Bulb Mites?? WTF!?

[Luckydux]

I don’t recall they having so much hair so I’m hoping your wrong about them being bulb mites

 

[Edinburgh]

I sat it over and over if you have any pest with an exoskeleton use de earth, wait till topsoil drys dust all around plant, i take a big wad of tp put in earth and clap it with my hands this produces a big dust cloud for your leaves like a powder puff, leave for 72 hours flush check ph done! Cheap organic and highley effective i have 2 toof decay autos and when young had a bad case of thrips would have lost plants for shure i cant say enough about de earth it has fixed / saved many a plant! Now my 2 toof decay are at day 50 still in veg and running both cycles, will leave in veg 1 more week to catch up then i will put under booster and flower.

 

[Lostouthere]

Hey, I’m the new guy posting to an old sticky thread but think this is important.
I scope every week but never really the root zone. My plants and everything for the most part has been fine. I do get some mosaic patterns on my chem and sour but they have had that forever.

I’m mostly hydro and made the not best decision to put on my moms in organic living soil from build a soil. I added kashi and neem cake top dress and ended up with big fungal layer (supposed to be good for plants.)
I believe in my soil mix there is a mix of mites that are both predatory and recyclers. When I scoped my stuff in hydro I found small mites in roots and rock wool. Freaked out. Killed a bunch of stuff. Did sulfur dunk, spray. H2o2. Quad cleaned everything and killed everything in veg except for some fresh cuts.
I though for sure bulb mites because why not? We always have some crazy new thing coming into the Cana world and lots of the time tend to think the worst. This is great sometimes but when I read back though soil mite forums people using systemic pesticides is not good!!

long story longer I think most these people have tyrophagus putrescentiae. They’re a fungal mite. I inoculate my hydro with beneficial bacteria and fungus. I probably have some hypoaspis miles too but I think the decomposers did better.

my end of story for now is I bought 50k hypoaspis miles and released them into my areas to do their work. If the mites are bad, they will eat them. If not. I’ll have backup for gnats and springtails etc. not very expensive.
There is also a fungus Beauveria bassiana that seems like it might help as drench if you were worried but that will probably kill good guys too.

 

[PurpleBuckwheat]

Hundreds of these mites escaped the soil after watering and onto the soil and pot. I sprayed them with Botanigard just to be on the safe side. It's worth noticing that I had a small issue with fungus gnats on this grow, but they aren't a problem anymore. And when I watered there wasn't even one flyer coming out of the soil whilst usually two or three fly out and end on sticky traps after watering. Did these mites take care of them?

Also, my soil is highly saturated with fungi (BTI, beauveria bassiana aka botanigard, and two beneficial mycorrhizae fungi too) and the plant has been growing amazingly well for now. It looks like they don't really like the light these mites. Are they beneficial Hypoaspis Miles? Can someone help ID them? Should I do something about them? Cheers!

P.S. I had Hypoaspis Miles on my first grow last year, but not that many of them, and they didn't do any damage.

 

[Freek1]

From reading this post and several others in different sites I got more questions than answers because:

• Mites are too many, some people identifies them as beneficial, predatory, pests...
• There is no agreement because of the difficulty to obtain decent pictures of the tiny animals with household items (Unexpensive USB microscopes, phone cameras etc).
  • It is difficult to count the legs numbers
  • It is difficult to differentiate the Antennae feelers from front legs. (To make things worse a proto-ninph stage of Mites has only 6 legs).

What seems to be a common occurrence is:

• People see a few fliers.
• Plants show signs of assorted deficiencies linked to High pH (Usually resembling Iron or Mg or Ca)
• Many have done the potato test thinking fungus Gnats and find these crawlers instead.
• Nothing seems to kill them.
• The smaller the amount of soil the worse the plant does.

Now something I have observed is that My worm bin has Mite population that seem to explode if the bin is too wet.

I consume a lot of coffee that ends up in the worm bin so my bin must be on the acidic side.

When the bin gets dry the mites are nowhere to be seen.
(This might just be because they don't like soaked soil so they come to the surface.)

I have seen fliers come and go from my worm bin and they have the erratic flight patter of FG, however there are no fungus Gnat larvae to be seen in my worm bin.
(But i have found some FG larva in some of my potted plants)

What can be concluded:

• They share the optimal conditions for FG
  • Acidic pH (5 to 7)
  • High humidity (Soil too retentive)
  • Highly organic matter content decaying (live soils, organic media)
• They are not affected by common pest killer methods
• Since the more soil the less damage this might indicate that they might only turn aggressive towards the root mass if enough in numbers and not enough food.
• The are photosensitive (Hide from the light)
• Even thou they like humid places they seem to be chased to the surface by drenched soil.

