Is this what I hope it's not?!?

I think this may be a winged root aphid- I thought for longest time I was just dealing with gnats but the last two runs have suffered greatly. I have been driving myself crazy trying to diagnose the problems I am experiencing but have yet to identify any actual aphids but was able to catch one of these fliers today. I do have gnats too but they have the pointed tail. I recently took cuts and got rid of all my plants and soil. I just started a shit load of seeds and was hoping to start fresh and have a successful run. I only had one or two of these so hopefully if they are aphids and I'm very diligent in my efforts I may be able to eradicate or at least keep the population down .

I was able to get some pretty good pics and hope they are good enough for identification . Let me know what you guys think. Thanks!

I hate to say but I think those are RA flyers. I've battled RAs twice now and it's not fun. From the pics i can see it looks like an elongated crawler. It has the dual pipes on the backside of the bug. If you know you have fungus gnats and have identified them and they look diff then this chances are you have RAs.

I beat them twice with a combination of root drenches / sprays for a few weeks. Sns 203, azamax, pyganic , and predator nematodes

Also have you checked your soil to see if you can see any Crawlers?

@RMFOCO Thanks for the reply! I just got rid of all my old plants and soil. But when I was having all the issues I never did identify any crawlers. I was starting to go insane I think but this latest flier I caught I was able to get some good pics and I noticed those tailpipes.

As of now I cleaned up my tent and the surrounding area and started new seeds and took clones of what I had. I just purchased both OG Biowar Foliar and Root pack and hoping I can take some preventative measures to stop them. Im thinking my next move is some predatory insects. I dont think the plants and clones I just potted up have any aphids yet and if there is the population is super low so I think I have a good chance at eliminating them. Any suggestions from here?

ScaryHarry45 said:

@RMFOCO Thanks for the reply! I just got rid of all my old plants and soil. But when I was having all the issues I never did identify any crawlers. I was starting to go insane I think but this latest flier I caught I was able to get some good pics and I noticed those tailpipes.

As of now I cleaned up my tent and the surrounding area and started new seeds and took clones of what I had. I just purchased both OG Biowar Foliar and Root pack and hoping I can take some preventative measures to stop them. Im thinking my next move is some predatory insects. I dont think the plants and clones I just potted up have any aphids yet and if there is the population is super low so I think I have a good chance at eliminating them. Any suggestions from here?

Click to expand...

You never identified them? Like did not confirm or just didn't see any crawling around? The first time I got them I noticed when I was transplanting, I saw a bunch of white / clear specs running around. Even though you got rid of all your old soil if they were around long enough to go through their full life cycle to become flyers you're going to have them. So RAs give life birth in their crawler stage where as they lay eggs when they are flyers. So the flyers probably have payed more eggs.

My only suggestions for you is if you're trying to only do predator insects due to organic reasons or not wanting to use any pesticides in general you're either going to have to get over that or kill everything, ditch all your soil, bleach everything, ( personally I'd use a pyrethrum bomb in the room after it's all cleaned ). If you're dead set on not using pesticides or not starting clean at least look into getting some sns 203 and 209. Essentially just Rosemary oils and things like that. It's actually not considered a pesticide but a "25 B".

Start with a soil drench of sns 203 on your first day, next watering drench with predator nematodes, sns 209, sns 203...etc
The big problem with these things too is that they multiply like crazy so you need to be quick on taking care of them