclamen mites and can not be told apart without high power magnification. there is a picture of a cyclamen mite and what you have does not look like it (wrong shape). i will keep going through my book. hope this helped

 

[Greenheart]

Ouch. Your making me wanna cry with those pics. Complete bummer. Your experience by far outways mine but what do you think about Mosquito Dunks. Have you ever used them. I was a Neem-a-holic myself till the FG bombers hit me. Now I'm using the BTI dunks in the soil and spraying down the leaves with the neem solutions. The BTI from what I read takes a while to start being effective but they are supposed to work on "larvae bearing insects". I'm in week 3 of my dunk program and as of yet the gnats are still persistant but I think they are starting to decline in the last few days after a massive population explosion.

Have you noticed any possible adult forms of the larvae? Possibly you could try putting some soil in a prison chamber to see what bugs craw forth.

My shot in the dark would be root maggots but they I think would be larger:
http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/pro...able-root-maggots-and-root-maggot-control.htm

http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3F_adv_prop%3Dimage%26va%3Droot%2Bmaggot%26fr%3Dyfp-t-701&w=640&h=480&imgurl=img155.imageshack.us%2Fimg155%2F7170%2Frootmaggot.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollitup.org%2Fbugs%2F335046-grizzlys-guide-pulverizing-pests.html&size=109KB&name=Root+Maggot&p=root+maggot&oid=564470cea942f99bcf60ae177021dbf7&fr2=&no=7&tt=2040&sigr=129gf4b6f&sigi=11f7e5tmg&sigb=12o37vpq9&.crumb=qeFfzaILz.A

 

[greenmatter]

sorry high wish i had the silver bullet for ya. would any other pics be possible from your end? one interesting thing i did find was that broad mite eggs go from being clear and smooth ( and eliptical) to growing bumps as they mature. also the rear legs are described as "threadlike"in more than one book. do you see any of that? i can't find good pics of the whole life cycle of the mites. again the shape just does not scream mite at me. looks more like thrip family but it sounds like you know about those. wish i could help you more. good luck

 

[Stress_test]

Sure kinda looks like leaf miners.

 

[greenmatter]

Sure kinda looks like leaf miners.

thought about that but from what i have seen every leafminer is the maggot or pupae from something that flies and the pupae are in the leaves for the most part and not on them. that pic is not a big area and there are a bunch of the little bastards , so to lay that many eggs there would be a ton of flies and scarring on the leaves.

i don't claim to be a bug guru so if i'm wrong please school me ... i'm hoping for highs sake one chimes in soon

 

[highonmt]

Ya they are not broad mites I'm fairly sure of that now. The bugs have a shape like a thrip but are way small ie you cant see them with the naked eye. They also lack the defined head of the thrips. They really move around pretty well and have grub like banding. There are no fliers or other life stages I've found. the eggs look like a little half moon. I've never seen these before but the damage they do is hard core. Luckily they don't spread very fast. I am going to try avid, and bug bombs we'll see how tough they really are.
HM
ps I'll try to get some more pictures soon.

 

[Stress_test]

I still say leaf miners. I've never dealt with them so I could be wrong but those in the picture and the damage don't really fit anything else.

 

[highonmt]

Ill try to get more pictures soon but they are so damn small its hard to focus on them. Here is another picture. Not much better unfortunately. I'm going to treat em with spinosad and see if it kills em. Thanks for any help.

 

[Stress_test]

I can't believe that somebody else hasn't seen them before.

That is another reason that I think it is leaf miners, cause there are only so many pests. The only thing that even comes close to your description is leaf miners.

Unless there is a critter that isn't as common?

 

[FoCo(No.Co)]

spinosad

 

[greenmatter]

gotta agree with fo co, and if stress is right about the leaf miner thing the spinosad will thrash the little F@#$ers. save the avid as your "nuclear option". let us know what happens. i would still like to know WTF these things are.

 

[highonmt]

Thanks for the ideas guys. We bombed the warehouse with pyrethrum foggers and the little shits are DEAD. I still don't know wtf they are but I do know they are dead. I spent 2hrs last night looking through the dissecting scope and nothing was moving. We are going to treat with spinosad next week to catch the next generation. Does anyone know if spinosad is ok for flowering plants? I know it's ORMI cert. but just want to be sure.
HM

 

[greenmatter]

Thanks for the ideas guys. We bombed the warehouse with pyrethrum foggers and the little shits are DEAD. I still don't know wtf they are but I do know they are dead. I spent 2hrs last night looking through the dissecting scope and nothing was moving. We are going to treat with spinosad next week to catch the next generation. Does anyone know if spinosad is ok for flowering plants? I know it's ORMI cert. but just want to be sure.
HM

my spinosad bottle says dried herbs and leafy veggies can be sprayed up to one day before harvest.