I might have introduced them in my plants from the worm bin.

The plant i found them was a cutting i got from a friend with impossible to explain lockouts (the mother thrived in vegetation showing deficiency symptoms but with good grow rates just to die after 8 weeks of flower producing very little yield, 32 top occupying 1.2m X 1.2 @ 80 Cm height when switched yielded about 10g dry...)

3 cuttings were recovered from this mother, rooted them with his soil and took em to a different place to see if the problem could be isolated.


Here are the observations:

The clones were re-potted as follows:

a) 27lt pot, on my soil mix of: 2x Peat + 1 Vermiculite, some sand, bottom of pumice + a hydro basket filled with peat to make a wick/self watering pot with low Perched Water Table (PWT) level.

This one is doing great, took about 2 - 3 weeks to recover, damaged leaves where used by the plant and shed. Lots of new growth, but it is the one where i did the potato test to see if the gnats traveled with the roots to the new soil.​

b) 3lt pot: Pure peat

This one fell from a stand i put on so it was close to the lamp, it lost about half the peat on the pot which and didn't replace it (lazy boy).​

It is also doing great, thou showing less growth as it has much less soil.​

IT also took 2 to three weeks to recover.​

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c) Didn't report left in a 4" starter pot with his mix.

This one, which was left on its soil but shared the Nute solution, the watering, ETC from the others; is the one that did not move, the damage seem to have stopped but she didn't recover, so last week i decided re-pot it.​

​

Now it is showing new growth and recovery signs.​

​

To re-pot it:​

A 1% solution of H2O2 in a big water container was prepared and dumped the soil and the root mass on it, it didn't fizz too much.​

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All the root ball was cleaned from soil and riders (I hope)​

And the plant was potted in the same mix as (a) but in a 1 lt pot to keep it "handable".​

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I left the old soil in the H2O2 solution ever since​

(I can see the FG larvae as white strands immobile underwater on top of the sedimented soil, I took tweezers and catched 3 after 4 days under water (the H2O2 probably has already broken into H2O and O.) To my surprise, once under the microscope the wormy FG larva became more active as it crawled out of the water drop and once on the dry it moved like nothing has happened to it... After 4 days soaking in a previously Neem treated soil under a ton of Water + Oxygenated water).​

​

So Drowinign doesn't kills FG larva, nor Peroxide, nor Azadirachtin (Azamax 1.2% or Neem oil (0.03% to 0.25%))​

​

I did found a lot of fungus Gnat larvae in his original soil, since
BTI is not readily available in the country I live in, this is what was tried:

• Neem oil + soap + water spray
• Hidrogen Peroxide (H2O2) flushes
• Aired Nutes + Molasses
• Aerated wormcastings Tea.
• Drowning

What to do from this point on:

Put potato slivers on:
the 3 pots + the Worm-Bin and compare what is catched.

Trust my pH
Find a way to measure the pH and trust it because the bugs might be unoffensive even beneficial and might just be an indication of too low pH / too humid soil / ready for problems!


Why? Let me explain:

Most of us use inexpensive pH pens, I have a Chinese Pen and a two electrode Chinese thing that you jam in the soil).

I don't expect them to be very precise but at least be coherent.

By the amounts of Peat I use in my soil and the amount of coffee i trow in the worm bin i should have low pH problems, yet when i pH the Brew either Nutes either WCT I find it in the 8's with the pen and the electrode thing doesn't move from 7.

I can trow some white vinegar in the mix and the pH will drop, just to be back at 7 - 8 a few hours later.

My tap water reads 7.7 - 8 lately, pure white vinegar read 2.6 in the pen, around 4 on the electrode thing.

My run off claims to be 6.8 pH. according to the pen.

It doesn't makes sense my pH should be low from the soil mix.
Should'n Nutes solution should also be on the acidic side?

Keep monitoring the plants:
Maybe the damage comes from FG, I didn't see many adult fliers in the clones, but the smaller the pot the worse the plant did, and once removed the plant shown improvement. (The donor grower had a bad case of FG)

If the mites are beneficial/unoffensive, but share FG conditions they might be a consequence of the FG infestation, for all we know they might compete against the Gnats for food.

I ordered some BTI (i'm paying more for shipping than for the product) If the FG dissapear but i still have the mites and the plants thrive then I'll let them be.


Some pictures of my mites:
These pictures are from the catch of a potato slice in a potted plant, I am yet to capture some from the worm bin and compare.

There are two types of bug, roundish ones (like a light bulb shape) the ones that seem to be mating.

And the one on the pict below which is more elongated and smaller.

