Root Aphids

Ahhhh yes, such a wonderful subject to bring up!
I have root aphids, and i am pretty sure i have had them for a long long time. Good thing I didn't give anyone any clones.
I will not mention any names, but I am pretty sure i got them from a former member here.
Some of you may have also gotten clones and had this issue, so i figure i will try to pick brains here.

First off i am positive that these are root aphids due to an experience with them in hydro a few months back. I was an optimist and hoped i had killed all of them when i eliminated the super easy to attack hydro system. Just now decided to try youtube to see what exactly they look like, they are without a doubt root aphids. Seems like there was enough left behind to continue and breed and breed and well breed, while my dumb ass was too dense to notice.

My symptoms are: Weak plant bases, trying to fall over with just the weight of the plant, no real buds. Only some plants, maybe 30%, but rising.
Weak Branches
Odd and unexplainable nutrient defs on only select plants, even at different points in the same plant.
Ever increasing wilting while there was still fair amount of moisture in the soil.

Plan of action at this point:
Soil Drench all plants with 1 tsp/gallon of AzaSol (free sample from the show should get me through all the plants, i hope),
will added Clove Oil and Rosemary Oil.
Bomb with Pyrithrum
I will probably also put vaseline or sticky traps around the base of the stem before doing this to try to keep them from migrating to vegetation.

I will then wait 24-48 hrs and check on everything, try to determine how effective the treatment was.
If not effective enough i will move on to Mallet, but i want to hold off on that as long as i can.
If fairly effective at this point i will add some nematodes and hope for the best.

Any thoughts or previous experience is certainly welcome.

Unfortunately I can join you here on this thread. Just earlier this week I discovered that I also have the dreaded root-aphid. I also believe I got them just from a cutting passed to me. Never again! It was pre-98 Bubba, and I just couldn't pass it up- my mistake
I am going to attempt a soil drench with SNS 203 and will report my results back to the thread.
I will say however that although there are quite a lot of root aphids on the edge of my pots and some flyers even.....my plants look super healthy still. I saw root aphids while growing hydroponics in a large MMC warehouse and the plants lost their health VERY quickly once the aphids had hold.
Once I get one more harvest down I am going to kill everything, shut down shop for summer to clean and sanitize like CRAZY in my grow rooms, and then start fresh from seed.......
Just when I thought I had my perfect line-up going with Pandora's Box, OG Kush, and Bubba Kush

I had these fuckers for like 6 months before I realized what they were and I think it took me another 6 weeks to get rid of them because they were outta control. Almost gave up. Literally had bad dreams of them coming back. anyway I tried a bunch of different things in my quest to rid them. In my experience, Azamax does not work, go-gnats works for a couple of days, neem oil does nothing(as soil drench). Doctor doom spray seemed to work ok but they still came back. I boiled 3 cigarettes and strained out the tobacco added garlic and cayenne and it seemed to work better than most of the stuff at the hydro store. Ok so what did work best was mighty wash as a drench, followed by safers soap(to wash the fungus off of the roots that these fuckers create. and safers with pyrethrins as an extra precaution. let me try and find the link to the thread that helped me rid them. the nematodes also seem to help, and getting rid of any particularly infected plants.

https://www.rollitup.org/bugs/509531-root-aphids-fungus-gnats-how.html there ya go. good luck!

fattiemcnuggins said:

https://www.rollitup.org/bugs/509531-root-aphids-fungus-gnats-how.html there ya go. good luck!

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Thanks! I am a little unclear as to how he used mighty wash as a drench. Just straight up? Or diluted?

Thought I had these, but I got rid of them way too easily (some neem oil in the rez, Organicide sprayed on the roots, and extra Heisenberg tea). This thread from ICMag has the most info that I could find. The consensus seems to be that if they have taken hold, use Merrit 75 or any generic version with 75% imidacloprid, but no later than 2 weeks into flower.

I used it straight up. It is like 98% water, and mighty wash is expensive. But whatever is in that other 2% it really does work.

I wouldn't use that imidacloprid unless I was still in veg and planning to veg for awhile longer. The stuff is no joke. I also shut my flower room down for a bit and threw out anything I thought might possibly have a root aphid egg hiding somewhere. Sanitized everything with strong bleach water. And I still had a few stragglers trying to infect my veg tent, so watch for that also. Take a shop vac and get it right down by your stem and bang the pot. They will try to crawl up the stem and theyll get sucked right up.

