Fungus Gnat?

cactusbudz

Active Member
i lowered the humidity to slow reproduction, hung yellow stickys to catch adults, and used 15ml of h2o2/gal for soil just got top few inches wet and flushed 12 hours later and repeated another 5 days. took care or problem and did not seem to damage the plants, i was very pleased at the results.i tried coffee,vinegar in a cup, drying the soil out and many others and didnt get rid of them. an alternative to sand you can use coco fiber top 4 inches, this will deter them and you can top dress on the coco and the soil is watered and dries evenly. to keep those little bastards out of the pot hols, cover the bottom with nylons. it will drain fine and keep them bastards out. some will disagree but it did work for me. hope this helps
 

Icemud

Well-Known Member
Here is what I found for fungus gnats that works... They have a 30 day life cycle so you have to do repeat treatments....

1st...Hang yellow sticky cards in your lower foliage near the pots and in shady areas...seems that the fungus gnats like shade... put yellow sticky cards on the top of your pots...laying across the soil...fungus gnats are shitty fliers and this seemed to work best in catching the adults for me...

2nd...Get mosquito dunks.... I usually will use them in my nutrient feedings, crushed up between my fingers, and bubbled with my mixes for 24 hours at least... I also will top dress the soil with crushed up dunks and work it into the top 1" of soil before feedings...

3... make a natural tea of peppermint tea, 2 cigarettes, some very hot taco sauce or red pepper, and about 10ml of neem oil... spray all of the sides of your pots as well as the top of the soil...This seems to help repel the fungus gnats...doesn't really kill them but helps keep them away...

4..... Let your soil dry out almost completely before watering again..fungus gnats are drawn to moist organic soil....this is where they lay there eggs... Less moisture...less draw..

If your problem gets worse...and you see tons of little tiny thread like white/clear worms/larvae in the top 1' of your soil...you may need to take it more extreme... This is what I did with a plant that was severely infested...managed to save her and have a kick ass yeild...

#5..... Use a clothes steamer...the type you iron your clothes with and slowly pull back the top 1" of your soil..immediately hitting the pulled back soil with steam...this will kill the little bastards quickly if your soil is coated with them.... do this over the entire top layer of the soil and you may even want to do it 2x within a few days to make sure you steam kill all of them... Just make sure not to hit your roots with the steam too much and make sure that you don't hit your leafs either...

#6.... To fully control the severe infestations...do all the above steps and then follow up with a dose of Azamax or Azatrol... Ive used both and I would say they seem to work about the same.....which is very well...


This is what I did and ended up saving my plants as well as killing those fukkers..... I now mix in a few crushed mosquito dunks to my newly mixed soil before planting for preventive measures...and so far...i have seen very little fungus gnat development...usually I may get 1 or 2 flying around..but as soon as they lay eggs, most are killed by the BTi..

Hope this helps...
 

roidrage152

Active Member
They are def reproducing 24 hours of hot shot in the room and .5 gallons of top watering with the mosquito dunks hasn't done much. Gonna give it another day and reassess. I have a mix of small and big plants and they love my babies in the one gallon pots. I'll pick one up an 5 will fly out try bottom. They have multiplied fast. Still not feeling like they r out of control yet but gonna try and nip this in the bud before I move to flower next week. I'm gonna try multiple solutions but not all are practical. I have a dozen plants in 15 gallon pots with pretty dense foliage. They only actuLly need watering once a week at most. So these methods that require moistening of the soil really interrupt my schedule. For example I hope the sinks work because I drenched the top of my soil somethig that was iladvised by some.
 

