Wonderland Grow

[AliceGG]

I checked the link,and you're right....maybe yours are a different type of soil gnat?
Because the ones I get are little tiny things,like 1mm long or even a little less.

Or maybe the ones I've had are just sickly little buggers...

By the way, it's quite difficult to decide how much they differ in size, because they fly and run so fast. Probably the one I took the picture of, was one of the larger ones.

edit* not saying if you have gnats or not, but if you did

I used sand to help get rid of my fungus gnats. Makes it a pain for the adults to get down to the soil. 2" worth. I did that, maybe a bit thicker, in 2 huge 32 gallon bins. That was some work. But worth it. Then I killed the fungus gnat larvae with a water / hydrogen peroxide solution. Watered twice I think with that.

Didn't have much of a problem after that. There were a few but...I had 200 litres of soil going. Could have been a nightmare.

I picked my sand up at Home Depot. kids playground sand or something. Also put a fan blowing over the sand. Adults hate that too.

And there was zero issue watering. made it easy. Filters right down. Slow water, you can see where it goes, it made my watering easier. But again...huge bins.

Thanks for the tip, Urban.
If I can't get sticky traps, I'll try to get rid of them with sand.

 

[Pbass]

Interweb's chants help @AliceGG NO BUGS NO BUGS NO BUGS! Nice job catching the little effers I can't find the little brown one anywhere on the google, but the black one does look like a pot pest gnat variety. Your girls look great despite them...nice to have such awesome advice and support at your fingertips, eh? You got this... KILL THEM ALL! Cheer's mate!

 

[Pennywise]

Spray every 3 days until you're sure they're gone.

 

[AliceGG]

Interweb's chants help @AliceGG NO BUGS NO BUGS NO BUGS! Nice job catching the little effers I can't find the little brown one anywhere on the google, but the black one does look like a pot pest gnat variety. Your girls look great despite them...nice to have such awesome advice and support at your fingertips, eh? You got this... KILL THEM ALL! Cheer's mate!

Yes, I really cannot describe how thankful I am for having you guys helping out with these things.

Both of the insects are still under their glasses. I'm starting to like the brown one. Seems like he was alone with all the flying guys, now that he's separated, he is so chill, hanging from the top of his glass all day long.
The one I took the photo of with the loupe-like thing was not the one I trapped under the glass. I just smashed like 6 of them with my hand yesterday, and chose one for a photo.
But now I've just put a burning cigarette under the glass of the trapped one, so I think he died a peaceful death in the smoke. I did this to have an intact body to take a picture, since it would be good to clarify if they really are gnats. I'll take a few photos once I'm sure its not moving anymore.

Spray every 3 days until you're sure they're gone.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get isopropil alcohol today. But I bought all the sticky traps I could, the shop I went to only had 6, so that's what I have to work with now.
But before doing anything, this thing came to my mind. I read that larvaes can't survive in dry soil. Both of my pots are bone dry at the moment. I know it sounds strange, because it was only 3 and a half days ago, when I slowly flushed the AK, so her entire 15l pot was saturated with water, but somehow it really is as dry as the Sahara now. Probably the very lowest layer of the soil has some moisture, but it feels very light.
The plants aren't droopy yet (well, the light went on about an hour ago, Jack always needs a lot of time to straighten up after being in the dark), so what should I do? I have a big 40cm standing fan rotating around, and another smaller clippable fan blowing air under Jack's canopy. RH is 41%, moderately low, the environment is windy and dry. This is not what gnats like. Should I wait another 2 or 3 days before watering? It could eliminate most of the gnats, but it might severely impact my yield as well. As far as I know, I shouldn't leave them dry out in flowering.
Option B is watering them tonight and putting the sticky traps on the surface of the soil. Six of these traps, for sure, will not be enough to cover all the surface of the two pots.
I also thought about using aluminium foil. I could entirely cover the surface of the soil, and watering would also be seemingly easy, I can remove the foil, water and put it back. I don't know though, if aluminium above my soil (not actually in it) can hurt the roots, and therefore my plant?

On a sidenote. I do have this "activator/conditioner" from BioBizz called ActiVera. It is said to improve the immune system of plants. Until I get alcohol I might spray the leaves with this product, I guess it cannot make things worse.

 

[Pennywise]

Do you have peroxide around the house?

 

[AliceGG]

No.
I'm quite young (25), and live alone for only about one and a half year now. I do not have a lot of things yet, that other people often have around.

 

[Pennywise]

Ok we need to get the plants sprayed, the insects will likely spread fast.

 

[AliceGG]

Ok Penny, I will do it tonight. It's already evening here, so I can't get anything else until tomorrow afternoon, but I'll spray them with this ActiVera for now.
What do you think about the aluminium foil? Should I lay it on the surface of the soil?

edit: or I have pharmatist benzin, if that's a good solution.

 

[Pennywise]

It sure about the benzin but spray good with the Activera. Just keep a fan pointed at the bottom of the plant. I'd hold off on the tin foil for now.

