Mites.

[Coir]

I was just looking at some leaves under a 30X hand held scope and noticed some small, clear mites. They are about 1/2 the size of a spider mite. I have not seen this type of mite before and am not seeing damage like you would see with spider mites. They are very fast movers and seem to be on the top and bottom of the leaves. Are broad mites this size and so they move really fast?

Thanks.

 

[respect]

I was just looking at some leaves under a 30X hand held scope and noticed some small, clear mites. They are about 1/2 the size of a spider mite. I have not seen this type of mite before and am not seeing damage like you would see with spider mites. They are very fast movers and seem to be on the top and bottom of the leaves. Are broad mites this size and so they move really fast?

Thanks.

yes and sorry

 

[Natural]

I've heard the eggs are speckled..easy to spot.
not my pix..

 

[mayonnaise]

It sounds like broads but there are alot of insects in this world. look up some pics like natural posted and give it a good hard look before you start chopping anything. or hanging yourself!

 

[Coir]

Looking at more leaves. Definitely more on the tops of them than the bottoms. Some are amber and more round shaped and I saw a few carrying what looked like smaller milky, more oval shaped ones. Can't find a picture that looks exactly like these and also don't see any eggs although I only have a 30X scope to use. The adults are plenty large to see easily though.

 

[Natural]

I hear Broads are super tiny and you need 60x...but shit..certainly sound like their behavior, from what I've read. The old males carry young females to the tops to lay eggs. What's the damage?..supposedly small numbers of them injecting their saliva or whatever is devastating.
Good luck with everything. Do you have them in flower? I've heard people are having luck raising the temps around 120* and let the CO2 climb high...every 4 days to kill some populations, but these might be the hardest to completely eradicate. Hope they are something else.

 

[Coir]

Not really any damage yet. Just noticed a leaf that was not quite right and pulled it off the scope it when I found them. These were just switched to 12 hours about 3 days ago. I have some predatory mites coming but they won't be here until a week from tomorrow. Supposedly, Amblyseius cucumeris are working well against them on greenhouse peppers and are cheap. I guess we will see if they work or not!
Not a clue as to how I could have possibly got these unless they were in the coir I got. Someone gave me some samples to try out and I wonder if that is the source. Everything else in the room is brand new and none of the first round of plants had them. No one else has ever been here either so I know they didn't get brought in by someone else.

 

[mayonnaise]

Very interested to see how the predatory mites work. Please keep this thread posted up on your results. And natural is spot on, your description sounds like broads.

 

[Coir]

Yeah, the more I read, the more it seems that's what they are. Especially the part about males carrying the immature females around. Going with a high temp treatment right now. It's 115 degrees in there the last hour and the plants look ok still. After the lights go out, going to use a botanical oil spray to see if I can at least keep them slowed down until the predators get here.

 

[respect]

I had the worst case of broads ever. You dont need a 60x fwiw

 

[Coir]

How did you get rid of them?

 

[respect]

How did you get rid of them?

I tried fighting them unsuccessfully for months...finally I gave up and killed everything, bombed my rooms twice and then painted them. That was over a year ago and everything has been fine since.I run multiple rooms and they were everywhere. I no longer get clones from shops.

 

[YarraSparra]

After reading a few posts here on broadmites, I'm shit scared of getting them now. A danger of bringing in clones without first quarantining them.

Hope they're not actually broads dude!

YS

 

[Coir]

I tried fighting them unsuccessfully for months...finally I gave up and killed everything, bombed my rooms twice and then painted them. That was over a year ago and everything has been fine since.I run multiple rooms and they were everywhere. I no longer get clones from shops.

What did you bomb the rooms with?

 

[Slowitdown]

Coir, predatory mites will not help. I have tried various ones lady bugs are the best BUT they do not help when the mites are already taking shit over. This is in my opinion I don't know if anyone else has had success. I have successfully removed mites from multiple rooms. My process took over 3 weeks to completely eliminate and had to be done while plants were still in veg. Take off one of your big fan leaves from the top where you think the mites are. Put a lighter to the bottom of the fan leave as you are watching to see and as the fan leaf curls up from the fire you will see the bastards burn in hell. The reason I do this is to see how deep they have infiltrated my plants. Sometimes there are a shit ton more on one plant and none on the plant next to it.

 

[Slowitdown]

Also, the guy above who said to bomb the room he did it while there were no plants in the room I believe. You can NOT bomb plants that are in flower that is a no no

 

[Coir]

Coir, predatory mites will not help. I have tried various ones lady bugs are the best BUT they do not help when the mites are already taking shit over. This is in my opinion I don't know if anyone else has had success. I have successfully removed mites from multiple rooms. My process took over 3 weeks to completely eliminate and had to be done while plants were still in veg. Take off one of your big fan leaves from the top where you think the mites are. Put a lighter to the bottom of the fan leave as you are watching to see and as the fan leaf curls up from the fire you will see the bastards burn in hell. The reason I do this is to see how deep they have infiltrated my plants. Sometimes there are a shit ton more on one plant and none on the plant next to it.

I know not to do anything to plants in flower. How did you eliminate them in 3 weeks if I can ask. I am trying to get as much information as possible to deal with these things.

 

[Slowitdown]

Pm me ill help step by step through there

 

[Coir]

So out of desperation and not wanting to spray anything on the plants, I heated up the tent to 120 for an hour and the mites did not like it! I still can't find a single one alive right now but lots of dead ones. I'm sure there are still some that survived but I have made a huge dent in the population and will be releasing 56000 cucumeris on Thursday and then 25,000+ Andersoni next week. I have a new microscope arriving tomorrow that I can attach my camera to and am hoping to get some stills and video of the cucumeris at work.
I have not seen any issues with the plants from the heat treatment. If this works to get me through the next 7 weeks, I will be very happy. Definitely a major cleaning and sanitizing coming up after that. Once everything is cleaned out, the new plants going in will be on a weekly regimen of preventative care and more than likely predatory mites through the whole cycle. I have learned a lot this last week reading every possible bit of information I could get on the enemy and all of the ways it can be destroyed or dealt with. Thanks to the people here who have responded and offered great advice. I also learned that you can not be too careful and not keep up with constant monitoring under high magnification for these damn things. Having recently talked with people that have struggled with them for much longer than I have and the biggest reason being they did not know they even had them.

 

[Natural]

I'd be sprinkling predators right on the new tip growth as much as I could..might even heat things up again before the preds get there.
Good luck man..rooting for ya..death to the broads!