# Tiny bugs living in soil PLEASE HELP



## Thanksfortheinfo (Aug 21, 2009)

Anyone know how to get rid of tiny bugs that live in the soil? I have searched around and cannot find any topics or anything in my cannabis bible and magazine stash


Some of the plants have them and some dont. 


I dont know what kind of little bugs they are...cannot find anything on the net and to small to take a pic of. 


The actual plants look pretty healthy but the ones that have it dont have as much roots as the ones that dont have the bugs



help please


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## SupraSPL (Aug 22, 2009)

What do they look like? Springtails and soil mites are pretty common and not necessarily bad either. If they are springtails you'll see lil white bugs that flick around like fleas if disturbed. If they are soil mites they can be white or orange. Maybe you have both types?


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## robert 14617 (Aug 22, 2009)

find some mosquito dunks the rings you throw into ponds ,break them up and soak them in water then add the water to your soil


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## matthew1 (Aug 22, 2009)

Hay i had a bad problem with spidermites, do they come out when u water? Either way some neem oil might help. Remember you plant can look healthy for awhile and those little shits can still be eating your roots. Just be careful. Look into preditor bugs also like ladybugs. Good luck to ya man, i fell your pain, no one wants to see bugs on their babies.


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## iPlatypus (Aug 22, 2009)

Small Bugs? do they fly? are you using organic compost? If so then you might possibly have fungus gnats. And if thats not what they're called then who cares, either way, if the buggers have wings then I know what you're talking about. As for what to do ... good question. I would just switch soil types the next time around. Maybe cover the top few inches with some potting soil, minus compost.


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## OregonMeds (Aug 22, 2009)

Most often it's fungus gnat larvae which eat your roots and they're an indication that you are watering too often and not letting the plant dry out.

Do you have any tiny black gnats flying around in your grow, getting all in your face sometimes?

There are a couple products just for them which you can put strait into the soil. Gognats which I don't really like so far it's just cedar oil marked up 1000% and there are chemical products like gnatrol and others.

You can also just stop overwatering and they'll die off or you can just cover the top of your soil with an inch or so of cleaned/washed sand. Both work 100%.


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## Thanksfortheinfo (Aug 22, 2009)

No other kind of bugs in grow room...had spider mites about 3 months ago but they have been gone since then (knock on wood)

To be honest the bugs are to small and fast to see what they look like...they run in and out of the soil...either a silver or darker brown color

The bugs don't come up when I water (every other day is usually how long it takes the plants to dry out)...the little bugs just run around in the soil...no flying or comming to the top when I water



Thanks for the replys RIU members




Forgot to add that I am using Foxfarm ocean forest


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## OregonMeds (Aug 22, 2009)

That's not something I've ever seen, sorry. It might help people if they knew what part of the world you are in since there are completely different bugs in different areas.


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## Thanksfortheinfo (Aug 22, 2009)

pacific north west


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## bobbleheadno (Aug 24, 2009)

Put a one inch covering of perlite on top of the soil. Kills them when they try to crawl through it. Works for several types of soil critters.


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## Tyrannabudz (Aug 24, 2009)

I got the recent high times and there is an article called "Buckets of Buds" the author Jefftek writes in a caption on page 98 it talks about sprinkling "diatomaceus earth" to prevent gnats. I have the same issue they come in from outside. Little fruit flies is what I figured. But gnats is probably what they are.


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## Tyrannabudz (Aug 24, 2009)

Fossil shell flour. I just googled it "diatomaceous earth" and there is all kinds of info. hope that helps.


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## Spoony Da Dro Man (Aug 24, 2009)

man I had spider mites everywhere I bought one of them no pest strips at wal mart and i havent seen one since(3 months).


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## curious.george (Aug 25, 2009)

capture one and mail it to naturescontrol.com and they will ID it for you and recommend a predator bug.


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## labrat1 (Aug 25, 2009)

I may have the same bugs you are talking about, root aphids. They do not fly, they live in the rockwool/soil, and totally destroy your yield. I've had them for waaay too many harvests now and have tried EVERYTHING to get rid of them. Yes, diatomaceous does work, but only when they come up to the top. The bugs I've had are white or amber colored and you can see the plants they are really attacking by the lack of roots, the leaves droop, the leaf margins curl under, and the leaves start to die like a phosphorous deficiency. I even tried this systemic thing last harvest where you water the plant with it, it absorbs it, and then when the bugs eat the roots, they supposedly die. It can take up to 30 days for it to work and I didn't have that much time left. It didn't totally work either. These buggers multiply like you wouldn't believe and their eggs can sit dormant for months and then hatch. The only option for you--if they're the same bugs--is to dump your plants, clone them if you need to, but keep the clones far, far away from your grow space, hotbox and fog your grow space and clean everything with dish soap. The root aphids need water to survive. Fungus gnats are totally different. Their larvae are little wormy things that leave honeydew on the top of the rockwool/soil and they do also eat roots. They look clearly different than root aphids. I've had them also and they are easy to get rid of. Root aphids can be identified with the naked eye if you look hard, but usually you need a magnifying glass. Root aphids leave a powerdery mildew type substance on the rockwool/soil. Good luck!