 

[Carcass]

What do you think about the aluminium foil

I'm going to say you shouldn't...with the last plants in my box,I cut some circles out of the reflective material I use on the walls.and laid it on top of the soil,to keep evaporation down,and try and lower the rh in there-it did help a little with that,but it also gave the soil gnats a nice warm,damp place to hang out,mate, lay their eggs, and whatever else they do.
It actually made things much worse,fungus gnat-wise-one of those things that sounded like a good idea at the time,but,obviously,wasn't.

 

[Carcass]

Adult gnats are a big nuisance,but they actually don't harm your plants at all-they don't eat
anything,they only drink -water or flower nectar.
The larvae are what can do damage,if you end up with a major infestation...they eat roots.

The reason you need to eliminate as many adult gnats as possible,is that fewer adults means fewer eggs being deposited in the soil.

Watering your plants with a 25% peroxide solution will kill them (the gnats,not the plants)...but it will also kill the beneficial microbes living in the soil,so there's the problem with it if you're growing in living soil....

You can spray the peroxide on the top layer of soil-with enough to penetrate 1 inch down or so,without doing significant damage to the soil,and by the time you do your regular watering,the peroxide will have degraded,so it won't hurt the microbes as it washes down through the soil.

Letting the soil dry out seems to help a little,but as soon as you water again,they come right back.

The Mosquito dunks I mentioned earlier will eliminate the gnats,but it takes about 4 waterings to do it,probably about two weeks.

 

[AliceGG]

So should I spray the leaves and also the top layer of the soil with peroxide? I think I can get a bottle tomorrow. I really have to do something, these bugs are annoying.
Guess what happened. I went into the room, and inspected the plants for a long 8-10 minutes. I was quite happy because I didn't see a single gnat in those 10 minutes. I was like, whatever happened, it's a good sign. Then after that, I went to clean the cat litter box. It's a closed box with a swing door, pretty useful to trap the bad smells inside. The box is pretty large, so I only clean it in every 2-3 days. Now here's the gross part. I took off the top of the box to clean it, and yes, you see it coming. It was FULL of them. I mean there were like, I don't know, 40-50 of them running around and flying above the cat litter. Obviously, I dumped the whole content, but it was really something I did not want to see. Now the box is soaking in a toalet cleaner to sterilize it, but I wonder how many eggs were laid in the litter.
Well, at least there are not too much of them around my plants now... I'm a bit worried though, I definitely have to check the litter every day for a while from now.
Btw, is cat- or any kind of shit a thing that gnats go for? Because if not, then I misidentified them for sure.

 

[Pennywise]

Peroxide is safe on plants and it will kill larvae in your soil.

 

[Carcass]

Soil gnats are attracted to moisture,so they might be after the pee,not the poop (although fresh poop does contain a lot of moisture)..(If there were a turd emoji,I'd of inserted it here)

I have a cat box out in my garage (cat sleeps out there at night) and there are always gnats buzzing around
in and outside the box-I don't worry much about them,because they seem to just hang out in the window in the garage.
When I clean out the cat box,I use the dustbuster to vacuum the gnats out of the window,and the process starts over...

 

[AliceGG]

Above you mentioned 25% peroxide. Now, as I'm browsing the internet, I can see that it's only 3-6% solutions that I can buy. Maybe different rules here in the EU than in the US? Where do you get the 25% one?

 

[Pennywise]

I just use the 3% it’s all I can get also

 

[Carcass]

Mix the 3% kind with 3 times the amount of water -3 cups water to1 cup peroxide
Higher concentrations of peroxide can get dangerous (corrosive) so the store-bought stuff is limited to 3% here

 

[AliceGG]

Oh, fine.
So by 25% you mean the solution should have 25% of the peroxide (the 3% one) and the other 75% is water.

Thanks both of you I'll get a bottle of it tomorrow.

 

[AliceGG]

That's my usual luck these days: I went to the pharmacy to get hidrogen peroxide. They only had one last bottle, 1dl (3%), so I don't have a lot to work with. But I guess this 1dl plus 3dl of ionised water will be plenty for a few sprays.
I realized that my trash bin, which wasn't cleaned for quite a while now, was their main nursery. I eliminated it (dumped out the whole bin), and I also got a lot of the gnats around the cat litter box. Now they are mostly everywhere around the house, a few of them here and there, but not too much around my plants. Since the pots are bone dry, this is not a surprise at the moment.
But I can't wait too much longer, I have to water the ladies sooner or later. It will increase the risk of populating the soil with larvaes. Now that I have sticky traps and peroxide, I'm a bit less worried. I plan to provide a good feeding tonight or tomorrow. Is it ok if I feed them with nutes, and after I'm done with watering, I spray peroxide on the top layer and put sticky traps on the surface of the soil?
I haven't seen a single one on the leaves though. They could be there, but I haven't seen them yet. When I see them they either fly around the plants, or most of the time, running on the floor of my tent. Should I still spray the leaves too?

 

[Pennywise]

Sounds like a good plan, I’d spray everything just to be safe.