Help, I've got white bugs under my pots?!?!?!?!?!?!

Bad news,

After searching a little it turns out that Onychiuridae are a type of springtails that do feed on roots.
They are white blind and about 1 mm long and they do jump and make wounds on your roots.
When i cut my mother plant to throw it away these little facks had colonized the main stem by digging the wounded roots.
Seems neem oil does not kill them all same thing with BT (no larva small ones look like adults).

peace

I tried to find something effective against them but it seems they resist to most pesticides.They can digest DDT.

Best thing to do seems to dry out media or turn temperature under 12°.

peace

http://www.stevehopkin.co.uk/collembolagallery/

That's what they look like.

Wow man, Blind Springers, thats a new one on me & look at all the different sub-species, av you worked out which one youve got/ID'd yet? I saw a guy on youtube treating his house for them, they can get into the house(normal springtails), he was using products id never heard of, but he said it worked with continued applications, was a mix of chemicals iirc, just cant remember which ones, it seemed like a load of botha to me, i didnt want sprintails in my house so i dashed my plants outside & picked up an October crop. Bugger mate unlucky! fker they eat roots! normal springers dont(just decaying matter & can be beneficial in that respect)!
G'Luck!

Yeah apparently there is like 100,000 different species of springtails, I'm still hoping I had a severe nutrient problem or somehow shocked my roots either with cold water, feeding them when dry, or the one time I was in a rush & blasted the top of the soil to hard & washed away/killed a bunch of the fine air roots @ the top.

It's so hard to tell if my plants are getting better or worse, I really can't tell & it's driving me absolutely fucking nuts.

In your case, could they have just been eating already dead roots? Because they will do that. Not doubting, just wondering, we might have yet a new plague about to rip through growrooms, who knows, we'll know soon enough though. Are you on the east coast?

I've been researching this shit a lot as well, springtails are a fucking bitch to kill, really there is no pesticides listing springtails. Predatory Mites & dry soil are about the only option.

Leroy, springtails are very hard to kill, i've heard somebody using Bayer Complete Insect Killer.. complete drench, several applications.. but this stuff is systemic.. and stays in the plant for long time.. better done in early veg.. another way, but it will only work if you haven't used any pesticides is hypoaspys miles, they work better as prevention though.. anyhow try to get rid of them ASAP.. they will definitely diminish your harvest.. i've seen it happen several times!

Damn, this is not what I want to be hearing. Anyone have a gun I can borrow? I only need to use it once

Hi Leroy,scroger ...

I am not in the US and according to the maps i found those little bastards come from northern Europe.

I strongly suspect that i introduced them in my grow room via Root Riots not sure if they were already contaminated or if this occurred in the grow shop were i bought them.

Unfortunately i have confirmation that they feed on live plant material (roots).I checked the roots digging in my medium and here they were trying to duck for cover, i could see wounds on the roots.

I would never have noticed them if it wasn't for the slow growth and side curving top growth.My last harvest was one third of what i am usually accustomed to.

peace

Leroy Brown said:

In your case, could they have just been eating already dead roots? Because they will do that. Not doubting, just wondering, we might have yet a new plague about to rip through growrooms, who knows, we'll know soon enough though. Are you on the east coast?

I've been researching this shit a lot as well, springtails are a fucking bitch to kill, really there is no pesticides listing springtails. Predatory Mites & dry soil are about the only option.

Click to expand...

exactly mate yeah! At first i thought i had thrips(last year this was), asked for help id'ing the little beggers, done the research etc & yeah it was the Snowfleas, sure i got bitten but apparently they dont bite, had me itching anyway, proper infested pots, jumping everywhere they were, thats what gave them away.
I cant bear infestations, why i chucked em out n cleand up!

Have a look on youtube man! there was a guy on there killing/treating his house to rid it of them, he seemed to think it definately killed them iirc. the little fuckers are attracted to moisture. & we have to water out plants, so its a losing battle without chemical treatment! What i dont like about them is, they get into your house, Walls, floors, carpets etc ohh noooo, why i chucked em so fast!

This is the Chap treating them! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNWdUfa4PYo
(Bifen IT, Cyanara/Cyanora? & Delta Metharin, are the chems/insecticides hes using)

See what i mean about the hassle! Hopefully this info may help you guys, hey Abuldur bro!!

