Root Aphids

Thanks! Gives me some hope that i will be able to make progress!

fasho. rereading through as much of that thread as I have time for.from what I am reading I really don't think switching to hydro is going to do it either. shutting down the grow proably also won't help. Maybe with the whole root dip soap thing purklize was talking about but it sounds like just as much of a pain as any other solution lol. looks like this qupee guy beat them too http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=159960&page=101 i see another guy is saying he used everygreen 60-6 on his plants and it took them right out. some strains of aphid have been shown resistant to the imid also.

keep at it man you can beat them in soil people have definitely done it.

Click to expand...

When I say "beat them in soil" I'm referring to eradicating them from plants without killing or replacing the plants. It can't be done in soil, but it can be done in hydro. Root aphids can infest hydro plants just easily as soil plants, the difference is they are MUCH easier to kill in hydro.

Once they are gone they are gone. The adults don't live for more than a few days without roots/water. Shutting down the grow for a while and replacing the plants is pretty much sure fire success. Obviously don't reuse soil or anything stupid like that. Pots need to be cleaned with hot soapy water, scrubbed, and soaked in bleach to be sure no eggs have survived. Ideally you should just pitch the pots too. Scrub down the tents or wherever you grow and mop the floors and there should be no worries about any eggs.

From my research Root aphids give live birth, they don't lay eggs.

They can reproduce asexually and sexually, so they can give live birth (asexual) or lay eggs (sexual).

oh ok I totally misunderstood you. i thought you meant they were completely unbeatable lol i see what you are saying.

I use imidacloprid on clones and plants early in veg, also different oils like cedar, neem, rosemary everywhere, but during flower ummm idunno hope u can defeat em I'll cross my fingers for ya : /

O3.

that's all she freakin' wrote.

15 min every 2 hours.
you will never have another
bug, mold, mite problem again.

IME.

O3 = Ozone

while I can see above ground application possibilities (and some experimentation possibilities, based on the notations below), how do you propose inoculating the root zone, as that is where the problem truly lies? these are *root* aphids that need elimination and they live in the soil mostly


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone#Agriculture

AgricultureOzone application on freshly cut pineapple and banana shows increase in flavonoids and total phenol contents when exposure is up to 20 minutes. Decrease in ascorbic acid content is observed but the positive effect on total phenol content and flavonoids can overcome the negative effect.[SUP][71][/SUP] Tomatoes upon treatment with ozone shows an increase in β-carotene, lutein and lycopene.[SUP][72][/SUP] However, ozone application on strawberries in pre-harvest period shows decrease in ascorbic acid content.[SUP][73][/SUP]
Ozone facilitates the extraction of some heavy metals from soil using EDTA. EDTA forms strong, water-soluble coordination compounds with some heavy metals (Pb, Zn) thereby making it possible to dissolve them out from contaminated soil. If contaminated soil is pre-treated with ozone, the extraction efficacy of Pb, Am and Pu increases by 11–28.9%,[SUP][74][/SUP] 43.5%[SUP][75][/SUP] and 50.7%[SUP][75][/SUP] respectively.

well you could do it two ways. isolated short concentrated blasts
upon the pot with the offending soil.
so long as the atmosphere smells of o3, it will be present
in the soil. very much the same way o2 is present in soil.

or like I do, I treat the room. anything in the room will be
neutralized. As everyone knows o3 is fatal to any o2 breathing
creature in large enough doses.
The idea is to create a large enough dose for the mm long larvae
or the mg sized flyer to experience a fatal dose.

taken from the "wiki":

"Kill insects in stored grain..."

the same principle I suppose.

nice!

T, you could easily do this in your setup. airpots might make it easier to to short blast em in the rootzone, as ML says.

I should think this would work with russet mites as well ... another bane to our industry that is rearing it's ugly head

So could i just buy ozone in spray form and spray it all over my air pots sides top and bottom? how would I do this without poisoning myself in the process? may sound like dumb questions but I want to do this right if I do it. I have the tank beetle type aphids now...

I am going to research further, but i believe a UV generator is needed for this. I will get into how not to poision yourself or your family once i learn all i can.
If anyone has any other thoughts on this let me know, i really am considering it.