 

[Rusty Nailz]

A friend of mine recently had this happen a couple times - Little tiny white bugs, very agile, quick, moving around on the top of the soil and deep into the soil, out the bottom of the pot, but never going very far away from the soil particles. Almost identical leaf curl to your photos as well, with the curled leafs becoming very brittle...

Both times, the "infestation" seemed to happen after a pH imbalance, early flower. I believe the first pH imbalance was due to too much sulfur being added as a top dressing, which may have killed off beneficial fungus, or something else that was balancing things?? I don't know. Even after the pH balanced out within the pots from the soil doing it's thing, they were still infested with the bugs, but the plants seemed to be doing just fine, aside from whatever nutrient problems were causing the leaf curl, and they were re-vegged in the soil that contained the bugs with no problems.

The second time it happened was during a different run, and the pH dropped this time due to too much molasses / kelp being added during the switch to flower. Bugs appeared, leaf curl, but everything seems fine.

I have a feeling these things are dependent on certain soil chemistry to hatch and spread, because he is still running the plants with the bugs side-by-side to other plants that do not contain them, using the same soil mix. The ones that do not contain them never had the pH / nutrients issues from adjusting for flower.

@highonmt - Did you happen to notice anything with your pH???

Note: The soil mix contained about 50% Miracle Grow Organic Choice vegetable garden soil (eg, half-composted chicken litter) The other 50% of the mix was local soil, peat, perlite, blood, bone, kelp, guanos, and dolomite lime

 

[Work2much]

A friend of mine recently had this happen a couple times - Little tiny white bugs, very agile, quick, moving around on the top of the soil and deep into the soil, out the bottom of the pot, but never going very far away from the soil particles. Almost identical leaf curl to your photos as well, with the curled leafs becoming very brittle...

Both times, the "infestation" seemed to happen after a pH imbalance, early flower. I believe the first pH imbalance was due to too much sulfur being added as a top dressing, which may have killed off beneficial fungus, or something else that was balancing things?? I don't know. Even after the pH balanced out within the pots from the soil doing it's thing, they were still infested with the bugs, but the plants seemed to be doing just fine, aside from whatever nutrient problems were causing the leaf curl, and they were re-vegged in the soil that contained the bugs with no problems.

The second time it happened was during a different run, and the pH dropped this time due to too much molasses / kelp being added during the switch to flower. Bugs appeared, leaf curl, but everything seems fine.

I have a feeling these things are dependent on certain soil chemistry to hatch and spread, because he is still running the plants with the bugs side-by-side to other plants that do not contain them, using the same soil mix. The ones that do not contain them never had the pH / nutrients issues from adjusting for flower.

@highonmt - Did you happen to notice anything with your pH???

Note: The soil mix contained about 50% Miracle Grow Organic Choice vegetable garden soil (eg, half-composted chicken litter) The other 50% of the mix was local soil, peat, perlite, blood, bone, kelp, guanos, and dolomite lime

I just dealt with the same exact bug. Your description is dead on what I've been dealing with. I used Bayer and Spectrazide. Killed them dead for weeks but they made a come back. These things layed eggs by the hundreds on the sides of my coco pots.

I've got terribly bad leave under-curl with the leaves getting very brittle and dry. Some of the margins are curling up as in the above pics as well.

I've got a thread about it here in the infirmary with just one crapy cell phone pic. Take a look and tell me what you think.

 

[dagnabit]

diatomaceus earth?
if they are in the soul and soft bodied.
turn your soil into a field of razors!!!

 

[Rusty Nailz]

I personally would try everything possible to avoid dumping some chemical into the soil to kill bugs, especially if that chemical systematically disables the bugs' nervous system....what happens if you smoke a few drops of it? Anyone want to look into that and let us know how it goes?

I was thinking - Might it be possible that these bugs are digesting so much stuff in the soil so quickly in comparison to typical microbes that they are shitting it out and making the soil even more "hot" and nutrient-rich with what they leave behind?

Typically, if you have an over-abundance of nutrients in organic soil, you don't notice because the microbes take so long to digest your amendments, right? For instance, maybe there is some kind of bacteria "working" on a grain of bone meal - What if these little bugs can just eat that same size grain of bone meal and digest it into a quick release fertilizer? Bug shit. ?

The leaf curl to me looks like a magnesium lock-out or something, so maybe the resulting excrement is high in magnesium? or maybe it is just from the pH changing?...

 

[greenmatter]

if part of this bugs life cycle is in the dirt nematodes would do the job. no chems in those