Soil Mites.........seriously?

louie · Feb 3, 2010

How is it going everybody? So I just replanted some clones that are in rapid rooter plugs into 16 oz beer cups of organic soil (LCs peat mix and recipe #1- bone meal, blood meal, kelp meal). They are doing pretty good except for a few stragglers, which is normal. I usually kill a few of the weak, slow growing ones. Well I killed 2 today and found a few little white crawling "mites" that were walking on part of the step that was buried in the soil and half rooted in the rapid rooter plug. These little "mites" were easily visible with the naked eye. The other clone I killed did not show any signs of these tiny bugs. Does anyone have any idea what these could be? They don't look like spider mites imo, they have a more of a bubbled body and are white with no markings that I could see. Are they possibly beneficial soil mites or should I start my assault to get rid of them asap. I appreciate all the help as always! here is my infirmary info:

SOIL:

How long has this problem been going on? just noticed it
What STRAIN are you growing? ak-47
What was the establishing technique? (seed or clone?) they are clones- decently rooted
What is the age of your plants? a few weeks old
How long have they been in the soil mixture they are in now? in rapid rooters for 2.5 weeks, in soil mix for a week
How Tall are the plants? 6 inches
What PHASE (seedling, vegetative or flower) are the plants in? clone- vegetative
What Technique are you using? (SOG, SCROG etc) n/a
What size pots are you using? (Include how many subjects to pot) 16 oz beer cups
What substrate/medium are you using? What brand of soil mixture are you using?(percentage of perlite, vermiculite...etc?) LCs mix- peat perlite, lime, worm castings
What Nutrient's are you using? blood, bone, kelp
How much of each nutrient are you using with how much water? *Knowing the brand is very helpful*
How often are you feeding? pure water only
If flowering, when did you switch over to using Bloom nutrients? n/a
What order are you mixing your nutrients? (example: veg nutes 1st, bloom 2nd ect) n/a
What is the TDS/EC/PPM of your nutrients used? n/a
What is the pH of the "RUN-OFF"?
What method of pH test was administered? Using Strips? pH pen? n/a
How often are you watering? once a week
When was your last feeding and how often are you feeding? n/a
What size bulb are you using? 2- 40 watt florescence
What is the distance to the canopy?
What is your RH Factor? (Relative Humidity)
What is the canopy temperature? 18 in.
What is the Day/Night Temp? (Include fluctuation range)
What is the current Air Flow? (cfm etc.) decent- 1 small fan
Tell us about your ventilation, intake exhaust and when its running and not running ? no exhaust
Is the fan blowing directly at plants? kind of
Is the grow substrate constantly wet or moist? wet to dry cycles
Is your water HARD or SOFT? bubbled hard water
What water are you using? Reverse Osmosis (RO)? Tap? Bottled? Well water? Distilled? Mineral Water?
Are you using water from a water softener? no
Has plant been recently pruned, cloned or pinched? no
Have any pest chemicals been used? If so what and when? no
Are plant's infected with pest's? I think- read above

MynameStitch · Feb 3, 2010

Did you check on the underside of the leaves and use a magnifying glass?
Do you have any bugs that you see that flying near your plants?
Does your plants leaves look small spotty?

Yes, they do have a kind of mite that lives in soil and they if I think what they may be, they are damaging and hard to get rid of...... you get these bugs by using organic additives like blood meal. or poop stuff..... manure. You can also get them from soil that was contaminated as well.

Do you got a picture of these bugs?

louie · Feb 3, 2010

Dr. Stitch you always come to the rescue! THANKS!!!

I checked the under side of the leaves with a naked eye (I have really good vision), but I will use a magnifying glass/ scope tonight to get a better look. I do not see any bugs that are air born and flying. The leaves seem pretty healthy for the most part, I didn't see any signs of spider mite damage or thrip damage, but I will get a more in depth look again tonight.

The only place I have seen these bugs "mites" so far is on the part of the clone step that is buried in the soil (about 1-2 inches deep). You say that I can get these mites from organic additives? hmmm well my soil consists of blood meal, bone meal, kelp meal, worm castings, dolomite lime, perlite and spaghnum peat moss; so there is a lot of organic material. All components of the soil are "new" (the soil is not reused). I can try to get a picture of them tonight, not sure if I will be able to get my camera zoomed in enough, I'll try though. Before I get a pic and more detail, what is your first guess as to what they could be?

MynameStitch · Feb 3, 2010

lol, well I try to if I can help out

well in order for there to be bugs if it was fungus gnats there would be flyers.. so it's not fungus gnats....