Thanks for all the responses guys.
The Mallet that is my back up plan is imidacloprid, and i hope to keep it as a back up plan.
I had never heard the Mighty Wash route, but i have a lot of soil to drench, we will say roughly 100 gallons of soil total. This obviously isn't going to take 100 gallons of bug killer mix, but i can see 25 or so pretty easy, but we will see. And if i have to use Mighty wash straight i could see it running into several hundred dollars.
Not really in any position to kill the flower room at this point, i have stopped adding to it and kept the next addition out till this is sorted, but with a single ventilation system for the 2 rooms, i am going to have to treat them as one.
Again thanks for all the responses, +rep to all!

This is interesting, i had read about the fungus that attaches itself to the aphid and feeds off of it, but this is the first i have heard of this.
I do not ness agree though as when these bugs first appeared i was using Dutch Master Zone a chloramine at the time, so it should have killed all bacteria, good bad and otherwise.

I couldn't find anyplace that carries the MET-52 around here but if I ever have them return it is my back up plan.

I am trying Nematodes, which is a beneficial type bug. You put it as a top dressing and these things grow and hunt down boring insects in your soil.www.biologicco.com is website where I got it. I also sprayed safer brand End all insect killer that has neem and pyerthrins in it. I have done a lot research into this and boy we have a mess. I am not sure that i have them, but took clones from a friend and he has them, At the least I will get rid of fugus gnats. Also soil from store could be the culprit. Gook Luck all...rw

clobbersaurus said:

Thought I had these, but I got rid of them way too easily (some neem oil in the rez, Organicide sprayed on the roots, and extra Heisenberg tea). This thread from ICMag has the most info that I could find. The consensus seems to be that if they have taken hold, use Merrit 75 or any generic version with 75% imidacloprid, but no later than 2 weeks into flower.

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More like 50 days before harvest. Read same thread. ..rw

TruenoAE86coupe said:

This is interesting, i had read about the fungus that attaches itself to the aphid and feeds off of it, but this is the first i have heard of this.
I do not ness agree though as when these bugs first appeared i was using Dutch Master Zone a chloramine at the time, so it should have killed all bacteria, good bad and otherwise.

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Indeed, it is only effective if absorbed systemically and then consumed by the aphid. Topical applications will not be effective, since the bacteria are housed within the insect.

I always forget sources. I won't troll up if you ask for them.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22229056

my neighbor had used the bayer tree and shrub and it didn't knock them out as well as when he used the nematodes. they work well.

fattiemcnuggins said:

my neighbor had used the bayer tree and shrub and it didn't knock them out as well as when he used the nematodes. they work well.

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Thanks for sharing that. I just put them in two days ago. Only thing I notice so far is the plant a little better every time I look, could be wishful thinking.lol..rw

I let my soil dry out 2 x to the point they almost wilt then add nematodes and havent seen them again and its going on a year now but this was in veg also

Hotsause said:

I let my soil dry out 2 x then add nematodes and havent seen them again and its going on a year now

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Another day with the nematodes, no sign of bugs...rw

I believe that my infestation was bigger than nematodes could handle. My concern was i would add them, they would not be successful and i would have to run bug killer and kill all of the nematodes too making for a huge mess of death.
Last night i took all of my sample azasol, and azamax and hit everything in the rooms with them. I filled all the trays so that the pots are sitting in azamax/sol mixture to kill anyone trying to leave.
Initial results look very positive, using the apparently heavily infested Pre-98 bubba kush as a reference. Some bugs were found on the outside of the smart pot that she is continually spitting roots out the bottom of, a fairly large infestation for being the outside of the pot, probably roughly 50 of the little fucks.
At first they were swimming and heading for dry ground, this did not last long, within a minute or two they stopped moving and trying to swim.
So here is hoping this works, growth on most plants, including the pre-98 bubba is huge still. Noticable growth everyday, so my veg room is getting over run quickly.

Do you guys think i would be worth it to run some imidacloprid in my veg room to insure that things are dead, or should i just get some nematodes and sticky traps?