Fungus gnats in deep water culture?

Lifted off the lid that sits on top of my hydroton in a net pot and noticed fungus gnats crawling around on top of and through the hydroton. Some look like little larvae. I thought that only happened with soil pots?!?! How the hell do I get rid of them?

K thx.......

I am a soil grower and ive had a few problems with gnats. Luckily even when you have massive amounts of them you will still see to your harvest, and the bud will probably be good. Only your harvest weight will be affected, and the plants will be more susceptible to rot, and disease.
I tryed drenching the soil with neem oil, and a drop of dishwashing soap.. it slowed them down but didnt get rid of them. I also brought my humidity down to 30% and watered from the bottom of the pots after the neem drench... and added sticky traps face down on the pots so if the gnats take to fly off they get stuck right away.
All this was until i receive a product i had ordered online called GNAT OFF,
you use 1ml/Liter of water... and after 2 or 3 applications the larvae will be gone. With soil, i realized when i lifted the pots a strong piss like smell, and a little puddle of water under them with loads of dead smelly gnat larvae... so you can actually see the little bastards dead....

The sticky traps will catch adults that way they dont lay any more eggs... (adults can lay up to 200 eggs..) so if you see 10 adults flying about imagine how many eggs.... OUCH...

but gnat off was effective, along with the sticky traps.. and the low humidity...
gnat off is basically a bacteria called bacillus thuringiensis and it is 100% organic... IT WILL STARVE THE LARVAE in the root ball, till they die and leave your pretty plants alone

PEace out
and good growing

Sickaluph said:

Lifted off the lid that sits on top of my hydroton in a net pot and noticed fungus gnats crawling around on top of and through the hydroton. Some look like little larvae. I thought that only happened with soil pots?!?! How the hell do I get rid of them?

Click to expand...

buy some mosquito dunks.
http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=KlR&resnum=0&q=mosquito+dunk&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=JnhWS6azF6PONK2_1dgE&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CCYQrQQwAg

They work great, just break off a small piece and put it in your res. safe bateria for plants, but kills the gnat larvae.

Ok, it's been awhile and I still have the problem.

There are some adult fungus gnats flying around so I know for sure there are gnats. The larvae of the gnats most likely dwell in the hydroton near the rootbase of the big rockwool cube. I also have bugs eating on my roots, but these bugs don't look like "larvae," they look like full grown beetle-type bugs that I think are root aphids. So I'm not 100% sure, but I think I have fungus gnats AND root aphids.

I have been using pieces of mosquito dunks as suggested, as well as something called Azamax in the actual resevoir water which is supposed to kill a lot of bugs. I have also been spraying a mix of Zone, Penetrator, and Azamax on the top of the hydroton so that it will sink down through the hydroton.

At times it seems like I have at least slowed them down, but they are definitely still there, and have damn near infested the root mass of one of my newer plants.

Can someone please help me figure this out? I am starting to get desperate.

I work in a growshop here, and im telling you man you dont have much choice with gnats.... insecticides and such wont do the job because it works by being in contact with the larvae... but seen as gnat larvae eats its way up the root, you need something that will actually go looking for the little buggers like bacillus thuringiensis.... so you need a product containing this bacteria...
As i said a very effective one is GNAT OFF.. dont waste any more time, order it online... and try and slow down their development with neem oil in the water with a little bit of dish washing soap....

each adult gnat will lay aprx. 200 eggs...
to catch them yellow sticky traps placed up side down near the growing medium is the most effective... so as soon as they fly off they get caught...

I know u should never trust someone who says trust me... but ive had a hell of an experience with gnats... and i tryed different things on different grows, only when i got gnat off did i manage to completely iradicate the problem...


good luck fighting man

peace out

I'm afraid that the root aphids are my more serious problem. One of the plants has a rootmass about the size of a basketball or so... and all throughout the rootmass are the little black/brown root aphids. What's strange is that this rootmass is obviously submerged underwater in the bucket, so the root aphids must be able to survive underwater.

If the aphids are really taking over that bad, use gnatoff for the gnats and Neem oil.... The neem oil will slow the aphids down and if you keep treating with the neem eventually theyll be all gone... but it take time using neem.... What you could do if your ordering fungus Gnat Off... is get Pest Off too.... it will get rid of a wide range of bugs... including aphids..... and is useable in hydro systems...

good luck

Keep applying the Azamax as directed. It is the same thing as neem just super concentrated.

http://www.generalhydroponics.com/genhydro_US/azamax.html

I'm surprised that the aphids or what ever they are, can live through all that treatment. How many times have you applied the Azamax? I have been using that stuff and it got rid of my gnat problem fast.

Keep up the foliar feeding with the azamax, that stuff is supposed to go systemic after a while. So they will eventually no longer want to hang around your roots (in theory).