well first off thank you Blue Dog for this thread, and thank you Seamaiden for making it a sticky.
it turns out i have bulb mites and im 99.9% sure of that.
my last crop (pineapple express) was in hydro and i noticed some white TINY bugs on my hydroton in veg. i was just getting past broad mites completely so i still treated with kontos in veg (in the water) as a systemic preventative. i hit with kontos right after seeing these strange bugs and ran it in my water for 2 days.... a few weeks later i flowered and the crop went from looking A+ top and bottom to horribly messed up with an uncureable calcium deficiency. after about 2 weeks into flower i trashed the crop not wanting to waste time.
now i have a crop of LA cheese in hydro and they look good, however, their roots are dying. a couple weeks ago all my roots were PERFECT though. once i saw the the roots dying i brewed a strong beneficial tea for my system and it didn't help. as a last resort i swapped the water and cut out the beneficials and added H202. this helped immensely, and that was two days ago. i just read this thread for the first time this morning and i knew i probably had them. so i went up to my grow and threw some potato slices down on the hydroton and waited 6 hours. i came back and saw some of the white moving dots that i saw previously on my pineapple express moving around on the potato. luckily i just bought a new good quality microscope (100-160x) so i was able to get a crystal clear look at it. it had 8 legs, a pointy head, brownish legs, and a couple brownish spots on its back. its body was 0.4mm wide and 0.6mm long.
i didn't have my digital scope with me, so i didn't get a picture, but i did find a picture on a bulb mite entomology report from ucdavis that looked identical to the one i saw 100%, so i will share that picture.
i have this thing about marijuana problems. i seem to encounter every single one. i've had all the bugs now i think.. except russet mites, which frankly don't scare me after broad mites...
i am a hater of chemicals, but i am also a user of them when it is absolutely necessary. i am not, however, someone that is so desperate to get to get a crop that i will poison myself and others. i will trash a crop before i spray my buds.
i have an arsenal of chemicals that i am prepared to use if i have to in order to save moms though. this is my bug fighting arsenal- imid, BT, ogbiowar foliar pack, neem,
azamax,
avid,
forbid, kontos, and
floramite. i hate admitting to owning a lot of those, but the harsh chemicals were certainly needed on broad mites though. those things are no joke. i'm not sure which of the miticides i own will affect a bulb mite, but i will read up on it in the morning.
my first line of defense will be to brew some ogbiowar. it knocks root aphids out, so let's see how it does for these bastards. i will definitely keep you guys posted on my bulb mite problem though, because right now it looks like there is almost no info related to these things on cannabis.