mysterious holes forming in leaves. possible ghost bug.

hello people. so I have had two occasions, one on one plant, one on the other. Little tiny holes appearing on a leaf or two. Now ordinarily I would immediately think of spider mites or something like that but other than these holes, which are relegated to literally one or two adjoining leaves, there are NO signs of pests. I saw a gnat flying around the growbox so I literally went nuts and left gnat traps out for like 4 days and when I examined them.. nothing. No webs to speak of either, and no creepy crawly larvae in the soil that I can find. I DO have little white specs that like to appear of leaves but it could be dust or something, the specs definitely don't have any visible movement like mites, and its not a lot, like a white power mold outbreak would look like. I read somewhere that it could just be water from foliar spray that sat there and didn't evaporate and burned through the leaf.. idk. What does this look like to you guys? BTW I cleaned off the leaf in question with a paper towel last night and woke up to the situation being slightly worse. Any input appreciated.

i was getting this when my coco had a loooooooottttaaa fruit flies\larvae in it.

Ducky112 said:

i was getting this when my coco had a loooooooottttaaa fruit flies\larvae in it.

Click to expand...

tell me more... could you actually see the larvae in the soil?? did you see fruit flies flying around? I haven't seen any fruit flies but I have seen gnats, but literally like 1 every 3 days or so and I do my best to annihilate it on sight. I put down yellow sticky traps and didn't catch any, they're not proliferating I don't think, but the fact that this is similar to your fruit fly/larvae situation it alarms me. Would it be the larvae at the roots that do damage to the leaves like that, or the flies themselves?? And most importantly, what did you do? were you able to fix it?

SON OF A BITCH! I got down in there and saw a few little creepy crawlies in the soil. I am so, so bummed. Now I need to figure out what they are and how to get rid of them. pic 1 is something out of my worst nightmare, root aphids. ewww. Pic two are springtails, which are supposed to be harmless. What I saw in my soil honestly looks more like number two, looking like clear little mitey things, rather than larvae, but they are SO small its kind of hard to tell. They definitely aren't colored like that pic of root aphids.

Okay so here's the deal. I've got bugs in my soil. Little clear, crawly bugs that look like mites, but clear. I have tiny holes in a few leaves. I have had gnat sightings. Please someone tell me how to knock these bastards out of my soil. Ive got safer spray but this is a soil thing. Diluted hydrogen peroxide rinse on my next watering? If I ever needed you guys I need you now.

CALM DOWN CALM DOWN! LOLYou can water your soil with Neem oil, also mild dish soap, or put safer in your watering. Want to catch flyers...? or find out you have em? put a little soda pop in a cup...some will be in the cup the next day. I put fly strips up, but they seem to like whatever I leave in my cup in the grow lol

^^^ above nailed it, ...neem oil is organic to my blog: https://www.rollitup.org/Journal/Entry/neem-oil.27514/
but I'd be more concerned with the forthcoming nute burn ...see the pale leaf tips, water well and reduce nutes by 50% for the next 2-3 weeks