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Ping under attack, help

chibae

An orchid fancier with a CP problem
Hi all. Okay, the particular tank this ping was in is set up in my family room. It has been established for close to a year now with pings, sundews, orchids and during the winter a small nep (or 2).
Last night I noticed one of my pings had been attacked by something. It was the only plant in the tank to be attacked. Since the tank top is not totally sealed I assumed that the culprit was a camel cricket. So I set a sticky trap by the plant.
This morning the trap was empty, the ping even worse and still no other plants bothered.
I took the ping out of the tank but left the sticky trap in. Now, ten hours later the situation is unchanged, nothing caught on the trap, no other plants affected.
I unpotted the ping and examined the media and the plant carefully, with a lighted glass, for bugs but found none.
Any help would be appreciated. I had assumed insect damage, but could it be a form of ping eating bacteria or some other type of disease?

expman.pl
 
http://www.pinguicula.org/A_world_of_Pinguicula_2/Pages/diseases1.htm

Hole formation on leaf lamina :

The symptom is the formation of a round hole developped in the middle of the leaf lamina that expands to the rest of the leaf in a few days. This start at the spot where the leaves touch the growing mix and involves the total disappearance of leaf tissue.

The appearance of such holes can lead to the death of a whole leaf but rarely in the death of the whole plant.


http://www.pinguicula.org/A_world_of_Pinguicula_2/images/PESTS/Hole(LR).jpg
Hole formation process on a leaf of a Mexican Pinguicula

Photo : Eric Partrat

This is again indirectly caused by fungus : Botrytis cinerea or Trichoderma sp.. These two types of fungus are necrotrophic pathogens that normally live upon dead plant parts. Trichoderma species are rarely pathogenic to plants and even act as biological control agents by preventing Pythium. Laurent Legendre observed that the Botrytis extracted seems to be incapable of infecting healthy Pinguicula leaf.

The holes are in fact the result of a potassium/calcium deficit in the plant due to a poorness of the soil.

A change of soil will lead to a disappearance of the hole formation process in few weeks.
 
Thank you, I just found the site you quoted before checking back here.
 
would have said slug or snail but no visible slime trail. Check the plants in the location where that one was at night.
 
Yeah, it looked like a slug victim. But Eric is truly an expert and Warren digs up a lot of educational info. I would normally suggest taking basal leaf cuttings in totally fresj media. But I'm not sure if that would work.
 
Well right now the ping is out of the house, away from any cps, orchids or house plants. Plan is to remove it from the media, physan it and replant in a totally fresh and more open draining media in a clean pot.
at the same time a search and destroy mission will be carried out in the tank.
when, and if, it recovers I'll see decide what to do with it.
 
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