I took the pictures both under UV and normal light.
View attachment 668483 View attachment 668484 View attachment 668485 View attachment 668486 View attachment 668487 View attachment 668488 View attachment 668489 View attachment 668490 View attachment 668491 View attachment 668492 View attachment 668493 View attachment 668494

I think you are on to something, perhaps even a symbiotic relationship with fungus gnats and root aphids. It's a chicken or egg things. The Bulb mites are there because there is fungus , which persist after the soaks for the other bug...the soaks themselves presenting an atmosphere for further fungal growth due to extra moisture and anaerobic fungal activity.
In my scenario used an insecticide to knock down numbers , followed with a diluted peroxide and diatomaceous earth soil drench... Then to turn the thing around bought some bacterial "pond sludge remover" and added a ton of crushed mosquito dunk since we have identified a potential pest (bulb mites) as having a larval stage.
My plants look fantastic after all this the best ...even before . Which leads me to think the bugs were spreading fungus and it had to be reversed.
Going with a treatment of orange oil on my next watering.

 

[Freek1]

Ok tried orange oil ...at way too strong a level and lost some plants ( 2 ounces per gallon is waaaayyy to strong) . This dropped the population signifcantly but they are still crawling.
Next attempt is clove mint and rosemary essential oils. about a combined teaspoon per gallon, so far it has them coming to the surface.. I think I see some dead ones . Gonna give it a day and see if they all die.

 

[Freek1]

Ok the essential oil killed a bunch...lots of little dead bodies.....but still some crawling around. One more thing before I get to chemicals . A sulfur drench...Stay tuned.

 

[BurnzYzBudZz]

This video is very informative when approaching mites. All kinds of mites.
Watch “Cannabis Diseases & Pests: Kill Hemp Russet Mite Broad Mites on Cannabis” on Vimeo:

 

[Freek1]

This video is very informative when approaching mites. All kinds of mites.
Watch “Cannabis Diseases & Pests: Kill Hemp Russet Mite Broad Mites on Cannabis” on Vimeo:

Observation, oils have to be used super carefully, then you have the soap as a dispersing agent. 2 strikes. Actually 3 soap raises ph and we know our plants like it slightly acidic. I do believe they have a place but it may be more cleaning disinfecting a room or there scents maybe enough to keep insects in the not interested zone.
Disclaimer: Obviously I don't know shit or I wouldn't be here.

 

[Freek1]

Sulfur dip at 1/4 the suggested strength Bonide sulfur dust at 1 table spoon 4 2 gallons.
My first note is that unlike essential oils which made them come out , I did not see a single crawler. Lights are off and sampled 1 really weak plant and one that is pretty much dead with the fuckers still crawling around.
Update tomorrow.
One last caveat is that I DID NOT give the 2 week period between oil and sulfur. Yeah that impatient...smh.

 

[Freek1]

Wettable Sulphur & Malathion Dip

Got tired of seeing the little fuckers crawl, bought out the big guns. No crawlers and finally shooting off new leaves, also seeing some fresh root growth nice and white.

In 2 days following up with Imid.

From all the articles I read they don't seem to be sure if these bugs actually eat the roots or just damage them to infect them with fungus. The articles do say that they are highly attracted to fusarium. Some of my plants had these symptoms , hoping the sulfur can control the symptoms and cut down the mite population while I use the chemicals.

 

[Freek1]

Been 2 days ....NO CRAWLERS!!!
Gonna give them some recovery time ...then the next treatment will be perithium since it's the only thing that seems to kill these root scabies eggs.

I think the sulfur is the key in this whole situation because they can't get resistant to it.

 

[Freek1]

Hey Mikenite69, did you identify the bulb mites with a microscope? I tried BT I and K many times with no luck when I had them.
also it seems unlikely that you would get them from a brick of coco. They like wet environments with lots of roots to eat. A coco block has nothing for them. Are you sure it wasn't spring tails? Did they hop at all? And how fast were they? Bulb mites are pretty slow to the naked eye

With you on this , I put BT/Dunks in my soil upon potting and these fucker live in it... Also did 2 essential oil and soap dunks. They were laughing at me. Triad seemed to knock them down, Malthion the same, pyrethium didn't bother them. I trashed it all , heat treated the room scrubbed everything with bleach, fogged and will be dropping new seeds after letting some no pest strips sit for a minute..Oh yeah bought a steamer and steamed every nook an cranny.

 

[Freek1]

I am not sure how many gallons of soil you are dealing with. Something to ponder when dealing with hard species of bugs is if can seperate the soil from used flowering plants from veg plants.

