Bug identification please

[Humility]

Got a few pics, need some help with identifying these bugs so that I can go on to eradicating them if they're malignant. In soil it looks like they squirm/undulate a bit but when I brought them out and placed them on a flat surface they walked around. They're small, about the size of the asterisk on a keyboard,a tiny bit smaller than that. Thanks a lot for your help people. For the record, I used a dilute neem soil drench to try and rid myself of them recently but was not successful.

 

[RetroGrow]

Look like termites....

 

[Humility]

Wow sorry, I forgot to mention that they're in the topsoil and can be seen rarely if you stare at the soil. Sometimes they appear within moments, sometimes it can take a minute or more. Definitely a soil bug of some sort.

 

[TemptedSoul]

thrips maybe.....use spinosed.


Had the same problem for a couple years----spinosed killed them all in one application!

 

[MynameStitch]

any damage to your plants or specks? Do they come out all the time or just when you water?

 

[Humility]

Hey thanks SO much to ya'll for replying. I'm really sorry for not staying on top of this. I need to take a few more pictures this evening once it's time for lights on.


It MIGHT be thrips. The segments on the body look very similar to me. What does not look similar at all is that thrips appear to be somewhat translucent in the head and abdomen whereas the thorax in those pictures seem to be opaque. My bugs are opaque all the way. Also, my bugs have no wings and are present ONLY in soil although I'll need to confirm that tonight after I perform a thorough examination.

I'm going to try to get better pictures but all the photos I look at don't look like thrips, fungus gnats or root aphids so I don't know what exactly is going on here. I'm hoping the bugs are innocuous but that might be wishful thinking.


I am having some serious issues with one of my 5-gallon buckets while the other one looks GREAT but I've seen bugs in both these buckets and I'm pretty sure I simply let the bucket get K deficient and then hit them with a decent amount of K P and N when flower hit, but probably too much N because the leaf margins are rolling in and crisped up - indicative of K deficiency, while the leaf tips are browning and crisping, indicative of N+.


Either way, I have seen no specks on my leaves (although my leaves are having a few other problems), haven't seen any bugs on the undersides of leaves (although granted I haven't looked as closely as I could have). Overall I'm just concerned that there are bugs in my soil.

Will update with better pics tonight.

Stitch - hard to say but I think they only come out when I water. I'll be able to give a better answer tonight.

Thanks again folks.

 

[Humility]

Alllllllrighty then. Got a chance to do some examining and the first thing I did was to brush soil away from the roots directly near the stems. Went down a few inches and saw ZERO root aphids.

What I did see were two-three things that pretty much nailed this for me:


Finally saw some larvae. Cream-yellow colored as normal.

Saw more "bugs", also saw that they had wings and that this time they started flying . That clearly means things are progressing in a bad direction.

most importantly prolly - I took a closer look at fungus gnats and thrips and I'm pretty much 100% positive I have thrips. I won't bother to post more pictures but I have definitively identified their cigar shaped body. Fungus gnats are shaped similarly but the hind quarters are much more tapered than the classic "cigar shape" of the thrips. More importantly probably is that thrips have small stubby legs while in all the pictures I've seen fungus gnats have mosquito-like legs. Very wide and spread apart. Also, the wings in fungus gnats seem to be much more obvious than in thrips.




So more news - I hooked up a neem+rosemary oil + lavender oil + a few other oils spray along with a dry powder insecticide of ginger, cayenne, cinnamon and chilli poweders.


The thrips were UNPHASED by the various powders. Maybe they need more time to take effect I don't know, but those powders did almost literally *nothing* except possibly excite them a bit.

More surprisingly - the spray does SO VERY LITTLE. I've never seen neem be so ineffective. Granted my bottle is pretty old it's been stored in ideal conditions (60-70 degrees, dark brown HDPE bottle) for a few years these insects simply are not reacting like fleas or ticks or scabies have in the past - these insects were definitely phased but did not die at all as a result of my spraying, often times multiple direct sprays. In fact, they kept on walking, almost completely regularly.


