Root aphids?? If so I need to go with the nuclear option! Please advise pics included

So I have been having an issue for many months. I thought it was nute lock out/defency but I think I finally found the root cause. I use smart pots and top feed in veg and go ebb n flow for flower. Today one of my trays in flower showed this horrible sight..
I know it might make you itch or puke but if you take a look you will see these fat gross brown/blask aphid like basterds. here is a pic of them stuck to a sticky stip and floating in my tray
They look big but there smaller and fatter ones and I have also seen winged ones. In the yellow strip pic you can see winged and non-winged ones. For months i have had issues with lower leaves yellowing and dying, very weak stems, slow growth, low yield and what looked to be a very bad cal/mag related def but I have been using full line of cutting edge for 9 years and have never changed my medium or anything in those 9 years. ph always 5.8-6.2, temps always 68-80, humid 45-65%, use co2 and always had 1/5-2lbs per light. last 18 months had nothing but issues with cloning, yield, and health. lower leaves looked yellow , rusty and then died. in flower plants lost all green within 3 weeks and finished but loose buds and low yield. These monsters have to been root aphids right? They are all over my roots poking out of my smart pots in trays in flower right? I run perpetual and harverst every 2 weeks and have 6 trays in flower. What should I do? I thank you in advance.

When I was reading your other thread, it looked like RA's to me. Go to the Fungus Gnat or Winged Root Aphid Sticky and read the last 10 pages. Boils down to applying OGBioWar Root and Foliar, full strength every 2 weeks for 3 months, followed by monthly for 6-9 months for an organic fix. Or 2-3 apps of Orthene/Riptide as recommended by EclipseFour20 for a chemical solution. Best to not try to go minimal or they'll return and cause you shitty yield, plant death, loss of genetics, high frustration, etc. Good luck. -granger

Or you could do the organic method.
You can get some beneficial nematodes for the soil and some lady bugs for the leaves and hit them with a one two punch...


peace
-mystic

topset1976 said:

So I have been having an issue for many months. I thought it was nute lock out/defency but I think I finally found the root cause. I use smart pots and top feed in veg and go ebb n flow for flower. Today one of my trays in flower showed this horrible sight..[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=68507&pictureid=1628110&thumb=1]View Image[/URL]
I know it might make you itch or puke but if you take a look you will see these fat gross brown/blask aphid like basterds. here is a pic of them stuck to a sticky stip and floating in my tray[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=68507&pictureid=1628109&thumb=1]View Image[/URL] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=68507&pictureid=1628111&thumb=1]View Image[/URL]
They look big but there smaller and fatter ones and I have also seen winged ones. In the yellow strip pic you can see winged and non-winged ones. For months i have had issues with lower leaves yellowing and dying, very weak stems, slow growth, low yield and what looked to be a very bad cal/mag related def but I have been using full line of cutting edge for 9 years and have never changed my medium or anything in those 9 years. ph always 5.8-6.2, temps always 68-80, humid 45-65%, use co2 and always had 1/5-2lbs per light. last 18 months had nothing but issues with cloning, yield, and health. lower leaves looked yellow , rusty and then died. in flower plants lost all green within 3 weeks and finished but loose buds and low yield. These monsters have to been root aphids right? They are all over my roots poking out of my smart pots in trays in flower right? I run perpetual and harverst every 2 weeks and have 6 trays in flower. What should I do? I thank you in advance.

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Granger2 said:

When I was reading your other thread, it looked like RA's to me. Go to the Fungus Gnat of Winged Root Aphid thread and read the last 10 pages. Boils down to applying OGBioWar Root and Foliar, full strength every 2 weeks for 3 months, followed by monthly for 6-9 months for an organic fix. Or 2-3 apps of Orthene/Riptide as recommended by EchipseFour20 for a chemical solution. Best to not try to go minimal or they'll return and cause you shitty yield, plant death, loss of genetics, high frustration, etc. Good luck. -granger

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OG Biowar is the most overpriced product for what it can do. It frustrates me that the company charges what they do for a product that is 70% Talc! It did nothing against root aphids for me when I had them. Nothing against you Granger because I know you got it to work for you. If keeping it organic perhaps load up on beneficials and nematodes and see if that doesn't do the trick for you. I'm talking Rove Beetles, Hypoaspis Miles, Nematodes and plenty of 'em. Otherwise pull the trigger and get the orthene/riptide combo. I battled the bastards and finally what it came down to was throwing my plants outdoors for this season and not having anything in the house for at least a month in order to let any live root aphids die off.