Once current finishes flower take that soil and pasturize it like mushroom growers do. You wet the soil take handfull of medium squeeze it until 1 or 2 tiny drips of water come out of it, then put it in the oven at 160F or lowest setting and let it cook for a solid 12 hrs. Mushroomers go shorter because they use less medium, can go 24 hrs if want to.

Granted your medium will be dead no fungi, no bacteria. Just mix a act add molasses so it has fungal and bacteria in it, brew for 8 hours so still has bacteria not fungal dominate brew, use eath worm castings, fish hydroslate, and what ever you wish.

Once tea is ready apply to your pasterized soi. If you can put the pasturized soil in a tote with a seed heat pad in center of the pile, use act and let rest for atleast a week your bug issue will be gone. Be sure to use steps to prevent soil being used in the infected area.

If its coir turn hot water heater to max let it heat up for 3 hours, apply the hot water on the coir wait 45 min replace the hot water. If have a good hose not cheappie can hook it to water heater instead of buckets.

I had thrips from bag soil, i pasturized it, fed it act, gave it bit of time to do its thing and they never come back. If dont have big enough stock pot turkey bags are great to use. Iuse turkey bags fill them full leave top open stand them up and fill oven full.

It comes down to cycling the soil, cleaning the room immaculant daily for several days and keeping it seperated. Bugs have no chance against a wash cloth with alot of pressure being rinsed on every stroke from being squished. This ensures nobody is hanging around or there eggs.

Have had alot of bug issues from bags of dirt and coir. Now if its new soil its pasturized in the oven before use and rests, coir is pasturized with hot water 45m soak,drain and repeat, and do it for 8 hours. Granted once coir is pasturized its rinsed and cal mag, 1/4 strength veg nute for a day then used. This is done as a prvenative with anything i have not worked with. If i get the errant bug from somewhere in my grow i do this again.

I am not a user of the word organic, i do want to limit chems but sometimes there needed to finish a run. If you pasturize after you know theres an issue, and are anal for a week in a cleared out room wiping evey surface ceiling to floor,equipment, i mean everything, and keep the bug plants away and contained while they finish this will KILL anything in the medium, just need to make it living with what you want except for pests, those need to die. I know you need to keep using bacteria species for there preventions, not saying dont include bt, bti ect in your grow.

Just trying to help those that have or want to prevent gnats,mites,thrips ect from buying products and keep having issues.You can have eggs on clothing and get pest issues. Keep it clean,use bacterias to help they are your personal army. Nothing is not fail proof but when have a failure cook them and let mother nature use them to your advantage, not thiers.

Edit- if have a meat thermometer check the center bag or the center of the pile for temp. Once the center of the midle bag or the center of the pile is 160F then start your time.

I am definitely gonna be there with you I believe these came from some off brand organic soil, but it doesn't matter . Every new bag is gonna get pasturized now.

 

[Planthead4life]

I've unfortunely been diagnosed with having bulb mites this week and all I can say with certainty is that clones take much longer to root. Makes sense when you have a bug eating the roots as quick as they grow. I also have root aphids and lots of fungus gnats in a flower room. Its plausable that one or the other brought them along.

I haven't had an indoor pest since 2006 and now have my hands full. It's sort of exciting :)

Old post I know but can you show me some pics of the bulb mites amd root aphids I'm dealing with some type if eost that looks similar and my plants are going down hill I only find them in my soil and theres this white webbing all throughout the soil...please any info you have help or advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Luckydux]

I don’t get on here often so I apologize for the delay. Hopefully you’ve found out what was ailing your gals. The webbing you mentioned sounds like root aphids may be a culprit. I don’t have any good pics of what a bulb mite looks like but you really need magnification to see them. 2 brown dots on their rear is the tell tale sign

 

[5farmers]

If they are in the soil look for safari :
do it at least 3-4 weeks before harvest so it has time to leave the plants system.
i do minimum strength.



you can spray avid as suggested.... just don’t spray avid after veg


Safari is a soil drench***
https://www.amazon.com/Safari-20SG-Sprayable-Systemic-Insecticide/dp/B005IW7X7S

 

[jdog22]

i like to use neem out to get rid of any parasite's do it 3x in 2 weeks and bye any nasty parasite's gnar nats are usually my problem also a great idea to put a few sticky traps down :)

 

[Montrealer]

Avid is very dangerous. If I had an infection, I would clone what I want to keep and dip everything in safers,neem,floramite,bugs be gone all in one night with 2 hours intervals to let the plants dry between each soak. Do this every 3 days for a total of 15 days. You can also soak the first 1/4 inch of your media but make sure the plants were recently watered/your media is still wet

 

[JKash]

Milk might kill the mites