thump easy

Well-Known Member
i run aroe so i just set the dunks in the water it fucks up the larva soft bodies without afecting the plants also gonat i dont like cause its like an oil they sell the powder thats good for your soil also fuck with soft bodie i like dunks cuzz they are like tea in the water also ozone will rip them in half i run that i dont have any in my room at the tym being n stickies that work good.. back in the day i had it bad in my noise my eyes n even cuting they fly right up my nose i thought they were just ataching me.. in my coffie in my toilet man it was bad windows were coverd but i was green back then.... good luck
 

ohmy

Well-Known Member
Soak ur plants in neem, and do a dunk with h202 mix, helped me a lot. any sucker i see flying gets soaked in soap spray...On my next h2o2 nix i am doing 1:5 mix unless someone talkes me out of it....I am only using 3%
 

roidrage152

Active Member
I broke down and wanted to do something more because the gnats we're really nothing me. Since my small plants were half dry I gave them a drench in mosquito dunk water, and gave my big plants another half gallon. I have the hot shot in the room, so there's nothing more I can really do for a week until everything dries up unless I get motivated to find a spray. Maybe an oil spray for my top soil layer or something. I was paranoid about aphids because of some a-holes posting about them :p so I repotted 2 of my small guys that seemed most infested. I didn't see any bugs in the roots at all. Was probably some larvae in there but too small to see.
 

thump easy

Well-Known Member
look dont do to much they r pestie but they aint gona kill your plants your have to b patient stickies n flush after everything with ph water at least the tyms next round the dunk might chang ph levels another good one that realy works its systemic aza trol or az max the the other hold on let me het it... n ill post it.. run your zimes with your a n b or three part use root excelerator house n garden, n dont kill them dont worry its not that bad.. just sticky right over your pot in pot over dirt nor coco its fine just dont get it all dirty n dont over do it
 

ohmy

Well-Known Member
You should be happy you do not have the lil fuckers I did, lol...They kicked the shit out of my plants real fast before i cought on that i had more then a few.
 

thump easy

Well-Known Member
if its bad bomb the place my experianc in dirt is i have had them n i just contained them look ill look for a soil pic
 

ohmy

Well-Known Member
bug.jpg These lil fuckers will suck the hell out of ur girls real fast. I have not been able to find a picture no place like what i got. 60x mag with my tric scope
 

thump easy

Well-Known Member
they eat rotting stuff they will eat the hairs of the roots but come on i had a serious infestation it wasnt bad to the plants on a big scale like mights thrips white flies or even fungus powdery mildew or grey mold its containable but do it easy so you dont stress the plant..
 

roidrage152

Active Member
Here's an update of how things are going with my gnats. 4x6x10 veg area. I did 1 gallon of mosquito dunk treated ro water in the top layer of my 15 gallon pots. I dipped my 1 gallon pots in water and soaked them thoroughly because the gnats liked to hang by the drain holes. 4 days with the hot shot the flying population seems to have gone down a little, but I was under the impression these were way more effective. Time will tell if I was able to interrupt the reproductive cycle. The bugs don't seem ton have effected growth, I did repot a couple of my small guys and the root zones seemed healthy. I'm just worried what they might do if I let them get out of hand.
 

BeaverHuntr

Well-Known Member
You should be happy you do not have the lil fuckers I did, lol...They kicked the shit out of my plants real fast before i cought on that i had more then a few.
Dude I had them bad and they will fuck up some of your plants theyfucked with two of my larry og's making them light yielders and on top of that they get stuck in your flowers because its so sticky and then when you trim you will see them stuck in your buds.
 

BeaverHuntr

Well-Known Member
Here's an update of how things are going with my gnats. 4x6x10 veg area. I did 1 gallon of mosquito dunk treated ro water in the top layer of my 15 gallon pots. I dipped my 1 gallon pots in water and soaked them thoroughly because the gnats liked to hang by the drain holes. 4 days with the hot shot the flying population seems to have gone down a little, but I was under the impression these were way more effective. Time will tell if I was able to interrupt the reproductive cycle. The bugs don't seem ton have effected growth, I did repot a couple of my small guys and the root zones seemed healthy. I'm just worried what they might do if I let them get out of hand.
I have done mosquito dunks in my flood and drain I have used like 6 hot shot strips every where and they still came back, I kid you not they would chill on the dry mosquito dunks I would put on the top of my pots. They are a pain in the ass to kill. another cheap method if you dont want to use Predatory Nematodes is to buy some D.E. Earth ( Diamatacious Earth) and make a top layer of that stuff about 1 inch thick and put it on the top of your pots when the juvienile gnats crawl out of the dirt they will die and they wont have a fuck fest on your top soil because the DE Earth / Sand cut up their body.

