Tiny white crawlers in my soil??!!??!!

so, i have been battling bugs for a year now, first fungus gnats, then thrips on my outdoor, now maybe root aphids

i am still seeing little black "flys" in the sticky traps
no damage to the leaves. but i have seen a slight N dificency and then overfert at the same time, this is how you know your roots are destroyed.
i found the root bugs by leaving a half a potato on the soil for a few days. these are slower than thrips, look like ticks or mites. the body is white and smooth. there will several different sizes.

i just did a spinosad treatment, but thinking of trying nemotodes.
man i am just starting a new strain agent orange, and think i may tear everything down and start again with seeds.

im not trying to hyjack this thread, i didnt want to start a new one since the bug sounds the same.

I noticed the same bugs before they seemed to come out when the soil was dry and I was watering. i started laying pieces of duct tape, sticky side up, on about 75-90% of the soils surface rite after watering caught 1,000's of them did this consecutively 3 waterings in a roll definitely made a dent hardly had any the 4th time no chemicals

they are all the same size: tiny, literally you have to stare at a white speck for a few seconds to see if its moving, and then you know its one of the bugs. IDK what to do, i cant ID them so idk how to treat them. the leaves on my plants seem to be getting yellower from the bottom up, but not necessarily in the plants that have bugs on them.

i herd of a few big growers useing RAID MAX HOME AN GARDEN AND MISTING PLANTS this will not harm or kill your plant and will get rid of all insects

I just noticed the same damn thing in my soil... It doesn't seem to be effecting the growth at all but its so hard to identify these little bastards.. I'm going to try that duct tape method so I can try to catch a few then inspect them.. I'll post back when I figure out the solution, and i will figure out a solution

Smelly if you had the same things I did then you'll definitely catch some just let the soil dry out and water kinda of aggressively .i use a plastic bottle that has drilled holes in the cap. i squeeze it to create the desire affect. they'll show themselves relative quickly crawling to the surface and jumping around

Bean 420 said:

Smelly if you had the same things I did then you'll definitely catch some just let the soil dry out and water kinda of aggressively .i use a plastic bottle that has drilled holes in the cap. i squeeze it to create the desire affect. they'll show themselves relative quickly crawling to the surface and jumping around

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Hey bean, do your plants have anything wrong with them? The reason I ask is because I've noticed the bugs in all of my plants soil and every single plant is healthy as ever? Shit if the duct tape works I'll just do that and try to get most of them out.. thanks for the tip bean +REP

does spraying pyrethrins kill these root eating aphids/spider mites/ fungus gnats/ possibly thrips. i think i saw 1 thrip today, ive been battling the other 3 for a while.

i just doused with spinosad, sm-90, and gognats to see if it got rid of anything

i am having lower leaves die and noticing a nutrient burn even though i havent given them any ferts, which usually means the roots are being destroyed and the plant is having a hard time uptaking nutrients.

i just had thrips on my outdoor and it reduced 3 4' plants to 7oz of larfy larf larf...even with spinosad, but i think i didnt use enough.

i have gone from gnats, to thrips to now these aphids/mites. i cannot get a break from soil bugs.

Smelly my plants seemed fine during veg but lost a little vigor in flower and I was looking for any or all possible causes and thought it couldn't hurt. Things improved for me but IDK if it had to do with removing some of the little guys

I had a bug called plant lice that completely infested one of my grows that sounds like what you have but they didnt harm my plants at all so I sprayed with neem and that didnt do shit so I left them alone.

rhino1111 said:

does spraying pyrethrins kill these root eating aphids/spider mites/ fungus gnats/ possibly thrips. i think i saw 1 thrip today, ive been battling the other 3 for a while.

