Mysterious Bug RETURNS! NEED HELP !!!!

So I have been battling a pest for some time now. I thought they were root aphids, and I'm still leaning this way as they are only seen on the ground and on the outsides of pots. But when I get them under the microscope they dont look like any root aphid I have seen documented online. They are tiny white bugs that can be seen just barely with the naked eye. I have recently shut down my entire grow and cleaned my grow area from top to bottom and set off a pyrethrin bomb. I threw away all my old pots and soil and started fresh. I deployed hypoaspis miles , rove beetles, nematodes and amblyseius fallacis when I planted as well but apparently that didnt do shit. These are the most persistent and voracious pest I have ever dealt with. I have attached the best photos I could get . These pics show what look like eggs attached to the bugs themselves. They move relatively fast under the scope so it has been hard to get a great pic. PLEASE HELP ME !

i hope im wrong bro but i think those look like broad mites. Broads are arthropods so they have 8 legs, if you can count them it might help narrow it down.

looks like same bastards i had! burn the room xD!

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=340640





i think you have broads and Pseudococcidae or maybe just broad that last picture is little over lighted looked bit like those others at first

Broadmites are translucent like that.

https://youtu.be/9wbYZYxdo5A

I got some new pics over the weekend. I only ever see these bugs on the outsides of the pots. I have scoped my plants many times never to find a bug on the plants themselves. Although in the past I have seen what I thought was broad mite eggs or possibly seccile glands. So maybe I have been treating the wrong damn pest this whole time? This one is throwing me for a loop. Back to the drawing board! This pics were taken from the sides of the fabric pots.

How do you know they are not S. scimitus (formerly H. miles) or another soil mite?

I have had natural populations rear up and hangers on from nearly a year after inocculation.

This is an oversimplification, but pest mites tend to graze like cows while beneficials move quickly.


Most importantly, what are the plants like? Root aphids and broad mites cause ever quickening downturn in health.

Bear in mind a growers tendency to diagnose every issue as the worst possible scenario. We are little old women and Chicken Little's the lot of us.

Have a little smoke and look at the big picture.

Thats just it, I dont know what they are , I'm trying to positively ID them. I have had them for over 6 months now with nothing but poor health in my plants. I have completely shut my grow down and cleaned everything top to bottom only to find they have returned and so has the poor slow poor growth. I have worked with plants my entire life and I feel I am able to pick up the first signs of poor health. The first signs I get are what appears to be overwatering then deformed new growth and mysterious holes apppearing in the middle of leaves. Right now the fabric pots are literally crawling with thousands of these lil fuckers (all being thrown out). In my experience there is a healthy balance with beneficials and that is not what I am seeing. I appreciate all the positive vibes and trust me I wish I could even start to think they're beneficial but I highly doubt that possibility.

Apologies, suppose I am reacting more to users like Tray aka the Broad Mite Patrol.

They do almost appear thread footed, but while broad mites range they are typically concentrated in the foliage on fresh growth tips.

I have a real "ends justifies the means" approach and would stay in veg treating the soil/foliage routinely for a period of 8wks to remove/rule out.

Sorry, I thought I posted this here, but was another thread. If they are broadmites, this will happen within a week or two all over all plants. I do not know if it made any difference, but the time this happened, I did not use a fan in the tent.

Someone took one look at them and knew it was broadmites. Then I scoped and found a couple of them. Russett mites would look like nute burn on leaf edges.



Just noticed those were on smartpot. You can not find them on mangy leaves?????

Hello All,

So I have reached out to a couple different specialists and each of them are thinking these are hypoaspis miles. I did release some about 3 weeks ago but they appeared much larger and had a reddish tinge. These bugs that I have posted pictures of are much smaller to the naked eye almost like a spec of dust but when you look closely they are moving around pretty quick. These are the same bugs I scoped about 4-5 months ago when I realized I had an issue,before ever releasing predatory mites. These bugs were crawling by the thousands on the outsides of my plastic pots at the time. The first thing I notice in my plants is the new leaf growth develops tears in the leaf and random holes appearing in the center of the leaf. The individuals I am working with thought the damage looked mechanical or as if something had chewed the leaf. These chomps or tears would require a bug large enough to see clearly with the naked eye like a caterpillar or something. I keep a very close eye on my plants as we all do and I have never seen a bug that fits that description. I have never seen an single insect on the actual plants just in or around the root zone.

I recently shut down my entire grow for two weeks and attempted to clean and disinfect everything. I threw out all old soil and pots and I started with new soil , new containers and new plants. I released hypoaspis miles , fallacis and rove beetles. Everything was going well until recently about 4 days ago I noticed these bugs on the outside of my smart pots. Like I mentioned before I had scoped these 4-5 months ago so I thought they were the culprit of my problems but now I'm being told they look like beneficials. At this point im starting to really go insane. I have two tents going both in veg. One tent I hit with OG Biowar foliar and root pack and the other I did a soil drench of botanigard then 4 days later I did a drench of SNS 209. The tent that got the OG Biowar looks much healthier than the other tent. In fact the tent that got the botanigard and SNS 209 are showing the tears and holes in leafs on most plants.

So the people I'm working with suggested I first try to see if there is a bug or something I'm missing and even go in at night with the green light to look. Secondly they have given me some suggestions as to how to activate the SAR response of the plant . They have suggested I brew a tea with yucca, insect frass and possibly a silica product. Sorry for the long as write up but I'm starting to question everything. I'm going to chill out, simplify things and try to grow some nice terpy organic buds ! Thank you guys for your input.

You cannot see broad mites, so it's not that.

I'd like to see a better picture, if you can capture it on a piece of cellophane tape we can better identify it.

A typical gardening or horticulture student can identify most insects using a key, and if we can identify it to what class of insect it is by looking at key parts we could suggest control methods. IF there is damage associated with a pest.

So I see 4 legs on each side, and a fusion of the head and cephlathorax, therefore it could be Arachnida class. Some insect controls are based off of what class of insect it is.

Get a better picture, I use a compound microscope after capturing it on a tape to see what it is.

I'll work on getting some better pics but I do have some leaf shots of the damage I'm talking about

The white stuff is the talc from the OG Biowar by the way