Absolutely astounding. Every time I've ever placed any kind of sprays or neem on insects they IMMEDIATELY begin to start demonstrating obvious signs of nervous damage and stop moving within seconds to minutes (neem works in seconds, the essential oils can take up to a minute with ants and such).


I'm gonna get some spinosad tomorrow and update when I have more news.

Jeez louise.

 

[Humility]

One note I forgot to mention - the spray WAS almost immediately effective against the one larval unit I found. It wiggled very energetically for 4-5 seconds and stopped moving entirely afterwards.

 

[unspoken]

Spinosad man. It will wipe them out. Monterrey Garden Spray works like a charm.

 

[ozzieAI]

i am surprised by your observations about the neem not being effective, sometimes i find it neem can take awhile to work on some bugs but is still effective non the less. are the bugs you sprayed still active now?

i would generally recommend watering neem into the soil and any bugs there will be affected. using spinosad would also be my recommendation if the neem continued to be ineffective.

all the best with it and hope you prevail...

 

[Humility]

Alrighty folks. I know I'm bumping a thread that's a little old at this point but I finally purchased and received my Monterrey Garden Spray containing Spinosad. Bottle instructions were to dilute 1/2 tbs (.25 fl oz) to a 16 oz spray bottle of water.

My spray bottle is 6 oz so I used 1/2 tsp for each fill up. 10% more concentrated than recommended but I highly doubt it'll cause any problems.



On to the fun: No picture updates but I have wonderful news. It appears as if these bugs either were indeed thrips or whatever they are is being highly effected by the spray. The adults DID NOT DIE instantly, or even after a half hour. These little critters are tough!

That said it's beyond clear that it's effective. I wanted to collect a sample and spray it in vitro by placing it in a mason jar along with a bit of soil but there weren't any present on the surface when I examined my soil for a few moments so I said the hell with it, loaded up and sprayed the soil of my pots. 6 ozs worth for two 5 gallon buckets to give an idea of the amount of spray used for the area.

I then went back and reloaded and sprayed the foliage, and then again and then again and then again. My room is running at 40-50% RH @ 70-75 degrees with lights off, 18-25% RH 75-80 degrees with lights on so I sprayed my buds and leaves quite heavily. I will admit that thinking back I didn't spray under the leaves as throughly as I could have, but I'm confident that I did well enough.

My leaves are already completely dry looking and it's only been a couple hours. This should give folks a clear idea of what kind of risk they'll be taking with spraying their plants late on in flower. I'm going to go 9-10 weeks and I'm on day 36 at the moment.

Anyway on to the real fun:


So after spraying the foliage of both plants quite thoroughly I noticed a flier here or there which isn't completely out of the ordinary. It's rare that I'll see one fly around (thankfully the infestation wasn't too bad) but it happened from time to time. This reminded me that I sprayed the soil first, so I looked down and there were CLEARLY far more thrips on the surface than I've ever seen before. I could easily see 5-10 in each plant, all crawling around on the surface. This is HIGHLY unusual even after I drench the soil for feedings or waterings.


I grabbed a few samples up and placed them in a container to observe their movement. I immediately noticed the twitching and jerking that I'm familiar with primarily in ants after an insecticide has been sprayed on them. There was also an overabundance of grooming going on, the bug trying to clean the spinosad off of itself and ingesting more as a result.

Anyway I hit the soil up a few times and noticed that when I came back in the room for my last spraying the thrips were out of control. They were climbing out of bucket, falling on my supplemental/side lighting (T12s), climbing up the main stalk of the plant at soil level, flying away, doing everything possible to try and escape the effects of the spray.



Extremely pleased, eternally grateful. Some people have thrips for years, back in the 60s and 70s I bet some people had them for DECADES and just didn't know what to do. This is my second crop and you guy came through in a big way. I'm confident enough in this product to continue reusing my soil without worry, something I WOULD NOT have been able to do without the advice to pick up an insecticide containing Spinosyn compounds.


Thanks so much again guys. You saved the day big time.