Do they only come out when you water your plant? A good friend of mine a while back last year, we were talking about this "mite" infestation that affects soil... my first grw I had them too, but that was because I used a pot that was outside before; I rinsed it out really good; but not perfect and I am sure this is where I got them from.

My plants were in the 6 foot tall range by then and the damage they can do was not shown in time due to harvesting; but when I watered them they came to the surface like earthworms do after a long rain shower.

They crawl all over the plant and around the rim..... I will have to get back in my pm's and find what they are called; because I looked all over for years to find out what them bastards were and found nothing until I came across a thread one day here and he was talking about them and had pictures of them and they were excat duplicates of what I had.

I never reused soil or the pots so the rest of my grows I did not have them anymore.
As for his problem; he tried everything to get rid of them, only one thing worked I will dig out the pm and show you.

This info is if I think I know what you got..... they chew on the roots.
When you water does anything come out with the run off?

Geoffrey Boycot · Feb 4, 2010

OMG...i have these soil mites i think. I was hoping they were beneficial. they only seem interested in the damper parts of the soil. they are almost orange/pink/seethru imo. they have 2 antana type things on the front of the their head. and move faster than spidermites....much faster.

I have blood/bone additions and my original 'gift' of clones had them so ive had them ever since.

louie · Feb 4, 2010

Geoffrey, you have these too? The ones I have are almost pure cloudy white. Have they negatively affected your plants? clones? How long have you had them? months? years?

Hi Stitch,

I just checked the clones and "killed" two more that weren't looking very healthy, I have extras. One that I uprooted had a few of these little mites crawling around the tip of the clone (that was in the soil). It had very few small roots (it should have a lot more) The base of the stem also had root rot, so did the other few I culled. I am not sure if this is caused by the "mites" or if I kept the rapid rooter plugs a little too moist or a combination of the two factors.

I tried to get a picture, but my camera isn't quite that advanced. I did look at the mites under a 30x scope though. They are mite looking for sure. They have a whiteish cloudy color to them, a bubbly body structure, with a pointed little head. Most of the legs are in the front half of the body and head area. I didn't see any of them crawling above the soil, they were all beneath the soil on the stem. I did see different sized ones though, Im guessing different stages of life, and they looked pretty much the same except a little bigger. They are definitely not fungus gnat larvae, I've battled them before too...not fun either.

Im not sure what to do? I was late on my neem/insecticidal soap spray routine, but Im not sure if that would have helped. I did spray the clones and the rest of my veg plants just now though. I do have some nematodes on stock in my fridge, in case of emergencies...do you think I should water them in next time I water? I can get anything else I would need too.

herbal essences · Feb 4, 2010

Does this link help at all? http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=101969

BigTop · Feb 4, 2010

There are soil mites that chew on roots too, but my guess is one of the oribitid mites... the all white ones that develop into hard bodied adults... tough to kill. They just spread & breed.

http://www.massey.ac.nz/~maminor/mites.html

Geoffrey Boycot · Feb 4, 2010

BigTop said:
There are soil mites that chew on roots too, but my guess is one of the oribitid mites... the all white ones that develop into hard bodied adults... tough to kill. They just spread & breed.

http://www.massey.ac.nz/~maminor/mites.html

yeah mine look quite like some of the oribitid mites. they also look a bit like the hypoaspis miles, so ive always left them alone on the basis they're probably not doing any harm.

Ive had them about 18months (since i started). So i have no baseline to compare with but they dont do any visible damage and seem more interested in top-dressed guanos than plant material.

:dunno:

greenatik · Feb 4, 2010

you said they were white? and visible? are they crawling around the edges of the pots but not the plants? check out images of springtails and see if that's what they are

bali_man · Feb 4, 2010

if it looks like this picture....... you've got root aphids.....

they might be all sorts of colors.....depending on stage of growth, but if you've noticed "cloudy" whitish ones.....I'd bet they're root aphids.

refer to some of the threads in the infirmary regarding phyloxerra....

You might succeed you might fail at eradicating these mfs it depends a lot of treatment methods/ chemicals used.

BM

Geoffrey Boycot · Feb 4, 2010

bali_man said:
if it looks like this picture....... you've got root aphids.....

they might be all sorts of colors.....depending on stage of growth, but if you've noticed "cloudy" whitish ones.....I'd bet they're root aphids.

refer to some of the threads in the infirmary regarding phyloxerra....

You might succeed you might fail at eradicating these mfs it depends a lot of treatment methods/ chemicals used.

BM

well they do look a little like that picture, but ive never seen them so close to a root unless scrambling over it to get to a fresh piece of moist bat-shit.