well looks like i have a tough decision especially since i am perpetual with 6 8x4 trays in my flower room and pull one every 2 weeks. I did a full h2o2 drench of all flowering plants yesterday and also scrubbed the outside of my smart pots to remove all pertruding root tips and remove all aphids. everything went down into the rez and i flushed the rez. Today i sprayed the pots, trays, top of pots, floor and everything else with azatrol which seemed to kill everything. i saw a ton of dead aphids and winged bastards. I also cut sections of panda film and covered the tops of all my smart pots in the flower room so nothing can get get into the top of them to lay eggs. I ordered evergreen 5% pyrethrin/Orthene/botaniguard/Merit 75WP/Gnatrol/Bayer Advanced 700270 Complete Insect Killer for Soil and Turf Concentrate. I hate to think about using this shit but after everything i have read it looks like if I can do this to just my veg the poison i'm going to give the girls will be out of the system by end of flower. I have over 20 strains of genetics that I just can't loose so I have to go nuclear option. I turned off all pumps in flower so all ebb and flow tables are off so the pots can dry out for a couple days. I normally feed them twice a day which is definably helping the aphids thrive.

Whats been very frustrating is the clones I take from semi healthy plants all root in 8-12 days like normal but take an extra week or two to start growing after i transplant into pots and have burnt tips and just don't look good. I transplanted a bunch of babies out of 1/2 gallon pots today and they all had dark roots none had nice white and bushy roots but I also saw no signs of aphids. Could it be that I took a clones from a sickly plant and the clones just don't take off because of the condition of the mother even though the clones have no aphids? What do you think i should do to make them healthy again? I am using roots excel, sea green, rootamentary, aqua shield and have been doing PTC biopack teas with kelp, blood meal, feather meal, molasses, and worm castings but I don't see super roots like I had before this mess. any idea why I'd have brownish roots?

who dat is,
Anything is cheap if it works. It works for me, and I've tried every organic solution you named. Nematodes work till they die off, but they're not cheap either. Comparing crop and genetics loss against cost of solution, I'm way ahead. OGBioWar has removed the frustration. BTW, most everything we use in this hobby has fillers of some kind.

topset,
If your roots aren't white you've almost certainly still got RA's. If you haven't drenched/soaked your roots with something, you still have em.

Egg laying is the least of your worries. What makes them so hard to get rid of is that the crawlers are females that give live birth to already pregnant female crawlers, and on and on.

Imid does not leave the plant before harvest. If you use it, you'll be smoking it. The solution is not to hit your plants with everything on the market. Pick one regime and stay with it. You'll kill a lot of RA's by spraying, but that's because you've got so many. You'll never achieve control unless you drench. Also, lose the panda film covering. Good luck. -granger

thanks granger I'm going to hit them today. Do you know why moving the plants into a greenhouse would stop the bugs? I have moved a bunch of plants out of veg room and into the greenhouse and they come right back. no more yellowing leaves or weak stems. They all got back to normal health. I didn't change the pots or anything. Would they die in the greenhouse? I have only seen these bugs on the roots coming out of the smartpots. never on the plant. any ideas on why moving plants outside would fix?

I have no idea sep maybe the greenhouse gets really hot [re killing RA's with hot water drench].

Kontos drench 2x a week apart .. easiest and most effective.. your plants will thank you for it

Granger2 said:

topset,
If your roots aren't white you've almost certainly still got RA's. If you haven't drenched/soaked your roots with something, you still have em.

Egg laying is the least of your worries. What makes them so hard to get rid of is that the crawlers are females that give live birth to already pregnant female crawlers, and on and on.

Imid does not leave the plant before harvest. If you use it, you'll be smoking it. The solution is not to hit your plants with everything on the market. Pick one regime and stay with it. You'll kill a lot of RA's by spraying, but that's because you've got so many. You'll never achieve control unless you drench. Also, lose the panda film covering. Good luck. -granger

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thanks granger so i got orthene and evergreen. I also have Merit75, botanigard, gnats and bdiatomaceous earth. I want to go with teh orthene/evergreen hit on them first and not use the merik if I don't have to. I have seen a couple different measurements for amount to use. Could you let me know the amount of orthene and evergreen? I use smart pots, can I just drench them or do i have to dunk? I have a lot in 10 gal pots and dunking will be difficult but I'll do it if necessary. should i add any nutes with it? How long should I wait before feeding the plants again and how many times should I hit them with this? I am only doing this in veg. thanks so much

You can drench and leave the pots sitting in the runoff, and the medium will draw the runoff up into the medium. It's important to get the area just under the stem wet. That's RA central and very hard to wet. Keep adding the mixture till it stops being drawn up into the medium. I'd do this 2 treatments, 1 week apart. I believe all your questions are covered in EclipseFour20's posts. I used the Search feature for you. Searched EclipseFour20 user name. -granger
https://www.icmag.com/ic/search.php?searchid=8193211

Spinosid (conserve) and dip the whole rootball.

