Fungus gnats or WINGED ROOT APHIDS???

[TheOutlawTree]

I am likely going to get some samples of my soil / roots / plant material and send them off to a plant diagnostic laboratory.

I have certainly not ruled out Parasitic nematodes.

After seeing a bunch of the same micro "aphids" or mites, on the onion bulb I had planted outside my house 2 months ago... it leads me to believe If I don't have RA"s or parasitic nematodes than ive got bulb mites.

There is not much information out there about bulb mites effecting cannabis. And from what I read on another cannabis forum there are no effective pesticides / insecticides against bulb mites. I have scoped the ones I have and they do look similar to bulb mites.

 

[medicalmj]

I am likely going to get some samples of my soil / roots / plant material and send them off to a plant diagnostic laboratory.

I have certainly not ruled out Parasitic nematodes.

After seeing a bunch of the same micro "aphids" or mites, on the onion bulb I had planted outside my house 2 months ago... it leads me to believe If I don't have RA"s or parasitic nematodes than ive got bulb mites.

There is not much information out there about bulb mites effecting cannabis. And from what I read on another cannabis forum there are no effective pesticides / insecticides against bulb mites. I have scoped the ones I have and they do look similar to bulb mites.

Bulb mites are not supposed to be a concern for non bulb plants. Bulb mites are whitish w reddish brown appendages, but plenty of beneficial soil mites same color. While possible, I would not hypothesize that you have bulb mites as a pest. That is, they could be trying to survive but not a pest to your herb.

 

[Unclecrash]

TheOutlawTree, and everyone else, find me ONE tidy grower that has tried Stratiolaelaps Scimitus on tiny soil mites WITHOUT success. I CHALLENGE all of you to spend $30 on a liter of predatory insects, and get back to me in a month. Stratiolaelaps scimitus (Hypoaspis miles) WILL solve your tiny soil mite or "root aphid" problem if applied correctly.

This is the last post I'm going to make in this thread, because "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." Again, I refer you to my first post.

What am I going to do with a litre of pred insects its the middle of the winter, for two I only have 12 plants. Im sure they work but not going to spend 30 on some flippin bugs,some of us are NOT in a setuation where we can let a bunch of bugs loose. Plus some of us are on are own mission to figure things out. On the cheap and there are only a million ways to skin a cat so don't get all up set because we are not using your method's WE ALL CAN SEE Your pos.t Peace

 

[cannascholar]

Root aphids are rampant in california, especially in our drought conditions. No Hmiles don't work already made the $30 mistake. Continue to waste your money but don't clutter this valuable thread about it.

Tried just orthene at 2g gallon on a test plant and haven't seen any burns. Hated using it gave me a headache.

Been using Riptide pbo in a flower room at 2 ml a gallon and it seems to be helping. I plan on using Kontos, imid, riptide on my moms in the future and continue to clean and clone out of the problem and grow nutrient dense plants organically. My best success in this war has been with that method. They Love chem nutes and will be in paradise on your NO3 rich roots.

 

[EclipseFour20]

Yeah, orthene does have an odor that can give you the heebie jeebies...but it does not linger much. Glad you observed no burns so far...I observed zero when I did my treatments (at higher doses), but that was me and the plants were not loaded with previous potions of RA pesticides. Just be aware of Imid's half-life and if it were me, I would do what I can to ween the plants off Imid.

That Riptide is good stuff, water soluble, much more affordable than other products and effective. I use it around the house to control ants, midges, and spiders (big bonanza herd of spiders this year around the house...thought I was in an Addams Family movie with all the spider webs)--normally we treat spiders as friends (the are by definition "beneficial") but this year they kind of over did it.

 

[medicalmj]

...No Hmiles don't work already made the $30 mistake. Continue to waste your money but don't clutter this valuable thread about it...