G'Luck with it Guys!

Scrogger thanks for the advice, I'll watch that video & research those treatments in a bit, I'm getting pretty close to the 3 weeks left mark so I was planning on drenching the soil next water with Imid & Pyrethrum (Except on one plant that might have to get pulled early), I wouldn't mind adding to the arsenal & having stuff to treat the room with.

I've confirmed that mine DO have eyes. They have such a evil evil look to them though. I pulled a root off the bottom of my pot & I witnessed two larger ones grazing on it, I'm not sure if they were actually eating the root, or eating something on the root, but they were on the root & eating.

I beleive mine are Supraphorura furcifera At least that's the only one I could find that looks identical.

Here is some pics I took last night, hard to get a good shot through the scope:



Mostly dead ones in the runoff:



FTR I'm still not positive the ST's are my problem, but I'm leaning that way. I may have done some root damage though, it's possible they were given water to cold, maybe fed while to dry at one point, maybe. The only thing I definitely did was watered them to forcibly once & exposed & killed a lot of the fine air roots at the top of the pots. But I did all of those things on every room yet the HPS rooms look far worse, might be from underfeeding since HPS will use more nutes, or it might be since the infestation is worse in the HPS rooms..... I think it's the infestation, yes this is my first indoor grow, but I've had plenty of peat container crops outdoors & I've done everything from over feed to underfeed, overwater & underwater, and everything in between including feeding dry soil.

The ONLY time I saw a problem like this was on a plant that eventually had a complete vascular shut down & had to be pulled, I found termites nesting in the rootball & a 1/8" hole at the base of the stalk. Fuck, I actually used some seeds from that plant for this grow. But those were much bigger, easily visible.



Don't these roots look kinda shitty? The ones in the better room look, yup you guessed it- better.

Scrogerman said:

(Bifen IT, Cyanara/Cyanora? & Delta Metharin, are the chems/insecticides hes using)

Click to expand...

hehe, that guy's a duesch. First thing he says is something along the lines of- "I'm not going to get into the factors of why springtails are in certain homes" haha, that made me chuckle. Eliminate any moisture & they will not be a problem.

Bifen- not for food crops

Cyanora- Not for food crops, pyrethrum based though.

Delta Matharin- Requires epa registration, it's some pretty nasty stuff that I wouldn't personally use, can be applied to soil, the longest PHI I found on the epa sheet was 21 days. Tomato was 1 day or 3 day PHI, can't remember. It's also pyrethrum based.

Thanks again scrogger

I found the same thing in my run off last night. My mums are kept in small 6oz containers that have a second container to catch the runoff. It usually stays real humid in the bottom with a few collections of water droplets in the bottom. I hope this doesnt move to my flower chamber... gl Ill be watching to see how this goes for you.

Also I was going to post in the nute forum. I have never had a bug problem. I used some foxfarm grow big and a week later I found a bug. Then a few days after that I say the collection of these tiny things in the runoff. Are you using foxfarm nutes?

haha, i was just showing you they can be removed with insecticides, tbh i didnt check out use for food crops, which i should of done. You aint got long left now anyway, i would dash everything afterwards with a proper clean up. The roots you showed me do look poor but i wouldnt say thats its caused by the Springers. The ones in the pics you show look identicle to the ones i had, i couldnt get over all the different larvel/junior to adult stages, what is it something like 8-10 stages, i nearly fell over when i saw that, read about them getting into the house & considered it too much of a future infection risk not to take direct action. Sorry that poo isnt of any help & yeah that guy is a muppet, but i thought you'd find it usefull watching, glad to be of some assistance, albeit very little.
G'Luck with the Fleas bro!

(they like shop bought composts & potting mixes for sure, thats where the Microwave comes in handy, funny enough i have one pot in the house that has a minor infestation, i consider these things a pest so the house plant is goin lol!)

Nope, just dry stuff. Maxibloom but that's Jacks from now on out, I just hate all the white stuff that doesn't go into solution in the maxi.

I'm still not 100% sure that this is why my plants got fubared, my inexperience makes every variable new, & It's hard to gauge recovery or decline if you've never been through it. I don't think I'll ever know unless I knock down the population & everything gets better within a few days. But I know my plants started looking like shit at the same time these things exploded, and all the things I've said in previous posts.

