Hey all, I have found another solution to biological control of root aphids. Or maybe the same strain of bacteria but much cheaper, and an easier application in some ways.
Capulator(on this site) has put together a herd of bennies that I put a pinch of in a tea I brew, and then add to the res at about a 1/10 ratio, and water into my coco/perlite mix, and it is providing awesome control.
'Interested in real spores without the "fluff"' is the name of the thread. The link to purchase the product on ebay is on page 12. It is the foliar pack that colonizes and kills root aphids and fungus gnats. I use this product personally with great success. And it is cheap. And you can water it in. I watch them die in a couple of hours in a dish of runoff. It is a rewarding way to spend your time.
Now MET52 is cool, but it doesn't get watered in. It needs to be mixed in with the media upon transplant. I think it might colonize the entire media if used at a high enough application rate. But the dead root aphids, if in 90% or higher rh(like in the medium) will be all infested and project spores out to a certain radius, being like little biological booby traps. You can rinse out fuzzy colonized RAs when you check big enough runoff dishes. They are social, they congregate, especially around the walls of the container. So the new ones encounter the infested corpses.
Let's not forget that this is bacteria. 50 ppm of P starts discouraging bacterial growth from some info that Capulator referenced. Jalisco Kid was told by some expert that 60 ppm of P was the cutoff for the beginning of ill health for the bacteria. I run CNS-17 3-1-2 ratio for coco at about 1500 ppms right now, therefore my P is riding right at 89 ppm. I still have control. But with my high ppms, and flowering will be @ 2-2-3 ratio, P will be like 200ppms or more very soon. And that is before the hammerhead/
MOAB combo for the last two weeks of feeding where P will be even higher. This may, for example, discourage the effectiveness of MET52 in the medium. But people seem to be controlling effectively w/MET52 mixed into the medium throughout the flowering. In theory a chunk of medium w/MET52 could be reused after the flush in another container, and keep working. But I wonder if the high P at the end of flowering could screw things up for the MET52. Who knows.
Some of you have a lot riding on things. This product got me back on track in less than a week. And Capulator breaks this off to people from the farm for a smidgen above cost. So more bang for your buck I believe than MET52.