White spider mites? Plz help me identify these bugs (pics enclosed)

[VancouverHigh]

I am having the same problem. I will write a lot, but have no permenant solution.

I have bugs that look like small white spider mite. They crawl around in the soil. I rarely see them on foliage. They like the rims of the pots. If pick up a plant, squeeze it a little, blow on the soil, and watch, I see up to a dozen little guys run up out of the soil and chase each other around.

I don't know where they come from, and I have had them for the last six months. They stunt the growth of the plants, and make the plants drink unevenly. ie, only half the room needs watering sometimes. What they dont do is eat the leaves. The bottom leaves wilt, but no holes or spots appear.

What have I tried? I have tried a lot, and have had some success, but no solution. I regularly spray foliage with Scotts Ecosense Insecticide and Neem Oil. This was working until these bugs showed up. I tried rose/garlic organic junk, that stuff is junk. I tried malathion based pesticides that almost worked, but were really hard on the plants. I tried alcohol/water mix, this didn't work. I tried drying out the plants until they wilted, this was pointless. I tried Raid house&garden, this didn't work. I tried feeding them something called SM-90, this stuff kind of worked, but didn't get rid of them.

Then I found something called STB. I think it stands for Spodoptera Toxic Bacillus. It came from "under the counter" and was in a small vial with an eye dropper. I put 3 or 4 drops in 1 litre of water and spray it on the plants. I think it works best if you feed the plants first, then spray this stuff. This is because the bacteria you are spraying will soak into the wet soil. The bug will eat this bacteria and they will DIE.

A couple of STB applications usually gets rid of the bugs, but they come back. I think they are living all over my house. I am currently trying to sanitize the entire house to get rid of these things.

My conclusion is STB (Spodoptera Toxic Bacillus) is a solution if you can find it. If you cant find it, look for SM-90. Mix the SM-90 into your food at around 2 mL to every Liter of water. Try feed this to your plants.

[BWC BayArea]

if ur having problems with soil borne pests, apply a soil drench.

[Racefan]

Originally Posted by AKStickyIcky

Its been a week now of spraying and these white predator mites still living in the soil. I beleive they where feeding on my thrip pests but, I got them under control from all the spraying. The plant looks healthy green I wana put into flowing stages but keep getting scared that predator mite get into my bud. now they are not going for any leaves. but you can see them cralling all over the soil and around the top of the planter. has anyone used predatory mites in flowering stages? are these good mites or bad mites? Should I get lady bugs?

Mites DO NOT live in soil! Period! They are sap suckers and require foiliage to survive. Predator mites require mites to eat on and survive and live on foiliage too. If you do not have mites then those are not predator mites. They won't stick around without a food source and will die off. I'm not sure what you have but it's not mite related in anyway. BWC said it right...if you have soil pests then make up a drench. I've dunked entire plants into neem oil solution to kill off gnats and white flies and no harm came from that action. Do you have anything hopping around or flying in your room?

[VancouverHigh]

Originally Posted by Racefan

Mites DO NOT live in soil! Period! They are sap suckers and require foiliage to survive. Predator mites require mites to eat on and survive and live on foiliage too. If you do not have mites then those are not predator mites. They won't stick around without a food source and will die off. I'm not sure what you have but it's not mite related in anyway. BWC said it right...if you have soil pests then make up a drench. I've dunked entire plants into neem oil solution to kill off gnats and white flies and no harm came from that action. Do you have anything hopping around or flying in your room?

Mine have 8 legs and look just like mites. They are in the soil. If they get really bad I see the occational one on a leaf, but by then there are dozen on the soil surface.

I have tried double feeding with SM90, this soaked all the soil, but they were not dipped into a drench. I think you have a good idea. How concentrated was your neem drench? I typically spray a concentration of around 10ml / litre.

The bigger problem is, these things keep coming back. I keep the house very clean and use bug bombs (DrDoom, Raid, ect) and bleach surfaces between goes. Nothing is working. I don't know what will kill these things! They are hardy little F'ers.

[BWC BayArea]

A drench is applied to soil in a similar to how u feed/water ur plants to similar to the ways u'd flush a plant (using an insecticide of some sort). A dip is a similar mixture used to dip entire plants (manually flipping them upside down and submerging the plant) to treat infections/infestations or to help prevent them.

[Strain Hunter]

That looks like a nightmare m8, sorry to see youve got an infestition of these wee feckers, just showing my support m8 good luck

[VancouverHigh]

Originally Posted by Racefan

if you have soil pests then make up a drench. I've dunked entire plants into neem oil solution to kill off gnats and white flies and no harm came from that action. Do you have anything hopping around or flying in your room?

I isolated a dozen young guys and tried the drench. I mixed my three part food, adjusted pH, added 30ml of Neem and 30ml of SM-90. This was with about 10l of water. I held the plant pot under water up to the lowest leaf, then waited until the bubbles stopped. Most of the leaves stayed dry. I guess I should mentions these were clones and are about 6 weeks old. Just topped. They are potted in small 4x4" pots... anyways...

IT DIDNT WORK

Three days later the little buggers were back crawling around. Only in the soil, not on the stems or leaves. To make it worse, drenching the soil has almost killed a couple of the plants. They haven't dried out yet, and it has been a week.