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It will kill the adults but not the larva. thats why you need to treat the plants every 3 days at least 3-4 times to break the breeding cycle. Fungus gnats are easily controlled by just putting an inch or so of perlite or plain sand on to of your medium in the pots. they do not like to move through the dry matter. If you are infested with them you may want to do a couple of treatments to control some of thier numbers first. The larva of these are dark colored. I think someone already mentioned using a pc. of potato on top of the medium to catch some of the larva.
If you have thrips then you would most certainly see damage in the leaves. Little white trails where the adults have fed. I would go with the Spinosad of Doktor Doom. Still needing to treat in 3 day cycles a few times to break the breeding cycle. Same goes for spidermites. Except mites lay thier eggs on the bottom of leaves. Breaking the breeding cycle of these is the only way you will rid your garden of them.
Jondo is ultimately right, positive identification is key. Also a few dozen ladybugs let lose in the garden can do wonders for pest control.

jondamon said:

Something else to consider is that SOME soils have HYPOASPIS MILES living in them. Which are predatory bugs.

OP you should google all the above mentioned.

If its thrips or soil lice then they will jump when you water and you should try to rid yourself of them (spinosad works great).

If its HYPOASPIS MILES then these will generally walk around the top edge of your pot until your water goes then they will return to their colonies just under the soil level. As these are predatory bugs then you wouldnt need to worry about them. THey help against Thrips and Fungus Gnats.



J

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They came with my roots organic soil. As well as fungus larva, but they corrected the fungus gnat larva quick. I had hypoaspis mites mistaken for thrips for a long time... I used my 420 scope to identify them..

reggaerican said:

heck man where can i buy some of these??? im fighting with gnats and thrips right now...

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http://www.kalyx.com/store/proddetail.cfm/ItemID/676226/CategoryID/12000/SubCatID/2560/file.htm
Just a little getting used to watching mites fester in your medium....

bigv1976 said:

I had a bug called plant lice that completely infested one of my grows that sounds like what you have but they didnt harm my plants at all so I sprayed with neem and that didnt do shit so I left them alone.

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I'm guessing you where reffering to me. If so, thanks! I'm going to try not to stress about it, there's just a bunch of the little bastards and I wanted to make sure.

well no luck. i just pulled 5 plants and no roots left....and i mean NO roots...one root ball was golf ball size in a 2.5gal pot.

been doing google searches and lots of people are pulling everything and starting over. some are taking clones, dipping and rooting them in another location, while sterilizing everything.

this sucks, these aphids are worse than thrips and fungus gnats. because at least there is spinosad and BTI for those.

someone even suggested replacing all pots and trays.
i am thinking of trying to take one clone, but might come to the conclusion that no strain is worth what these bugs do to your roots.

did i mention i am so over root bugs....i tried roots organic soil, tried coco, thinking of going hydro with some new seeds and a sterile room.

this sucks...i am over root bugs. glad i got my outdoor

I just noticed this same little white bugs your talking about in my soil when i checked my plant tonight they are too tiny to see in a picture and my leaves are also yellow at the tips from the bottom leaves beiing worse to the tops leaves just being the edges im not sure if its from the bugs or something else but one of my leaves had cuts in it as if something was eating it.

i swear these bug infestations are coming from roots organic products. this time i used their worm castings and coco.

BIGV your avatar pic is fucking awesome MLK is the shit. lol

oldschooltofu said:

well no luck. i just pulled 5 plants and no roots left....and i mean NO roots...one root ball was golf ball size in a 2.5gal pot.

been doing google searches and lots of people are pulling everything and starting over. some are taking clones, dipping and rooting them in another location, while sterilizing everything.

this sucks, these aphids are worse than thrips and fungus gnats. because at least there is spinosad and BTI for those.

someone even suggested replacing all pots and trays.
i am thinking of trying to take one clone, but might come to the conclusion that no strain is worth what these bugs do to your roots.

did i mention i am so over root bugs....i tried roots organic soil, tried coco, thinking of going hydro with some new seeds and a sterile room.

this sucks...i am over root bugs. glad i got my outdoor

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I totally have these same worm/bug/wtf ever they are...except my plant never made it past seedling...got into the seed casing and ate it!

m8 if they jump they are springtails they normally jump when the pot is hit they are actually beneficial to the soil m8 hope that helps