Valuable thread, maybe. But the whole premise of this thread is kinda fucked. RAs or FGs, wtf kinda comparison is that? First it's the larvae of FGs that cause issues not the fliers. So one would be looking for larvae (FG) or an aphid in the root zone. But no, we are examining fliers. If examining fliers on a yellow trap why would one think an aphid with wings is from the root zone and not a normal aphid pest that lives/feeds on your plant. Last, almost every pic of a supposed RA is a soil mite.

But back to you point, Sesh is hardly cluttering this thread. He/she is giving ideas based on what works for him/her...and that's what this site is all about.

 

[Highlight]

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[cannascholar]

It's clear most of us haven't spent many hours researching and dealing with these pests. Root aphids are both winged and not, once a colony gets established a winged aphid finds another plant to colonize. The purpose of a sticky trap is to identify the easily distinguishable winged aphid and slow the spread. Fungus gnats are not the issue here.

Here's my sloppy greenhouse that I defeated Ra on. Plenty of people are smoking it and paying well. For an outdoor grower complete elimination is near impossible. Early control with chemicals followed by quality nutrition and soil and the bugs are avoiding most of my plants. Watched my nextdoor neighbors crop get devoured.



You can see the plants in crappy, unbalanced vermifire soil to the left are falling victim to aphids. I will be recieving both imid and spirotetramat resiudual tests this week.

 

[EclipseFour20]

IMHO, signs of phantom nute deficiencies and premature leaf yellowing are not caused by Fungus Gnats or friendly "soil mites".

IMHO, if one has RAs then "most likely" there will also be FGs in the soil. One way to identify the difference between a "flying RA" and a FG is to compare the thorax and size of the wings. Per this picture--

 

[medicalmj]

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All pictures here

Those are RAs (from page 1). Notice how they colonize an area. A typical feature of RAs is that when there's an infestation there will be aphids of all ages, which means there will be varying sizes of near microscopic to quite large. And they also excrete a whitish waxy substance which will be around the infestation.

Again, mostly pics are of soil mites not RAs. Since they are an insect that feeds on roots in clusters and are suseptible to neo-nics their eradication is far simpler than eradicating plant parasitic nematodes.

 

[medicalmj]

...Root aphids are both winged and not, once a colony gets established a winged aphid finds another plant to colonize. The purpose of a sticky trap is to identify the easily distinguishable winged aphid and slow the spread. Fungus gnats are not the issue here...

Yeah, all growers should know this stuff. Except that for many posting here don't have RAs like you. Often it is FGs or nematodes or just root rot that attracts the soil mites.

Anyway, I was wondering if you could post some good close ups of your RAs? I am very curious as to what species you have. And think it would be great if we could start comparing RAs from diff growers. I am wondering if we are seeing evolution play out here. Literature often names the species based on host plant i.e. the corn root aphid, however it feeds on a variety of plants.

 

[EclipseFour20]

Does it really matter which particular species of Root Aphid that someone has?

I believe there are over 4000 species of "aphids", with something like 250 are the "root aphid" variety. Each preferring one plant/habitat/geographic area over another (ie, phylloxera prefers grapevines, sugarbeet RAs prefers sugarbeets, conifer RAs prefer conifer, lettuce RAs prefer lettuce, etc), as well as they come in various sizes, colors and shapes.

But it appears that ALL Root Aphids have at least one thing in common--they all die like "aphids". IMHO, arguing over "minutia" is really counter-productive.....lol, asking someone, "which species of root aphid do you have"....like I said, does it really matter?

 

[genedigger]

get your hands on some mint plants any kind of mint will do.dry the plant material i used a 5 gallon bucket full off dried plant material.cut it all up in small pieces and add to your soil medium.this may require a lot of mint plant material so if you live in the city or dont know about other plkants then dont even bother listening to my advice.

 

[genedigger]

im pretty sure these 2 pests fly very differently but i could be wrong

 

[Holdin']

Valuable thread, maybe. But the whole premise of this thread is kinda fucked. RAs or FGs, wtf kinda comparison is that? First it's the larvae of FGs that cause issues not the fliers. So one would be looking for larvae (FG) or an aphid in the root zone. But no, we are examining fliers. If examining fliers on a yellow trap why would one think an aphid with wings is from the root zone and not a normal aphid pest that lives/feeds on your plant. Last, almost every pic of a supposed RA is a soil mite.