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## infowarrior420 (May 15, 2012)

Any guesses as to tiny black thing that crawls around? don't think it has wings. Seen a couple different pests over the past couple months, only 1-3 of each very randomly. havent seen the others since, but seen this one a couple times, almost got a picture but it fell off my hand and couldnt find it lol. anyways slender black crawly...? good, bad...solutions?


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## ANC (May 15, 2012)

A squirt of doom followed by a watering.... just saying. Never had a problem I couldn't solve with insecticide... Oh and I inhale bottles of the stuff in the course of a year, just spraying flies,


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## bgoodgrow (May 16, 2012)

Hey Thanks, This might help, I live in Nor cal and in Nor cal we have native predatory soil mites that THRIVE in Fox Farm. When I saw these little tan bugs running in and out of mostly the top of the soil I Panicked!! Like anyone else, I don't want anyone who isn't me in my plants damnit. But I managed to catch one with a pinch of soil and dropped it on a yellow pest strip ($2 for a pack of three any nursery) and it landed perfectly face down. I looked at it through my 60x (I would recommend you get a 60x if you don't have one because it helps you determine when to crop if nothing else) and this is what I saw.
http://www.petsnails.co.uk/documents/hypoaspis-miles.html 
If it looks like this your good man, They only eat other bad bugs, or fungus if there starving. I'm using Mycorrhizal fungi, so i believe that helped promote them
If nothing else Thanks, it will help you rule out the bad bugs once you have it I.D.ed!


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## PixiDustr (May 18, 2012)

you can sprinkle a little cinnamon on top of the soil for fungus gnats. You can also use corn meal. I prefer cinnamon.


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## hazeynative (May 21, 2012)

ive had a bug problem since my plants sprouted..little gnat looking things that fly or crawl away sometimes when i water..i dont think theyve caused much damage but i think they might eventually.. i couldnt find any info about them but im also using foxfarm ocean forest and ive had a feeling for a while now that they came from the dirt. i wasnt sure until i read your post.. looks like were in the same boat good luck


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## DR.SUCIO (Sep 30, 2020)

Food grade *diatomaceous earth* is another effective treatment to *get rid of fungus gnats*. ... But if you mix some into the top layer of infested soil—or better yet, into your potting mix before planting—it *will kill* any *gnat* larvae (and adults) that come in contact with it, as if they were crawling through crushed glass.


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## AdamAce (Nov 22, 2020)

Had small flies in soil, took a closer look at the soil and there were tiny white worms that were maybe a tenth of a mm in diameter and 5 to 10 mm long, that were actually fly larva. They all came in a bag of miracle gro organic soil. I mixed the soil half and half with peat moss, mixed in about 20% perlite, and no more flies or visible worms. Almost everything started in the original soil had issues ranging from leaves shriveling and curling, long periods of little to no growth, irregular growth like 1 of the 3rd sets of leaves being the first leaf to reach a normal size, with that one leaf being larger than the entirety of all the other leaves combined. Transplanting to the mixture resolved all of the problems, but some were still stuck as seedlings in small cups and too weak to transplant when the first plant began flowering. Also, I had to quit watering until the soil lost its black appearance and became brown for the seedlings to finally wake up out their dormant stage--when they finally did, they almost caught up with the one that was flowering.


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## 4BarrelPLip (Jan 14, 2021)

DR.SUCIO said:


> Food grade *diatomaceous earth* is another effective treatment to *get rid of fungus gnats*. ... But if you mix some into the top layer of infested soil—or better yet, into your potting mix before planting—it *will kill* any *gnat* larvae (and adults) that come in contact with it, as if they were crawling through crushed glass.


Well the ones in my post where crawling all over diatomaceous earth plus once it got wet it was like cement these little buggers are had to get rid of.


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## tstick (Jan 14, 2021)

I dampen some pieces of brown paper (like a grocery bag) and lay them over the top of the soil...24 hours later, take a close look at the paper. For whatever reason, these bugs like the paper better than the soil....They might be predatory mites...could be root aphids (bad). I just wait until they pile onto the paper and then keep discarding the paper. It seems to take several days of repeating this method, but, in the end, it has pretty much taken care of the problem....for now.


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## DyersEve451 (Jan 21, 2021)

Thanksfortheinfo said:


> Anyone know how to get rid of tiny bugs that live in the soil? I have searched around and cannot find any topics or anything in my cannabis bible and magazine stash
> 
> 
> Some of the plants have them and some dont.
> ...


