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Coco & gnats, brand or store specific?

T

thesloppy

I've seen more than a few threads recently talking about picking up gnats in coco, and I've been victim to it a few times myself. Do you think the gnats are brand or store specific? That is, do you think the gnats come from the brand/bag of coco itself, or being stored improperly, or both? Anybody with lots of broad horticultural/coco experience know or think it's worth identifying what brands of coco are more likely to come with bugs, or would that be unfair, if the bugs are more/just as likely to come from the store, or if it's just likely to be a per batch thing? Do you think it makes a difference if the bags are stored indoors vs. outdoors?

For whatever it's worth I think 100% of my gnats have been found in bags of Black Gold cocoblend, but 100% of those bags also came from Fred Meyer (a NW supermarket), and I've bought plenty of bags of Black Gold that didn't have any bugs at all, so I can't really point one way or the other. Recently I've gone through half a dozen bags of Tupur from Royal Gold, and that was all clean.
 
VagPuncher

VagPuncher

Balls Deep!!
ICMag Donor
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Just ordered a pound of Gnatrol in case these Spanish c*unts I get my coco for wanna send me some bugs.
 
Mister_D

Mister_D

Active member
Veteran
Water all coco/soil with 5ml per gal. sm-90 and you will never have gnats or likely any other bug problem ever. Use from freshly cut clone/seedling until flush. Doesn't matter what brand of coco/soil or where it came from. Also works fantastic in hydro. I'm using it to very successfully kill off a serious root aphid infestation. Planning to make a thread about this very thing, just waiting to see if I can completely rid myself of them using nothing but sm-90. Started with thousands dead in my clone trays daily, after two weeks i'm down to maybe 30 a day. This is combined from ~70 clones. I also have spectricide and imid just in case, but those stunt a plants growth pretty bad. Plants love sm-90, does alot of different positive things for them. Just check out nutrilife's website for more info. Or do a search here at the mag.
 
K

kln

Member
that sm-90 looks rly nice, if the description is reliable.
I had some gnat trouble in the past, having a bottle of this would be great, i cant find any retailers in europe, sum1 knows about it?
 
Mister_D

Mister_D

Active member
Veteran
Kln - DHF and Krusty both have always recommended this product for a reason. Anything those two put down you can take to the bank, good as gold. I just finally bought some a few weeks back, and the plants love it! Wiped out the few fungus gnats that were hanging around also. Seems to do everything they say on the website. I know i'll never grow without it again.
 
I

irobot sd

Member
I find most humboldt area bags of coca are filled with gnats. I'm sure sitting in storage at many hydro shops makes it easy to spread to all units. Check in the tiny holes where the bags "Breathe" and give the bag a good nudge or kick and see if they fucking crawl or fly out the holes. As dudes stated before the safest way to go is compressed bricks. I switched to these within the year and like them a lot actually. Small, light-weight, no bugs.. Just get a nice rubbermaid tub and mix 5-7 gallons of ph'd water. Throw a brick in and let it soak for a few.. Get in there with a little hand shovel and break the brick up. Add perlite or whatever helps too.. Only negative is there can be ph balance after transplant but it clears up quick just get some good runoff.
 
Mister_D

Mister_D

Active member
Veteran
TribalSeeds said:
SM-90 prohibits growth of beneficial bacteria
Click to expand...


Common misinformation there. Dongle69 here at the mag confirmed with a microscope that sm-90 does NOT kill beneficial bacteria. The company also claims to have tested it with their bacteria product with the same result.
 
A

Amanita

Member
Bagged is the problem. It's loose so it provides an ideal environment for the gnats to proliferate. Just like commercial potting mixes. That's why I use compressed. The gnats are unable to live in it so it's always good.
 
T

TribalSeeds

Mister_D said:
Common misinformation there. Dongle69 here at the mag confirmed with a microscope that sm-90 does NOT kill beneficial bacteria. The company also claims to have tested it with their bacteria product with the same result.
Click to expand...

I actually quoted the sales info direct from a site. Its on more than one site. My bad
 
vta

vta

Active member
Veteran
I get them once in a while...and I've tried just about every brand.

I use No Pest Strips....but only when I see a gnat. Use it 1 day, bag it, then a couple days later for another day. It will kill what ales you.
 
G

Guest 18340

From years of experience with growing in coco (blocks and loose bagged) I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Gnats are an environmental problem, not the coco.
Coco doesn't come with gnats, it attracts them because it's always wet, which is where they thrive.
Has anybody ever opened a bag of coco and had gnats fly out? Not in my years of using (Botanicare) loose coco has that ever happened.
 
T

thesloppy

evlme2 said:
From years of experience with growing in coco (blocks and loose bagged) I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Gnats are an environmental problem, not the coco.
Coco doesn't come with gnats, it attracts them because it's always wet, which is where they thrive.
Has anybody ever opened a bag of coco and had gnats fly out? Not in my years of using (Botanicare) loose coco has that ever happened.
Click to expand...

My completely baseless, unresearched, and unscientific assumption is that 'infected' coco comes with dormant gnat eggs, rather than live gnats, and therefore needs some time and moisture before releasing it's special 'treasures'. While you're correct that I've never had gnats fly out of a bag of coco, I have had them show up in my cabinet a few days after introducing new, fresh pots, where there were none before, many a time.
 
S

superjet

Active member
yes, when i started watering twice a day (probably over watering) i started noticing gnats hanging around. but since i've been putting mosquito dunks in my water bucket (i hand water in coco) i haven't seen any in a week, and i had a dozen or two hanging around about two weeks ago.
 
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