But back to you point, Sesh is hardly cluttering this thread. He/she is giving ideas based on what works for him/her...and that's what this site is all about.

Medicalmj, the title of this thread is kind of a moot point now. If you look at the date, it was created literally 5 years ago before many people understood the wrath of RA in cannabis gardens. The thread creator was implying that growers who have had ongoing issues and wrote their flying critters off as FG might have actually had RA and a much bigger problem.

But I agree, over the last several pages, just pics of soil mites. I don't think RA are as common anymore in many areas as they were from say, 2010-2013. Certainly some folks are still getting them though...

Peace!

 

[medicalmj]

Does it really matter which particular species of Root Aphid that someone has?...arguing over "minutia" is really counter-productive.....lol, asking someone, "which species of root aphid do you have"....like I said, does it really matter?

I guess it doesn't matter if you lack curiosity and have no interest in the dynamics of your endeavors. And who's arguing over minutia?

Moreover, it would surely matter to any professional. You think a commercial tomato grower that hears about a mite (terrestrial) problem in some other part of the country that is deveating crops and pesticides are not working is not gonna want to know exactly what this species of mite is? Know the enemy.

 

[Corpsey]

These were my root aphids... Def not soil mites...a winged RA and a crawler


Since the begining of the year I have only spotted 3, so I have at least controlled them if not got rid of them. Last Christmas I had to have at least 10,000. The buds were black from all the winged RA stuck to them.

 

[medicalmj]

These were my root aphids... Def not soil mites...a winged RA and a crawler
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Since the begining of the year I have only spotted 3, so I have at least controlled them if not got rid of them. Last Christmas I had to have at least 10,000. The buds were black from all the winged RA stuck to them.

Thanks for posting those! Yeah aphids for sure.

So where did you find these things living and eating? On the leaves, on the roots, if on roots were they deep within the root zone or just near surface?

Thanks

 

[Corpsey]

they were in the soil, winged ra on undersides of leaves and stems, on the sides of the pots, on the floor, on the wall, on the ceiling, in the hoods, on the bulbs, you name it they were there.

I noticed them more near the surface of soil then when breaking up a rootball, but they were still there as well.

also they were different size crawlers, some clear some more brown. im guessing different life cycles.

One thing i noticed about the flyers were they always went to the same spots in the room, like this one wall they all would go there everyday and i would squish 100's at a time, next day boom more!
they might leave a scent or something else to tell the others to follow them, after all thats what the winged RA does, seek new plants to establish a new colony.

 

[EclipseFour20]

I guess it doesn't matter if you lack curiosity and have no interest in the dynamics of your endeavors. And who's arguing over minutia?

Moreover, it would surely matter to any professional. You think a commercial tomato grower that hears about a mite (terrestrial) problem in some other part of the country that is deveating crops and pesticides are not working is not gonna want to know exactly what this species of mite is? Know the enemy.

After discovering there were hundreds of unique species of RAs...and since all the pics I found on the internet did not "match" the RAs in my garden, I decided it was not important to know which church and pew my RAs belonged to. Not writing a book...rather I talked to entomologist Ray Cloyd and developed a plan of eradication that I felt was "least harmful".

Know thy enemy....agree--but when you have literally hundreds of choices, how is one to know absolutely, they have identified the "correct one"? There lies the rub...RAs munching on cannabis roots 100 miles apart can look similar but technically be of different "species".

These are the links I used in my "unsuccessful" attempt to specifically identify my "enemy"--perhaps you will do better.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/147/tree
http://www.insectimages.org/browse/tax.cfm?Area=16&Res=3&fam=30
http://influentialpoints.com/Gallery/Aphid_genera.htm
http://tolweb.org/Aphidoidea/11009
http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/52380-Aphidoidea