Hopefully you can figure it out, alot of people could benefit from a sure fire treatment like that. on another note my homemade mix seems to have put the hurt on them. 1 tbs horseradish chunks, 2 cigarettes, and about a 100 black peppercorns boiled for 15 mins and strained with a reusable coffee filter. Let cool and soaked the top layer of soil and sprayed all the outsides and bottoms of airpots. also sprayed vegging plants with it. no ill effects if anything they look greener. it was a stupid gamble that seems to have worked better than anything I've hit them with lately. zero crawlers and fliers. i was able to find about 20 in a small area before. even brought them out from under the hps because I didn't believe it. I'm not saying use this same mix, but don't be afraid to experiment people

Moses.Lyons said:

O3.

that's all she freakin' wrote.

15 min every 2 hours.
you will never have another
bug, mold, mite problem again.

IME.

Click to expand...

Has this been tried on russet mites?

What ppm of ozone is required? Ozone can damage plants so it is important to know.

I would not spray canned ozone on the plants.

You do need an uv-c/ozone generator.
CAP makes one for around $125.

I have not measured the ppm but I went with
a "If I can smell it, it must be there" logic.
kind of like natural gas. I do not have
any ozone overdose on my plants at 15 min
every 2 hours.


I have no ill complaints from my household as to
any type of ozone exposure. I do keep my pets
out of the room when my generator is active,
however I have been in the room before
whilst the generator is on and have not experienced
any symptoms of ozone toxicity.

a spike in ozone within the atmosphere
does occur naturally after a rain.
The rain smell in the air is ozone.

Toxicity symptoms include lung irritation and
difficulty breathing. However it usually
requires prolonged exposure >24 hours
or extremely high doses. Somewhere near
hospital levels.

Because ozone has a half life of ~30 min
then decays into o2, a two hour wait time
between bursts seems to keep levels up enough
to neutralize any nasties but low enough to
not be harmful to any of my household, animals
included.

Ozone is very irritating to the respiratory system. If you have asthma low ppm amounts like those found on "Ozone Alert Days" in big cities can induce attacks, or make you more susceptible to them. I can confirm it doesn't require all day or massive exposure as I grew up with a malfunctioning dishwasher that spewed ozone (wtf?). At the odor threshold it induced asthma attacks almost immediately.

You're thinking of lightning for weather-phenomena ozone.

Dang I am scared to try it now because I have severe asthma. Thanks all for the info.

I have had good success in dirt using Diatomacous Earth around the whole base of the plant. You have to reapply it after every watering which is a pain but it kills any that crawl up or try to go back down. I have even dusted my girls in veg to help take care of spider mites before rinsing off with a good foliar spray. Incidently - Others have told me they have good success with calcarb from xtremegardening for the mites They don't like the leaves that have it on them.
A dude told me recently that he put an inch or 2 of sand on the top of all of his pots to keep the aphids/fungus knats out. He claims he has no gnats at all since he started doing this. Don't know if it works but might be worth a try. For those in soil I know going longer between watering 3-4 days keeps them down too. Stressful for the ladies but gives the bugs a harder time.

i have never really had a problem with aphids of any kind in ebb and flo buckets. Maybe just lucky. Always get some in dirt. I think the eggs come in the over priced soil we buy... In the end most of the things that have worked for me are really just measures to keep the bugs down/ at bay so they don't take over. When the plants are healthy they seem to tolerate some bugs with much problems. But as soon as the plants are stressed the bugs take over. Part of the reason I try not to trim too much or too often. my 2 pennys wirfth

So it turns out I have Russet mites as well (i'll try to grab a scope picture tonight). After doing a bunch o' research I found a lot of people talking about the product "No Spider Mites." I sent them a message asking if they would kill Russet mites and within 10 minutes they called me and said they will work on them. The guy seemed fairly confident that I would get rid of the problem in 2 application. Apparently the way it works is suffocating the mites and it also kills the eggs. Another cool think is that it is all organic and not photo toxic to plants and can be used up to harvest (even though I probably won't use it on very mature plants). I'll let you all know how it goes.