Aphids? Thrips? Something else?

Hey everyone,
Having a hard time id’ing my pests. This is an outdoor grow in central Az, not all plants are effected. It also seems like they are only attacking the older leaves. About half way up the plant the leaves are all healthy looking with no sign of these boogers. As you can see on top of the leaf it has little white specks, however on the underside are these little black specks (pictured at 50x mag). Not sure if the black spots are eggs or feces? Any ideas? My insect id app said either melon aphids or thrips but I’m not seeing any actual bugs.

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I would go for black aphids … icon_eek|nullxnull

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Dunno about the black stuff - could be eggs - but the top side of the leaf looks like stippling from spider mites. I think thrips damage is more intermittent and comes out looking kinda like a squiggly line, while this is covering the whole leaf.

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I kind of agree with @George , might be black bean aphids. Hard to say for sure though.

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Those look like aphid eggs to me :thinking:

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I’m agreeing with Cormoran, the damage looks more like spider mites to me.

Cheers
G

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I probably should have taken a pic of the bottom that wasn’t zoomed in. The little black specks are mostly in uniform little lines, that’s what makes me suspect they’re eggs of some sort. I’m gonna try some crop Defender 3 that came highly suggest by another grower in the area. If that doesn’t help I’ll probably look into some predators. It’s a small grow so any impact is gonna be significant.

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Looks like possible eggs or even feces from an insect. Flys will leave drops of shit on whatever they land on. But that seems to be the underside of a leaf. It’s not mites and its definitely not aphids, because at that zoom value you’d certainly pick up some definition of legs, thorax, abdomen.
Have you tried to scrape or knock any off? Does it even come off?
They using a jewlers loop or a trichome scope if you have one.

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Try @JohnnyPotseed, I believe this would be on his wheelhouse. :peace_symbol:

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Agreed , I’ve only had green aphids outdoors and they are easy to ID w/o magnification and always disfigure new growth and leave honeydew all over the place. Not sure about the black variety.

Looks more like thrip dmg/poop to me. But you should be able to see those pretty easy on the plants also.

Drop some yellow sticky cards down and you’ll find out if it’s thrips real quick. :+1:

Just my $0.02 :call_me_hand:

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I like the sticky card idea. I’ll get some and put them down and see what I catch. A buddy of mine said he had similar problems last summer and it was caused by lacebugs. I found this pic, definitely looks similar to what’s on my leaves. Whatever those things are they won’t come off by rubbing. They’re stuck on there pretty well.

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Definitely lace bugs. I finally caught one on the plant. Weird part is, they’re really only attacking the smallest of my plants. The ones that are larger abs more healthy they seem to be leaving alone. Hoping the stuff I ordered is effective on them.

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