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Tired of having to fight gnats every time you get a brick of coco?

StankyBeamer

Professional A$$hole
My friends, i have the solution. Lets face it, whether you buy expensive pre-charged coco or youre like me and get the cheap gh or botanicare bricks, youre gonna have to kill off some gnats. Theres multiple routes, gognats (which doesnt work for shit), bti (which takes forever and still sometimes doesnt work, and soil drenches with pyrethrin/permethrin or h2o2. Well ive found the cheapest, easiest, and most effective strategy for eliminating the pesky bastards. Start getting coco bricks instead of bags, and simply boil the water you use to expand it. This will kill all the hybernating gnat larvae. Unfortunately it will also kill the trichoderma, but the good news is innoculant powder is cheap as fuck on kelp4less.com. put your brick in a 20gal bucket from home depot, and pour big soup pans full of boiling water on it to expand it. As it starts to puff up, scoop the steaming hot expanded coir off the top and cover the bucket with tin foil to seal in the heat. With this technique ive been able to completely drop the use of products like gognats and azamax trying to fight the little bastards. Ill post pics in a minute. Hope this comes in helpful for other cheap-skate coco growers like myself:tiphat:
 

FireIn.TheSky

Active member
I was buying botanicare bricks I have never seen any bugs in it. Its dry as a bone I don't know how any gnat could live it it since they eat decaying plant matter and roots.

Gnats are a bitch I always have tons of them in my veg tent they seem to die off in flower.

I think it's because I have better air circulation in flower so it dries the soil out.
 

RoostaPhish

Well-known member
Veteran
Reminds me of the old bake the soil technique. Have a few friends that did that a lot. I know that b'cuzz coco is steamed as well, so pretty similar also. And if the bag is sealed like dr. earth for instance nothing can get inside, well "technically".
 

StankyBeamer

Professional A$$hole
Ive heard a million times from a lot of different people "i never see bugs in bricks or soil", or "the bricks are dehydrated and compressed, how could the gnats survive without moisture?". The best answer, they hybernate. Ive tried steamed coco, ive tried bricked coco, no matter what kind i use, i get a swarm of gnats a week after i transplant into the new coco. Ever since i started boiling my coco, this hasnt been an issue:biggrin:
 

SteelCityGreen

New member
That's always been my theory. Dormant eggs waiting for the right conditions. I once though they were just finding a way in but there's no way they can be that ubiquitous.

It would make sense that boiling/steaming would neutralize the eggs before they become an issue, I've wondered about using boiling water on my coco before but it worried me. And I'm too tight to ruin a block of coco. So instead I've always kept them at bay with Insecticidal Soap spray, dries the little bastards right up :)
 

StankyBeamer

Professional A$$hole
You just gotta re-innoculate the coco with trichoderma afterwards and its the same as before, except probably has more bennies than before and zero gnat larvae
 

doams

Member
in bb coco there are always shitloads of springtail but cant complain glad that they are there started to like em a while ago they are fun and welcomed in the pots cat imagine it without dem would be sad :)
 

justanotherbozo

Active member
Veteran
if you're growing in a confined space, say a tent or a cab, then all you need is a few yellow sticky traps and a bit of patience to rid yourself of gnats, easy peasy.

...it's the larvae that are the problem feasting on your roots so if you have a bunch of fliers in your veg tent then they are laying eggs in your coco that are happily munching on your roots until they develop and morph into the fliers who don't have a mouth so are not a threat, just a nuisance, ...except that they are the egg layers.

...a few yellow sticky traps in your space and you start taking out the fliers and within a couple weeks your gnat problem should be a thing of the past, no boiling water, no re-innoculation, just a few sticky traps.

...you could also put a 1inch layer of hydroton or grorocks or gravel on the top of your pots and deny the fliers a place to lay their eggs, if they can't reach the top of the medium they can't lay their eggs.

a key part of your strategy with any pest should be a study of the lifecycle of that pest so you can figure out a way to interrupt that cycle.

peace, bozo
 

Snook

Still Learning
Veteran
if you're growing in a confined space, say a tent or a cab, then all you need is a few yellow sticky traps and a bit of patience to rid yourself of gnats, easy peasy.

...it's the larvae that are the problem feasting on your roots so if you have a bunch of fliers in your veg tent then they are laying eggs in your coco that are happily munching on your roots until they develop and morph into the fliers who don't have a mouth so are not a threat, just a nuisance, ...except that they are the egg layers.

...a few yellow sticky traps in your space and you start taking out the fliers and within a couple weeks your gnat problem should be a thing of the past, no boiling water, no re-innoculation, just a few sticky traps.

...you could also put a 1inch layer of hydroton or grorocks or gravel on the top of your pots and deny the fliers a place to lay their eggs, if they can't reach the top of the medium they can't lay their eggs.

a key part of your strategy with any pest should be a study of the lifecycle of that pest so you can figure out a way to interrupt that cycle.

peace, bozo


I stopped using coco because of the ggoddammedggnats. this sounds like it might just do that ... "stop the life cycle". Good tipski. Cheap too.
 

StankyBeamer

Professional A$$hole
http://www.forestrydistributing.com/en/gnatrol-wdg-biological-larvicide-omri-listed

Gnatrol WDG, yellow sticky traps. Use both regulary and with a little patience your gnat free. Idk why people mess with anything else.

If you believe they are laying dormant in your compressed brick, add it to your final flush water when rehydrating your brick.

The problem ive found with this is that gnatrol only kills larvae at a specific stage in the life cycle that lasts about a day, and they stay larvae for 30 days before maturing and laying eggs for a few days, so you have to use gnattol every day for a month in coco daily feeding to even have a chance at breaking the life cycle, and thats not counting that there are bti resistant gnats because of monsanto corn stock that produces bti to try to keep corn borers off. Nothing is immune to boiling water, its cheap and kills all life cycles instantly. Works on aphids and thrips that might be hiding in there also, where as sm90 and gnatrol wont
 

justanotherbozo

Active member
Veteran
...there are NO yellow sticky trap resistant gnats, you catch the fliers and pretty soon you don't have larvae, ...in a tent it takes at most 2 weeks to eliminate gnats.

...i'm not talking out my ass either, i've been growing in coco for close to 8 years now and i run a perpetual so that means a LOT of 5kg bricks of coco and an assload of gnats, ...the sticky traps have solved the problem for me every time without chemicals or bacteria of any kind.

...gnats are so phuckin' easy.

bozo
 

StankyBeamer

Professional A$$hole
The problem with stickys is the adult stage is a few days and the larval stage is much longer, and adults lay so many larvae if you have a few fliers your soil is full of larvae and the larvae are the only stage that damages the plants. The sand layer can slow em down but ive heard and had mixed results, and found it slowed my wet/dry cycle in my coco up too much for the multifeed. Ive found the heat gets rid of em instantly, and cheap strong h202 drenches make sure they stay gone
 

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