Hot Shot pest strips work but I have seen gnats and mites become immune to a lot of different chemicals. Now every grow I start whether soil or coco I always add 1 million predatory nematodes to my soil or coco mix, and always use Azamax and Gnatrol to pre treat clones.
 

thump easy

Well-Known Member
thats y turn off the light hit your pythom spray bomb every three days for a week they reproduce daily but hit the bomb every three days hit stickies some type of drench but rinse the drench out check ph read instructions let the plant recover n just have stickies around but at the begining of flower azetrol or azamax it wont fuck with it if you do it late in flower dude that shit is toxic dont want to put in public hands or to your self i know an asian dude hit that shit at the end of flower man not good he dont smoke so he dont care but you gota be carefull cancer is no joke.
 

roidrage152

Active Member
I'm gonna just water with the dunks/gnatrol for the next week or 2 and hope to at least minimize the problem. And keep the hot shots up for a bit. I may also look for a safe organic spray to supplement. Multiple pesticide bombs seems pretty extreme at this point. Going to flower soon, and would really like to avoid gnats in my sticky buds :/.
 

thump easy

Well-Known Member
keep the stickies at the base of the trunk of the plant on the dirt.. so wen they come out the walk on it dont worry n dont over do it.. just remember easy untill the next crop then use aza max or aza trol k.. good luck
 

xMOONx

Member
I would like to know more to, Lil basterds are in my veg tent, I have sand on everything, Holes are taped shut with sand packed in em and still killing them, Anyone have a link to the dunks so I make sure that i get the right stuff and not something that will hurt my girls,Still have a few weeks left on the plants that are loaded, seems like they put a hurting on a few of my plants ;(
I just ordered the 6 pk. mosquito dunks but you can get a 20 pk. also, I just didn't need that many. Hope this link helps--cheapest I found.

http://www.northlineexpress.com/item/5SU-110/Mosquito-Dunks-6-Pack-
 

roidrage152

Active Member
Another update on the gnats:

I still have a few of those fuckers around, I got actual Gnatrol, I beleive its the same chemical as the dunks, but less messy, and mixes better. I've started adding it to my rez to hopefully interrupt life cycles. In the 6x4 veg room with my Hot Shot Strip, there are still gnats however. The population doesn't seem to be growing, but it definitely doesn't seem to be shrinking. These pots were soaked to the core on their last watering a week ago with the dunks, we'll see if that Gnatrol works better moving forward. Another side note in regards to the people reccomending cinamon/hot pepper type stuff. I bought from Home Depot an organic flying pest spray that is a mix of spicy stuff like cayenne and cinamon just for the hell of it. I didn't want to add any more chemicals to the room, but still wanted to do more. My plants did not like this stuff. It was in an aerosol can, and I got a little bit on the lower leaves when trying to wet the top soil layer. Within hours those leaves were done for, wilty and dead. Caused some pretty bad discoloring on other leaves as well that got minor contact. I expect my plants to bounce back from this (may lose a couple recently transplanted cloans.) but this was probably a bad idea :p. I have sticky strips up, still catching a few adults a day. I may try a perlite/sand layer on my vegging plants still in one gallon pots, but its too much of a hassle to try and do it to my dozen 15 gallon pots. It seems like my small guys still have the worst of it, it's my understanding gnats like the newer growth. These fuckers are hard to kill, and this time of year everyone seems to be having issues as they move inside for season change maybe. Keeping the strips up and the gnatrol in my res should at least keep the population low enough so not to have my yields effected for now, until a more permanent solution presents it self.
 
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