You'll have a lot of people giving you advice on this and I'm sure many would help you, but there's a fool proof easy way to deal with them. Get AzaMax and use their directions for a soil drench. I do a couple of them on every seed germination I do, and that's a metric shit ton of seeds and seedlings. When my Gene Forge is in selection mode I germinate around 150 seeds every two weeks looking for breeding quality plants and when I do the AzaMax drench I have zero losses or stressed plants. If I don't I would have anywhere from 10% to 25% losses. AzaMax doesn't yellow or otherwise screw with the plants, even with cotylings before any true leaves show up. I wish someone would have turned me on to it 30 years ago. All those lost cannasouls. It chokes me up every time I think about The Lost Ones. What did I lose? What did I miss? lol, anyhow, try it out you won't be disappointed.


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## DyersEve451 (Jan 21, 2021)

4BarrelPLip said:


> Well the ones in my post where crawling all over diatomaceous earth plus once it got wet it was like cement these little buggers are had to get rid of.


AzaMax drench. I had fungus gnats killing off 10% to 25% seedlings. AzaMax ended that the first time I used it. I just do two drenches on seedlings at 2 days old and ten days old. If any gnats show up after that I just hit 'em again, but that almost never happens. Honestly, it's the only real thing I've found, and I'm germinating hundreds to thousands of seeds a year at The Gene Forge, Luck Dragon Seeds. Remember that anything that hits your roots hits your whole grow. To grow good cannabis, grow good roots. One of the things I learned from the old timers and has never let me down.


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## tstick (Jan 21, 2021)

Well...Just by chance, I was experimenting with using hydrogen peroxide to help some heavily-rooted plants to give them a boost of O2...and I submerged the pots in a 5 gallon bucket and gave them a drench of diluted hydrogen peroxide. I'm not sure how the roots responded yet...but a side-effect of doing it was that there were no more fungus gnats -at all! Yes, I might have killed off any beneficial bacteria in the potting soil, but, then again, no gnat larvae is eating the roots, either. The effects of the H2O2 are very momentary and it just breaks down to water and oxygen in the end. But, apparently, when the extra oxygen molecule breaks down, it gives off some kind of energy that kills the gnat larvae and other bugs and eggs, etc. in the soil. If this is all it takes to obliterate a pest that I've always had to fight off in my tents, in the past, then I'm going to make it a regular practice in my grows from now on.


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## DyersEve451 (Jan 24, 2021)

tstick said:


> Well...Just by chance, I was experimenting with using hydrogen peroxide to help some heavily-rooted plants to give them a boost of O2...and I submerged the pots in a 5 gallon bucket and gave them a drench of diluted hydrogen peroxide. I'm not sure how the roots responded yet...but a side-effect of doing it was that there were no more fungus gnats -at all! Yes, I might have killed off any beneficial bacteria in the potting soil, but, then again, no gnat larvae is eating the roots, either. The effects of the H2O2 are very momentary and it just breaks down to water and oxygen in the end. But, apparently, when the extra oxygen molecule breaks down, it gives off some kind of energy that kills the gnat larvae and other bugs and eggs, etc. in the soil. If this is all it takes to obliterate a pest that I've always had to fight off in my tents, in the past, then I'm going to make it a regular practice in my grows from now on.


Yep, that'll do it too. I've had the H2O2 thing explained to me several different ways but the just of it is that when one of the O's in O2 break out of the less stable H2O2 molecule creating a more stable H2O molecule and a free radical Oxygen molecule. The free O is an oxidizer that is seriously dangerous to some living organisms, predominantly small insect and smaller organisms. I've used it before and I've had some severe yellowing crop up in the plant population treated some days later and I've gotten what I consider better results using AzaMax because I didn't have those problems. I've used it on 36-48 hour old seedlings with zero detectable negative results. I recently used it on a 60+ seed germination with the loss of only one seedling due to unrelated reasons. A cat was involved. Cats are a scourge on all growing environments. Eliminate them from you facilities.


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## Applechewer (Feb 5, 2021)

Azamax.


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## northside novis (Mar 1, 2021)

Try leaching yr soil with clean water with a few drops of dish wash liquid for every couple of litres of water FILLING yr drip tray with run off tip this out dont let them sit in excess water as they'll slowly suck it all back up but this process helps for a whole lot of issues mites, aphids and it brings yr soil back to a neutral P.H and it even gives u a clean slate if you over fertilize, so u can start from scratch, this lil gem has totally saved my ass more than once, that's for sure hope this helps dude


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## conor c (Mar 10, 2021)

If your worried about it and your plants are otherwise strong and healthy then a quick dunk in ice water can be a good organic method for killing some gnats or mites and stuff long as your plants are well established it should only slow em down for a lil bit i dont mean drown it or freeze the roots to hell just enough to kill/slow down the bugs


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