I looked through the infirmary and found a 19page thread on phylloxera, the first 5 pages of which seem to suggest the root aphid can fly and is mostly common to coastal california.

Mine can't fly and im PNW.

bali_man · Feb 4, 2010

they only fly when they hit the adult stage..... other than that they're gonna be in the soil..... Usually if you see flyers thats an indication that the population levels are too high, and the fuckers start developing into egg laying fungus gnat looking beasts. I'm only suggesting phylloxera because what you describe sounds just like them.

Geoffrey Boycot · Feb 4, 2010

bali_man said:
they only fly when they hit the adult stage..... other than that they're gonna be in the soil..... Usually if you see flyers thats an indication that the population levels are too high, and the fuckers start developing into egg laying fungus gnat looking beasts. I'm only suggesting phylloxera because what you describe sounds just like them.

i did have a fungus gnat issue at one point....or at least....THATS WHAT I THOUGHT THEY WERE?!!!?

now you are scaring me. what the fuck are these things? Neem the bastards? I'm trying to do this benficial micro-bacteria organic soil grow lark.

edit> the fungus gnats [infestation level] did seem to go away completely once i started applying bti and the soil mites stayed. but maybe that was just a summer thing? the soil mites stayed all summer and then this autumn a couple of fungus gnats came back for 2 weeks, but i just stopped allowing the top soil to stay wet and they buggered off. but, hey, i could be wrong, they may be root aphids?!?

Geoffrey Boycot · Feb 4, 2010

this image from that phylloxera thread looks like my bug.

but that thread seems to be talkign about 2 distinct bugs...the reading continues.

Geoffrey Boycot · Feb 4, 2010

Podocinum sp.

Hypoaspis miles - a fungus gnat predator who's presence in my soil could be explained by the previous Fungus gnat infestation?

MynameStitch · Feb 4, 2010

Yes, that is what it's called;' I had too many pm's to find the thread I was looking for I gotta go through old PM's and clean up!!!

BigTop · Feb 4, 2010

GB~ think you're correct on eliminating root aphids & gnats... both have little wings at the adult & previous development stage. They tend to have larger, more swollen bodies as well... from what I can recall... been a little.

Also found the bti knocked the fg's out w/o issue, especially w spot sprays... which entirely had zero effect on the soil mites.

The root aphids (if indeed what I had), had an effect on the plants... they weren't happy, but that could have been overlap from my oil applications. Anyway, neem drenches in combination w insecticidal sprays seemed to kill those. Kinda in the same category as the aphids... easy compared to the mites.

Forget about predator7y bugs... they will never keep up w the mass of pop bursts the mites put out.

Shit dude, some hardcore sprays don't work (chems). I don't think the pyrethrums worked (nor the synthetics), hort oils, neems, soaps, carbaryl, & imidiclopid. Probably mispelled a few chems there, but this is from memory. DE as a barrier sucked. Dunno, tried all the soft approaches & worked my way up.

They kicked my ass. ODDEST thing... they did nothing to the plants except crawl on them & then die from dehydration. A layer of Tanglefoot applied at the base stalk will keep them crawling up the stems & dying on the nugs. You can use to isolate to the interior of the pots as well... though they get into the drain water, I'm sure you've noticed.

Purely an annoyance pest... except they eat the beneficials (if used) & the goodies in a LK or the like. So they do detract in available benefit to tthe plant roots, but my roots were always great looking. They didn't bother them a bit, unlike the aphids/gnats.

My solution was a total isolation & dump of all sources (breeding/feeding areas). Bleached everything. Let the room run dry for an entire 7 days (found some alive at day 3 after alll water sources removed). I was down for 2 weeks total before started up again. Peace.

louie · Feb 5, 2010

Wow this thread is taking off. Thanks for all the help guys

Now after looking at the posted info I decided to take another look at these mites and did some searching and think I found out what they could be. I think they are called bulb mites. They get their name from being commonly found on bulbs and are found in the soil. Does any one have any experience with bulb mites? What should I do? Here are a couple pics I found.

Geoffrey Boycot · Feb 5, 2010

The antanae on mine is about 1/3-1/2 of the body length. I estimate 6 legs + antenae.

I cant *see* any exhaust pipes. on some mites theres a white dot on the back end similar to a bunny rabbit.

there are occasional flying things (i saw 3-4 today, and killed 3) but nothing to match the numbers of the soilmites (10-20 visible per sq inch in some pots)

they run around with similar movement and speed relative to body size of a mouse. they also sit up and 'sniff' with their antanae like a mouse would.

the pink/clear in the pics is just about right.

Soil Mites.........seriously?

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