Mother F***ing Fungus Gnats

So it's about week 2 for my budding girls and various stages for my veg and I am noticing these mother f***ers flying around my box. Please any suggestions would be wonderful, so far I have put up a couple sticky fly traps but I want to get midevil on these s**t d**ks!!!!!!!

If you want some advice, explain your setup in detail and i'll do my best. I have had plenty of fungus gnats and a few root aphid infestations in the past. The fungus gnats seem nearly harmless, but in the long run they bring larger problems. You also want to try to fix the problem that is inviting the pest... in media like coco though... i am convinced you can be growing flawlessly and still have a small fungus gnat issue.

You'll want to make sure you do not have root aphids as well. The flying root aphids look almost identical to fungus gnats. The flying root aphids are much quicker and more coordinated than the fungus gnat. Try to smash a couple gnats... if you cannot catch one of them as they are too quick then you probably have root aphids. I credit that "smash test" idea to the RIU user "West Coast Cultivation". Obviously, you would want to confirm that by finding root aphid nymphs.

With a little work you can get rid of fungus gnats and then start up preventative measures to keep them from coming back. The way to go about it totally depends on your setup. Yellow traps are definitely part of it... to save cash, instead of paying out the money for 5 traps over and over... buy a stack of yellow construction paper and a tub of "tanglefoot". You can make your own traps for pennies rather than over $1US a piece, like the grid pre made traps. The homemade ones are just as effective. With a putty knife, a stack of paper, and tub of tangle foot, you can make 500 traps for under 30 bucks. Which would get you about 20 traps at a hydro store.

put a peice of potato on top of the soil for about 4 ,5 days. that will draw the larve to it and cover the top of the soil with demacious earth and botom water if you are in soil. the bugs come out the top and through the de and it chops them up like a blender.

Hot shot strips (or make them) for hydro or soil. [h=3]Mosquito Dunks for hydro, Diatomaceous Earth for soil.[/h]

Hank,

Thank you for the home made fly strip idea! That shall be implemented today! As far as the set up, its an 8' x 4' x 5' box, split into two 4' x 4' x 5' chambers. The veg side until about 30 minutes ago had a layer of poly on all sides, now the whole inside of both sides is flat latex, waterproof, white paint. For soil i am using a mixture of 50/50 Roots Organic greenfeilds/Fox Farm Happy Frog. Nutes are Technifloras BC Grow, Boost, and Bloom, i use Aza Max because my buddy brought me some clones of Sour OG, complete with spider mites, and every couple days i foliar spray with Clonex. The gnat was relatively easy to capture, and fuck a smash test buddy, i trapped him in a cleaned out Flarp jar with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol to catch his ass. Here is what he looks like up close...



Papa,

when you say a piece do you mean to say cut it in half stick it up there, or am i slicing wet potato chips to put in my bags??

Supchuka/Papa

will do, diatomaceous earth, i am assuming it would be easier to just order the shit online yes??

No offense was meant by the insult to the smash test Hank, just bustin ya balls Yhakno!!

Put out small cups of coffee, and apple cider vinegar with a couple drops of dish soap! These two things absolutely work, they won't get em all, but they will get a bunch!!!

dry out your medium more. you can add an inch of sand to top of soil, also.

gnatrol
nematode designed to specifically kill larvae and eggs

i used to use gnat off. its a great product. its organic and a simple drench will kill the buggers but honestly since i started using heisenbergs tea i havnt had a gnat outbreak. when the larvae eat the baccillus bacteria it kills them. no more gnats

frankenbong said:

No offense was meant by the insult to the smash test Hank, just bustin ya balls Yhakno!!

Click to expand...

Haha. None taken.

Potato slices about 1/8-1/4 in thick will help with larvae numbers. Just sit it on top of the soil. They will collect on the underside. Burying might be more effective, i'm not sure.

Water less often to keep them from being a future problem.

Diatemaceous (sp?) Earth can be had from Home Depot/Lowes in the pesticide section. Just make sure it stays dry. It is useless when wet from what i understand. That is why poster said to bottom water when using it.

Following the steps to IPM will never lead you wrong. Knowing the life cycle is crucial to getting rid of a pest that is both below and above the soil line. Knock back numbers of gnats and kill larvae before they have the chance to become gnats. The life cycle is short enough that if you control the larvae, you will be fungus gnat free in a week. Continue the larvae treatments even after you are no longer seeing gnats. For 5-6 days. Then you have eradicated.

I do traps, gnatrol wsp, and potato slices for a couple weeks and they are taken care of. I'm in coco. Im sure the other ways posted here work too.
If you use gnatrol wsp avoid the temptation to water more often to deliver the gnatrol more often. Just water as needed. Watering more will just make for root rot and more larvae food.

For future prevention. Along with letting soil dry out more... keep traps out for monitoring and control of adults. If you mix nutrients and keep a resevoir then throw in a mosquito dunk. Keep one in there at all times. Replace when it has broken down to nothing. Maybe once a month or so throw another potato slice in to check and see if you have larvae coming back. If you do not keep a res of mixed nutes... you could crumble bits of mosquito dunks and spread them on your soil. It would probably help with prevention. You would want to use sparingly to make it cost effective.

Did you say you use grow bags? Nice. I love those... Especially with a root aphid paranoia in the back of my head at all times. You can just pull the side of the bag down a little and get a look at the root ball, no matter the size of the plant. No guessing what your roots look like.

No guessing at all actually, I recently transplanted two 1 gal bags into 3 gal smartpots!! I must say I was impressed with myself the root mass was 89% of the dirt that came out. Thank you so much everyone for the advice I shall start implementing all or as much of this as i can!!

what are s**t D**ks ?

All honestly get a few sitckys , put them where the stem meets the soil. If you have a lot of pots then consider a soil drench, gnats lay eggs in the soil . Also cinnamon works as well, sprinkle cinnamon generously on top soil and watch them disappear .kiss-ass

This is the two OG Kush just 48 hrs after they went into the smartpots, they have already extended the canopy over parts of the pot!!

shit dicks are fags, shit on their dicks, yhakno

I have inceased my perlite to 30-35 %. The soil dries faster. The bastards like wet conditions. Mosquito Dunk chips in the water. I make sticky traps as stated. I've heard good things about Gnatrol.

u can get de at lowes or hd

Fungus gnat = women's tights.
Put women's tights over to tops of the pots. It is guaranteed to stop fungus gnats getting to the soil.
I don't know about the potato peelings? Rotting vegetables near my plants, no thanks I'll pass on that lol the fungus gnat larvae are just maggots really apart from they thrive on rotting vegetation and not meat. I would not throw a piece of meat on maggots if I was trying to get rid of them.
To very good natural pesticides you can use to get rid of gnats is ground cinnamon and chamomile tea (cold) BUT I HAVE ONLY USED ON HOUSE PLANTS AND NOT ON CANNABIS, I don't get fungus gnats, cause of the tights, so I do not know how these will affect cannabis. I would assume the tea should be ok, but I'm not guaranteeing it lol, maybe someone has used it on weed. I know it does not affect any of my house plants or outdoor plants in anyway, shape or form.