I WOULDNT RECOMMEND THE DRENCH

Any ideas? Anyone got rid of these things? Nothing I have tried works. There must be a magic pill...

[hippylee]

Hi VH,

I posted the original pics and started this thread. I have no idea what these things are. They look like spider mites, but they appear to live mostly in the soil (however, in my case, they were confined to the soil with "tanglefoot").

I came back to say that I believe (knock on wood) that I've finally got rid of them (I had to close down my grow room b/c of some security threats and a friend agreed to let me move my plants to his grow room as long as I promised not to infect his plants with the white bugs -- sure... no problem!). Here's what I did:

- I coated the inside of the top rim of every pot with Tanglefoot (nasty, sticky, gooey stuff that gets all over your hands whenever you pick up a pot, but it worked)

- I also put tanglefoot around the drain holes at the bottom of the pots (very important b/c it's a way for the little critters to escape)

- I put each plant in a loose plastic bag so the tanglefoot didn't get all over my buddy's grow-room floor and also to help stop any escapees from getting too far

- I put tanglefoot around the bottom of each stem and covered the bit of rockwool that was sticking up from the dirt with the stuff (so the critters can't crawl up the stems to the foliage)

- I bought a bottle of Ecosense liquid insecticide -- it doesn't change the pH of the solution the way the insecticidal soaps do -- I mixed a tablespoon of the Ecosense and a tablespoon of Neem oil (it has to be the cold-pressed stuff -- has some chemical that stops little critters from maturing) in a litre of water and I sprayed the soil with it (not the foliage) -- I sprayed around the inside of the pots holding the pot in such a way that there was a crack between the dirt and the inside of the pot so it would run down the inside of the pot. I gave all the pots a good spraying every few days when I'd get chance to go over to my buddy's place, but in between, he just misted the area without moving the pots or anything.

This worked! His plants didn't get the bugs. And it's been two months now since I moved the infested plants over there. The number of "moving white dots" as I started referring to them as, dropped drastically once I started the regular spraying. Those plants have since been harvested (about a month ago) -- I noticed a few "moving white dots" on two of the pots when I was cutting down the plants, but that was it. We threw the pots and dirt away immediately (put them outside in garbage bags as soon as we'd cut down the plants). Even if I had wanted to risk trying to salvage the pots, it's virtually impossible to clean off tanglefoot.

I have repeatedly and religiously checked the plants we have growing currently and none of them have "moving white dots" or spider mites or bugs of any kind. I really think we got 'em beat, finally.

Meanwhile... as I wrote in an earlier post, the reason I thought they were spider mites is because I was given some plants by a friend, and three days later I discovered they were infested with mites (my first experience with the nasty little critters!). I sprayed and washed them every few days and thought I'd got rid of them when suddenly these "moving white dots" appeared in the soil (in swarms, I might add! And right after I'd just hosed down all my plants for what I was hoping might be the last time -- I hadn't seen a spider mite in weeks at that point). The guy who gave me the infected plants shut down his grow room for the summer when I told him about the mites, moved all his plants outside, cleaned the place from top to bottom, set off a couple of those insecticide bombs a month apart, washed everything down with bleach, etc... Then he set his indoor grow up again last month, with everything all clean and disinfected, new "clean" clones from a different source.... and yesterday he called to tell me the mites are back. Sucks!

I have checked my plants religiously and so has my friend whose place they're at, and there is no sign of anything. So - you need a tub of Tanglefoot and a bottle of Ecosense insecticide (the stuff you dilute in water and either spray or water the plants with -- I might have put some in the water as a "soil drench" when I first got it, but if I did, it was only once because after all the sprays for spider mites, and the messed up soil pH that resulted, these plants weren't doing too well). BTW, the plants with the "moving white dots" gave an okay yield in the end - about an ounce per plant which I thought was pretty good considering the hell they went through!

Good luck!

Lee

[drdanks]

drop your temp to about 60, this will pretty much slow the reproduction to a halt, then neem them for a week or so, and yes spidermites can get to your soil, the live on raw sap, doesnt matter where they get it. zone treatment works well too. spinosad does the trick also. good luck.

[BWC BayArea]

Originally Posted by drdanks

and yes spider mites can get to your soil, the live on raw sap, doesnt matter where they get it.

U sure about that? Please provide ur source of info. I've never seen or read this anywhere. When I've seen mites (and I've seen mites), they are predominately on leaves and if on the stems they hang around internodes. Leaf surfaces are much tougher that the cambium layer (outer layer/or "skin" of the stem to my understanding) of the stem/stalk. This is why I assume the mites congregate, eat, sleep, and breed on leaves. I think the feed on the top and do everything else below. Mites like most bugs tend to work their way up not down.Like u stated they like "sap", not gonna find it in the roots and the bugs have to reach the xylem/phloem to get to it thru the stem (not sure if they're naturally equipped for that job) If u have ANY documentation, proof in the form of book titles or hyperlinks please provide it. Thanks.

[metalhearts]

ugh i think i have them too. i have 4 plants and 3 of them in a mg organic soil and the one in the different soil doenst have them or i havent seen any yet. so it might be the soil, the one in my good soil is the largest out of them all now.