I use Spinosad occasionally, but I've never had any luck on RA's with it.

I do hydro and I am in hydroton rocks in E&B Buckets. It worked great for me.

Good luck Granger, I know they can be maddening.

Brother Cadfael,
It is likely that Brother Cadfael would have cannabis in his medicinal garden. Great show.

I haven't had RA's in a couple of years. How many treatments did you use? How long has it been since you saw an RA? Thanks. -granger

And that is why I took the character as a nom de plume.

I have a veg hut and a flower room. We made up a 5 gallon batch and we dipped the buckets when the plants went into the hut and when they transferred into the flower room. We had it really bad in once in the flower room and re-dipped during the week 3 pruning.

It was so easy we just included the whole process into our transfer regimen. We started doing this four months ago. No RA or fungus gnats for three months. *knocks wood*

well i got all suited up and went ahead with orthene and evergreen attack in veg. I haven't seen a living soul in there since!! In flower (3 weeks and under) I did a evergreen (5% pyrethrum), botanigard, gonats and diatomaceous earth flush and have been spraying everything including the top of the soil with azatrol every couple of days. Tons of death everywhere! Looks like a WWII beach in france but in this battle everyone deserved it! For everything 3 weeks or more along (I'm perpetual and harvest 1 8x4 tray every 8 days) I used botanigard, de, gonats and just sprayed the outside of the smartpots and the top of the soil so the liquid penetrates an inch or so with azatrol and insect soap. Again lots of death and I haven't seen anything flying and hopefully nothing in the pots sucking on roots but i won't know for sure until i harvest and get all CSI with the evidence. I also tried dunking a few small veg plants in merik to see how that works. I hate using this stuff but I have spent years getting these genetics and losing them would give me months of sleepless nights. I continued the rest of the regime and looks like we are in the clear. New growth looks nice and green. A lot of my plants in mid flower probably won't benefit a ton since they already have yellow leaves and smaller then normal bud formation but I don't care. I just want to be rid of these little evil monsters. A lesson has been taught though. I have been doing this in a 15k grow for about 10 years and the worst thing that can happen is getting complacent or over confident. I have only had to deal with spider mites maybe once a year so I never really cared about gnats or leaving water puddles in saucers or making sure i pick up every dead leaf. I started out as a clean freak but when you don't have consequences you leave your guard down and thats when you get punched in the mouth. no matter how big or small your grow make a daily list to avoid pests and mold. All the info you need is on this site. Don't wait until you need to go defcon1 on these bastards. Clean room, no standing water, use a good air filter for any intake air, have a pair of "grow room shoes" that you change into when entering your room (better yet change clothes and shoes), never bring a new plant you got from anyone straight into your room, do a weekly spray of neem at the least, use yellow and blue sticky traps to see if you catch anything flying and always use clean soil/coco. If you are going to invest all the time, money and effort then you must also make sure you are investing in the insurance side of the grow game. Do these things and I am almost certain you will never need to even click on the dreaded infirmary portion of this site. Glorious growing to you all and thanks to everyone for all the help and support. This site sets the standard for help and knowlege

I would do a 2nd drench with Orthene/Evergreen soon.

Here's one way to totally knock them out. Please post if you try it, it works.

Order a quart of botanigard and put all the plants in saucers. Be sure all the plants soak in that for at least an hour. Wrap the outside of the pot completely with the new double sided yellow sticky tape from Arbico. If you now let them dry out, only babies should walk out and can't walk passed the tape/ get stuck. Repeat the botanigard soak and the next time you let them dry out, you'll see the problem is gone. You'll probably wanna keep the botanigard around, it only takes a few ounces per 50gallon Rez.

Keep in mind, cloth pots will slow the spread through the holes and runoff just lets them surf around and find a new home.

You can absolutely wipe those out and continue about your life. Botanigard is the shit for fungus gnats too.