unknown critters???

OK someone ....help please ...

I have been growing for decades ...but I have never saw this...

heres my grow..

hydro.ebb and flood
medium is hydroton
1000 watt hps on 6 foot light movers

I dont have gnats i dont have mites i dont have thrips ....

I dont see any aphids....

I have these weird little white bastards that float the surface of the ater in my ebb and flood tables and seem to be in my pots as well..

I use bt dunks in my res and also in my flood tables..no gnats

Iuse neem oil to prevent spider mites/ fungus.. etc. about once every 10 days or so..

these little white things are not even slowed down.

there are more each day...

my plants look great but there are thousands of these little bugs in each flood table.

when the table floods they are on the surface of the water popping around.... when i try to catch one it pop away they seem to float ..and they pop away fast .

i dont see any in my res ... but they may swim to the bottom i dont know ... they are for sure crawling around in the rocks ...

what the fuck are these and how do i get rid of them...

p.s.

they look like little white specks....on top of the water not round but 2x as long as they are thick and appear to have 2 antenna that you can just barely see with the naked eye and my microscope is broken...so thats the best i can do describing them..they are tiny

so has anyone had these little fuckers??????

dr.skunkfunk said:

p.s.

they look like little white specks....on top of the water not round but 2x as long as they are thick and appear to have 2 antenna that you can just barely see with the naked eye and my microscope is broken...so thats the best i can do describing them..they are tiny

so has anyone had these little fuckers??????

Click to expand...

i would bet a shiny nickel you have spring tails. pic they are actually beneficial. they eat dead organic matter, keeping things clean. they reproduce like you wouldn't believe!

thats them !!!!!!!

so this is a good thing????

I have never seen anything like this before...

sooooo leave em alone ?

If it's not those, they are fungus gnat larvae. I've had them for awhile(came with the shitty MG soil), and everytime I water, they are floating at the surface, jumping around. They look like those pics, but they are so tiny that I can't make out any detail. Mine are definitely fungus gnats though, so your problem is probably spring tails if you haven't seen any gnats around. Also, the are larva for only 5 days, so I think you would've seen some flying around by now.

Just trying to cover all bases.

uggggg i hope its not fungus gnats .....

if it is I am fucked cause there are thousands of them in 2 of my bloom tables ... after harvest I am hitting these tables with something like extra strong h2o2 or something...

i took a couple of plants out of their pots and looked close at the roots and not one maggot .. if it were gnats i think maggots would be on the roots ..... wouldnt they ?????

god if its gnats then they drink Bt dunks like budwizer and neem is there favorite food....

ugh .......what next.

wouldnt there be a swarm of gnats with thousands of larva popping around???
wouldnt there be a bunch of maggots in my roots ?

i am going to get a microscope 2morrow .. does anyone have any pictures of the larva stage of the fungus gnat ...

i thought they just went from egg to maggot to fly which lays more then eggs...

thanks everyone for the info...

From the sounds of it, it's not fungus gnats. If there are that many larva swimming around, you'd surely see a bunch of adults flying around. Also, if you didn't see any in the outer roots, you might be okay. But, they're so tiny that they're hard to see unless you are watering. Hmmm....see any adults around?

Oh yeah, the only way I've been able to control them, is by sprinkling sand on top of the soil. It worked really well, and eliminated 95% of them. I read that the sharp edges of the sand grains cut into the larvae and kill them, plus, the dry sand keep the adults from wanting to lay eggs there. I'm switching to FF soil ASAP, and i hope that gets rid of the little bastards.LOL At any rate, I'll be alot better off than the MG soil I'm using.

I am in hydroton so sands out for me . thanks though

spring tails can be killed using h2o2. it will kill all other beneficials too so you'll have to re-apply them.

Springtails 'hop' on the top of your water. If they look like they are bouncing all around, like little popcorns then they are springtails. They will do no harm.