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Little white bugs.

I have some little bity tiny white bugs in my terrarium, and they are eating flytrap bulbs and killing them. They are a little bit bigger than a pinhead. I don't know what they are but I want to know how to kill them. My venus' flytrap poplution has been cut by about 70% in the last few days, because of them. The only thing that is left most times is about 8 perfect venus flytrap cuttings missing a rhizome. I need help FAST! Anyone have sugestions on how to murder the murderers?
 
This would be what I would do until the culprit can be photographed and identified properly.

Systematically take one VFT after the next and remove it from the medium. Set the plant aside and toss the medium into a plastic bag. Get in your shower with your plants and get a good stream of water going.  At this point, I wouldn't worry whether you have city water or well water.  Get that good stream going and unfortunately you will want to blast the plants. Pay particular attention to the underside of the leaves as well as the traps. You want to knock off any little white bugs with the water. Now rinse all of your VFTs with distilled water. Set your plants aside in the corner of the shower. Take your terrarium and haul it outside and hose it down. I'd use a mild dilution of bleach water and then I'd hose it down again. Leave it sit. Do the same to your pots.

If you think this is a mite of some sort, you might want to consider using horticultural oils. I'm thinking horticultural oil products applied properly and timely might be worth a try. Disclaimer, I have never used dormant horticultural oils or Neem oils on a CP. If you have a white fly larvae in the soil, the horticultural oils should also work.

aprilh and I are talking on the phone and she recommened Diatomaceaous Earth. Restaurant grade if possible. You can pick this up from pet stores that have salt water fish as well as from restaurant supply stores. The restaurant grade is coarser. She also feels the plants should be rinsed off and the existing medium tossed out.

There are some bright yellow white fly traps out there that you could hang. The white flies are attracted to it and they stick to it and die. But, you may not have white flies.

Diazanon soil would certainly rid you of whatever you've got but I don't care for chemicals and neither does she.

If you need to reuse your soil, nuke it on high in yoru microwave and let it cool down to room temperature. Not much more we can come up with so hopefully others will respond to your post.

Best wishes
 
Yup, that's them. When I got back from school today, I looked at my flytraps and saw only one venus flytrap that was still alive. EVIL APHIDS!!! I'll get some ladybugs to take care of any survivors after I nuke the media. As you might have figured out, I am now accepting vft donations of any kind with a full heart. Plants, cuttings, seeds, or bulbs. I will pay shipping. No obligation of course. PM me if want to help me replenish my stock. Thanks!
 
Aphids! Ugh. You poor thing.
 
Just spray orthene on the plants and soil surface. That will get the aphids fast.
 
Aphids wont effect the rhizomes, or the media..
they only live up on green stalks and they "suck sap"..

using harsh pesticides is probably more harmfull than good.
it can also harm seedlings..
if its really aphids just soak the plants UNDER water for 24 hours..
if some aphids float to the top, skim them off and dispose in any manner that pleases you..
if the rhizomes are being eaten and disappearing, thats not aphids..
 
I don't like using chemicals on carnivorous plants and I don't have any orthene anyway, so I will stick to drowning them. Apparently they are not aphids if aphids only suck sap. The rhizomes and bulbs dissapeared without a trace. They look like bugs in the picture that lauderdale gave a link to, but they are tiny. I forgot to mention that they crawl around under the peat and I see them surface quite often. I'll give the results of project "drown evil bugs to save last venus flytap" tomorrow after they are dead.
 
Orthene is biodegradable.  BobZ is right and it would work very well for both aphids and mites. No fuss no mess and your stress level will reduce significantly.  Just because there are those who prefer to avoid chemicals doesn't mean there is no place for them.  Merit might be more readily available by you and you might want to try that in lieu of orthene. Maybe your neighbors have a little they might be willing to share with you.  Anyway, if you use orthene or Merit... I don't believe you would need to worry about nuking the medium. Both should take care of the aphids as well as the nymphs and it should last long enough to kill any eggs in the soil.  

"To eliminate the aphids you will need to, at least partly, understand their life cycle. In the early spring the first aphids appear from eggs laid in your soil the previous fall and these climb up your plants and start to produce live nymphs. Since the total life cycle of an aphid is about 25 days you can see they don't have time to do much more than eat and produce. People have sprayed them off their plants and found more the next day and decided that the ones they sprayed off had returned, not true. Those are the nymphs maturing and taking the place of the ones washed off and since you can easily have 5 generations on your plants with many more coming you can begin to see the problem."

It was my understanding aphids will feed on roots. Some aphids also bore through stems.
http://www.hort.wisc.edu/masterg....ids.htm  

Interesting tidbit for anyone who has ants out and about who ends up with an infestation of aphids this coming summer on their outside plants-

"Ants will protect aphids from predators, move them from plant to plant when necessary and even protect them in the ants’ nest in many cases over winter. This mutualism has been observed since ancient times and is well-documented by many research scientists. In addition, ants will feed on plant nectars produced at nectaries in flowers and interfloral nectaries."

John Warner, PhD qualified entomologist
University of Florida
Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, Ant Lab

I saw a special on ants and aphids once on tv and I was spellbound.  Didn't hurt that the photography was so wonderfully entrancing either.
 
  • #10
Hay, Hellz here,
i would use that under water method, but i would also add some neem oil in, so that way, if the aphids try and swim on the water, the neem oil would kill them ^^
Hellz
 
  • #11
My problem has been solved. No sign of the bugs. I found some orthene, and i'm not afraid to use it now that I know that it is biodegratable and won't hurt my plants, so I sprayed my terrarium. My ladybug idea didn't work because most met death in my N. ventrata. Thanks for the help everybody!
 
  • #12
Are they a white powdery looking bug? If so, could be mealy bugs. Do a google search on mealy bugs and see if thats the culprit.
 
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