Stop eating my plant!

[Welltreated]

I've just changed to my 12/12 cycle, less than a week ago. I've noticed that soemthing seems have gotten into my indoor grow and is munching on my leaves. There is also some wetness, but I'm not sure if this is related. I was thinking of investing in some diatomaceous earth, would this be sufficient to fix the problem?

I recognise there also appears to be some early signs of nutrient burn, I'm going to flush my plant tomorrow (unfortunately I don't have time today) but I don't think this is related.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

PS sorry if this isn't the right place, I did have a look around first.

 

[Emilya Green]

yes, you have some sort of crawly bug in there, one who eats a lot! check the lower side of your leaves for the little critter, and then get a good natural pesticide like Azamax. Stop this thing at the eating stage and you probably won't have to add anything to the soil to stop them. A trick I use in my soils is to break up a mosquito dunk into each batch of soil that I make... kills the root eating larvae stage before they can get started... totally naturally and in a way that can't uptake into the plant.

 

[Rifleman]

Emilya has you covered about the pest. Moisture on the leaves could just be natural asperation of the plant which hasn't evaporated yet. Do you have plenty of air movement?

 

[flexy123]

It could be white flies or some other type of aphids. Rather common. (I grow my stuff together with Chillies, and the Chillies attract them like crazy ;( )

There are a few things you can do:

Azamax, as Emilya suggested. It's actually a natural insecticide "inhibitor" that contains the main ingredient of what's in Neem oil, "Azadirachtin". There might be other brand names who contain this, or you can actually use Neem oil too.

But Azadirachtin doesn't directly kill them, it inhibits growth, prevents them.

So what you can do is also to look into "Insecticidal soap" and give the plants a good spraying/washing with it, it kills on contact and is also entirely natural and doesn't harm the plants. Perfect: If you make a mix with insecticidal soap AND Azamax (or Neem oil), this also helps because it forms an emulsion so the Neem oil (or Azamax) works better, and you get the benefits of Azamax and the Soap.

Just don't spray during flowering, some say it's not good because it can make buds taste bad.

As a prevention and also for monitoring (and kill some of the critters, but not as effectively) you can also hang yellow sticky tape between your plants. They jump on the yellow cards and then get stuck.

Edit: The "wetness" could be honeydew which the aphids excrete, it will then also at some point turn into black mold. Yeah those things are nasty.

Edit 2: CORRECTION. I thought those are white spots/bugs...but it ain't. It seems to be water, image is a little weird. So or so, neem oil and insecticidal soap can't hurt if you have bugs.

 

[Welltreated]

Thanks for the help guys, I've taken the advice and there doesn't seem to have been any more eating. Really appreciate your responses.