Root Aphids?

Hopefully not. Anyone seen this bug b4? Found them in my saucers. Plants are looking pretty healthy, I have only seen like 3 on the top of the soil with wings and they dont even fly they just run around crazy as hell. Growing in soil Roots Organic 35% RH and i water only like every 4-5 days 500ml.
Im worried because i started 12/12 like 4 days ago =[. Every saucer had atleast 1-5, I took everything out and sprayed my floors with bleach cleaned all my saucers let it all dry. I'm gonna try to get some pestacide but i hear these things are pretty much impossible to kill if it is Root aphids.

perhaps try a little emulsyfied neem in your nute mix...........did you know aspirin in youir nutes helps keep pests away....

So they are root aphids? this shit sucks

Gonna try azamax and some great white to keep roots growing. Both hydro shops in my town have never seen/heard of Root Aphids. I'm 1 week into flowering and debating if i should force them back into veg or just push on. Plants look very healthy green and are growing good still. Wish i had more seeds/clones cause i'm almost tempted to soak em with gas and light em on fire, thats how much i hate these bastards.

dunno mate...........so many different bugs around......

+1 root aphids for sure. can tell by the little things stickin out of their asses. and your discription. if you do nothing expect very light loose, buds that you will be only able to cook with. since you see flyers, they are established, you will start to see difficencies in about a week.

there are a plethra of threads to read through. neem, azamaz, and most other bug treatments dont work. do some google searches on how to get rid of them and you will see MET 52 is the only way. biotaniguard is similar, but has lower rated results.

you hav a few choices.
1) tear down, start over. either came in with the soil or clones. if you do this. bleach everything, throw out all soil and pots. clean all equipment.

2) get MET 52. if you can get it in the liquid (currently being tested) do a soak. if you get the granular. you will have to mix it into the soil as best you can. need to do asap, as the fungus takes 2 weeks to innoculate. while this is going on i would drench with either mighty wash or liquid pyrethums or add preditatory nemitodes if you cant get MW or evergreen aka pyganic (pytrethm). you will have to try to get the met 52 grains all around the root ball and poke holes every few inches and drop one grain in. then put about 2-3 tbs of grains on the top layer and mix in. the more the better.

3) take clones, throw out all soil. and clean. while clones are rooting, mix met 52 into your new soil mix. so that by the time the cones root, your soil should be innoculated and bug free. also might want to add spinosad and bti as roots are known for having thrips and or gnats.

i have switched to coco/perlite because i can sterilize the coco, and i have had nothing but bug problems from roots soil.
i had RAs last harvest and ended up pulling 5-6 oz off 5 small plants in 3-4 gal pots.
get yellow sticky traps will help capture flyers and know if you have flyers.

So i went out and got a microscope and the flyers are def Gnats. I dont want to throw all my plants out just yet as they look very well still, so i soaked them with water about 15gal for each 5gal pot. Waited about 10-15min staring at the pots to see if anything came out or up and nothing. I have only seen about maybe 10gnats. I dont know what was in my saucer in thoes pics. I even dug out a side of my pot(killed a few roots) and looked at the soil/roots with microscope and cant find thoes bugs anywhere. Going to treat with neem oil/gntrol. I'm just hoping i dont have both gnats and RA =X.

I have both gnats and root aphids right now, I feel for you. I'm going to try all these products, but there are a few more mentioned in another recent thread on RIU here, you can find it just by searching "root aphids" in the search bar. So far, I haven't tried any of these other miracle products because I have just heard about them for the first time, but GoGnats, Azamax, and Neem have kept them at bay, but not eradicated them by any means. Just because you have them doesn't mean you can't give all your plants all the TLC in the world to get them to finish with excellent quality buds. But it will always be hard, and always be a struggle, and I find it hard to believe that there is anyway to ever be free of them without throwing everything out, bleaching what you can't throw out, and starting over with fresh stock, preferably from seed to avoid embarrassment of it happening twice in a row.

Fucking awful little monsters. I hear h2o2 can help get rid of them, they need a particular bacteria to survive, so kill the bacteria; kill the aphid.

did you read my post????

i can tell you have RA by the first pic. i have had RA on my last two cycles. they come in from clones and medium. i am finally rid of them and i didnt loose my strains, i have nice healthy roots again. but it takes time and a lot of work. once you see flyers its time to clone and toss all soil. and i wouldnt wait if i were you being a week in. next week you wont be able to clone.

gnat flyers look exactly like RA flyers. those bugs in the pic are RA you will be wasting your time if you think you are dealing with gnats. belive me i was treating for gnats for a month before i realized i had RAs.

go read about RA life cycle. they reproduce by giving live birth to pregnant young. no males are needed, no eggs. if you are seeing flyers your roots are already destoryed. pull up a plant and look at the roots. do you have full white hairy roots? or brown thin dead roots? is there white waxy stuff on your soil ball? then you have RA.

you can also do the potato test. put half a potato on the top of your soil cut side down. look at it after 12 hours, if you have gnats you will see many white worm like larve with a black head. young aphids look like adults but white tranlucent in color.


either way gnats or RA your harvest will be comprimized, your buds will not finish, and you will be left with smoking hairs instead of calix.

there are a lot of threads on thc farmer you may want to read. one is very long and has alot of what doesnt work.

if you want to go chemy just use avid, merit 75 or bayer tree and shrub. but i wouldnt smoke flowers from treated plants.

I pulled up 3 of 8 plants and not 1 bug in the root area. Thats whats got me confused. Roots are white and healthy and hairy. I gave em alittle superthrive, great white and planted em back. The flyers i did see are not rounded they look more like gnat/mosquitos very long and skinny. I'll know in about 6-10 more days if it was aphids forsure. The plants i have all came from med shop and can be replaced im not losing any crazy genetics or anything if they do die. Its just weird cause if i seen them in the saucers i would assume they were in the roots which 3 outa 8 were clean. I dont want to have to pull all of them up, some of my plants are 3 feet tall.

Lights come on in 1 hour i have been watching them like a hawk will post pics.

So i checked all the bottoms/rootballs and no aphids in the soil. I seen about 3 more gnats runnin around in the soil checked a few of them under microscope and they are def not aphids they are gnats. Really long no spikes on their asses and multi colored black/white. Gonna push on with this grow and toss all my pots/soil at the end and go ebb n flow or get waterfarms. Day 5 of flowering looking solid atm.