Hey Scroger, nah you were very clear that you hadn't looked into that stuff & that he was treating a house, I should have been more clear that it was useful to watch & google those insecticides.

Hearing that they look just like yours is good to hear, I was tempted to rip chunks off the bottom & plop bags of fresh soil underneath, thinking maybe it's drainage, they seem to drain fine but there is a lot of roots, I have a shit ton of holes, probably 100 per (And cracks, notice the duct tape) but the holes I made were rather small, 3/8" (9mm) at most. But then I realized- I can't see my containers having a drainage problem, I have 1 plant in each room in a 3g growbag, the MH room one is fine, the HPS one (It's my biggest) looks like shit.

Oh shit, there is a difference in that respect, the MH room is in the shower, doesn't have the pondliner so there has never been standing water. I'm going to elevate the pots in the hps rooms.

See the information i got was that Springtails are completely harmless to plants...Period!
Well at that time i knew there was several/many different species, but the experts at that time told me that ST's were completely harmless & were more beneficial than not, as they eat roots yes! but dead ones & decaying matter, so i thought ok, cool, when i read about the potential house/property infestation potential, i decided i had to rid myself of these things anyway, regardless of them being beneficial. Nothing at all else was mentioned about these things eating healthy root systems & causing damage to our plants. At the time i didnt know that different speices eat healthy roots. What info/links have you got on ST's eating habits bro, i need to know this shit man!
Cheers bro!

http://extension.usu.edu/files/publications/factsheet/springtail01.pdf

http://www.simplykitchengarden.com/vegetablepests/251.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=F_Eo6r5xAzEC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=Onychiuridae+root+feeding&source=bl&ots=hW7Lbnzexe&sig=YqDkVcZCtEvYkU7N6GKzh18H7HM&hl=en&ei=Aa-ATf-VKMaw0QH_4dCKCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Onychiuridae%20root%20feeding&f=false

This link is good info & also confirms that the Orich.... type feed on roots: http://www.vegedge.umn.edu/vegpest/beneficials/Springtails.htm



This one you can't view, but it's one of several things I've come across that indicate the orichinidae species do eat roots (based on the title). http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/20111711

This place also indicates Onych.... are root feeders, no info though & should be taken with a grain of salt: http://bugguide.net/node/view/246786/bgpage

Steven Hopkin is like the ST guru, if my species is what I think it is he has written that they eat beneficial mycorhizae, and when they come in contact with water they secrete a sticky fluid to stop them from being washed away.

Most Onychiuridae are blind, most springtails in general are blind, but I've found that even though mine have eyes they are listed under Onychiuridae, assuming my identification is correct, which it probably isn't considering I haven't veiwed it under a slide & I'm not a professional springtail ID'er.

So cliffs: There is a lot of different species, yet there is not much research or info on them despite how prevelant they are. Many eat decaying organic matter/vegetation as well as harmful fungi & bacteria, some types that prefer this stuff will eat live roots if there populations get large & they don't find what they like. Some species eat live roots, and some species eat beneficial fungi.

My plants still aren't transpiring like they should, and I'm losing lower leaves in a sort of death/vascular wilt type of way. At this point I'm waiting for the soil to get really really dry & then bombing their asses with pyrethrum & misquito dunks.

Next run is definitely not going to be soilless, I'm going to do a few hempy's, a few blaze1's just add water, and a few DWC. Sorta cover all bases & not put all my eggs into one basket approach. My clones are looking like shit, so I might have to pop some beans which will fuck me on plant counts, I'll do 12/12 from seed for any in dirt & see how it goes.

YOOOOOOOOOOOOO I'm now starting to wonder if it's my fucking pondliner.

I do have 1-2 plants in the MH room showing symptoms, BUT the ones in that bin could have been in the HPS room for the first 2 weeks.

Check it, Tetra PVC liner from lowes. They sell a few, ranging in size/price. Mine is the smallest/cheapest...........ONLY one that doesn't say Fish Safe in the description.

Hi Leroy

Do you have springtails in every room ?

If they do feed on root hair it would not surprise me that this would affect both transpiration and nutrient uptake.

I'm going the same road: drying out,pyrethrine but BT seems useless since they have no larval stade.