I have strong UV (64w, almost up to UV-C) on for an hour a day in my tent and have never seen a trace of PM, and I definitely track it in from the outdoors. And the fungus gnats stay below the canopy mostly, they died off after a few 72-hour watering cycles with a fan blowing across the tops of my smart pots
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I bought a 25w bulb off Amazon. 1st time I used it . Well I didnāt ignore the warnings but I figured a little look here and there id be fine. Next morning MY EYES WERE ON FIRE . I couldnāt open my eyes for 18 hours and then I had to squint for another day . Welders flash they call it . And the bulb puts out ozone Im told no good for lungs .
But the box filter idea came from an old timer. it catches the spores. It helped big time 20$ for fan 15$ filter i change every 6months or when it looks dirty . Also exhaust 24/7 .
I had exhaust set for high temp. When lights went out the exhaust stopped an hour later . This had my plants sitting in stagnant air for 10 or 11 hours .
Almost made me quit growing my own, fucking with pm daily . Yeilding 1/3 what I shouldāve gotten. So glad that monkeys gone
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With bugs if they move fast 99% of the time beneficial. That looks like californicus
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Beautiful plants!
They may also be a beneficial mite moving in to feed on fungus gnat larvae such as Hypoaspis Aculeifer, Hypoaspis Miles or something similar.They are often be seen crawling on pots and the soil surface looking for food. As stated above the speed the mite is moving is a good indicator of pest status usually.
Edit ::
Also I somehow missed you were dealing with thrips as well as fungus gnats. Itās worth pointing out that one of the main uses for these predatory mites other than controlling fungus gnat larvae is they are used as bio-control agents for controlling thrip pupae in the soil & greenhouse floors (as a preventative). They are a good preventative for fungus gnats as well but probably not able to keep up once a serious infestation is established.
BTI (Bacillus thuringiensis strain : israelensis) and Entomopathogenic Nematodes combined with physically trapping them as you are doing might be an effective approach if you wind up with a serious infestation of fungus gnats again
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Thatās what i thought, i have those, they are good i havnāt seen a single gnat in months with those living in my soil
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āAnd the bulb puts out ozone Im told no good for lungs .ā
Yes, you do not want to be around an ozone generator when itās working.
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Thanks for the info!
Iām glad everyone has confirmed theyāre beneficial, I have a lot of therse in my pots lol. Not like an infestation, but theyāre definitely abundant haha.
I have noticed that one if my 10gal pots seems to have less of these in early veg, and thatās the one pot that seems to have the most gnats on the sticky trap too.
Iāve tried scooping out a spoon full of soil with them in, from the other pots and placing it in the pot with the gnats. Hopefully that will help boost their numbers.
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Where do you get yours?
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If that was in reference to the soil mites they came free with with soil lol.
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The beauty of it all. Trust in balance and it shall be. Patience creates effortlessness.
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Day 15 of flower.
This past week its been mainly plain water for the 10gal pots, the smaller pants have had a bottle organic liquid feed this week, and I think theyāll get the same once a week now through flower. And perhaps an Epson salts watering soon ad the leaves seem to be much paler green than the plants in the 10gal living soil.
This week I aslo oven dried x2 banana skins and powdered them then sprinkled over 10gal pots as a little top dress and watered in with some Biosys microbe tea.
As I was dealing with the gnats I let the top layer dry out between watering this week, and the next time I came to mist the surface with a castile soap/neam oil solution, it was absolutely crawling with these thingsā¦
Pretty sure theyāre Beneficials, but I think a lot of them were wiped out as I sprayed with the neam.
Thereās still a few kicking about today though.
Day 15 flower
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#2
#3
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Hard to tell from the picture but it looks a bit like mold mites. I personally view them more as a pest than beneficial, but they certainly arenāt a major pest worth worrying about either. With severe infestations they can be seen on stems and under leaves as well which would explain seeing them on sticky traps. Be careful and wait longer than you normally would to transplant rare or valuable seedlings in soils that contain these mites. Once the cotyledon emerges they should be safe.
They feed on decaying organic matter / mold and thrive in conditions similar to fungus gnats. I believe they have a kind of symbiotic relationship with fungus gnat larvae and can even hitch a ride in on them, but donāt have any sources available to back that up. As far as Iām aware neem has 0 effect on them.
(hypoaspis left, tyrophagus right)
Hypoaspis miles adult & Tyrophagus putrescentiae nymph
Tyrophagus putrescentiae (mold mite) come packed as a food source in the bran/vermiculite mix used for Hypoaspis Miles when you order them online. Avoiding fluctuating environmental and watering extremes should allow the predators like Hypoaspis Miles(Stratiolaelaps scimitus) get control of them. I also assume most living soil setups have these mites present to some degree and are kept in check naturally via predators.
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Iāve had many plant fade on me early flower, they ran out of food, usually a heavy top dress will do the trick, quicker than you think too, then another one in 3 weeks
either one of those or some similar all purpose organic fertilizer, a couple handfuls, your plants should be dark blue green in a few days
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Thanks for the info, Iād read somewhere on these forums that the mold mites fed on gnat larvae, which would make sense why there was a boom in the mold mite population if I had an abundance of gnat larvae.
Iāll keep an eye on it closely this weekend and see what happens.
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Day 30 of flower.
And I have almost gave up with these gnats.
No joke, I must have removed over 1000 of them via sticky traps now, itās only a 4x4 tent lol.
Neem had zero effect, letting soil dry out and watering from the bottom zero effect, 2 days ago and again today Iāve added nematodes, so hopefully they will do the trickā¦ if not I have Gnatrol on the way from the US too.
If that doesnāt work Iām setting fire to the whole tent and laughing maniacally as I watch it all burn to the ground.
But that aside, Iāve added a toodress this week consisting of.
Vermicompost, neam meal, Kelp meal, gypsum, volcanic rock dust, malted barley, alfalfa meal and fish meal.
The #2 seemed to be suffering as I was letting it dry out a bit too much maybe, its definitelylooking a little lighter than the othersā¦ It looks to be getting back on track now after the topdress and Iāll be giving it a compost tea in a few days to help it on its way.
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#2
#3
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Beautiful girls you have.
fungus gnats are a giant pain in the a$$, I know.
Those nematodes should get you going. But if not, what I use, is Diatomaceous Earth. wonāt hurt your plants. It must be dry to be effective. Hereās how I do it.
After you do your normal watering, or feeding, let the top of the soil dry out, overnite. Grab a small handful of DE and sprinkle it over the surface of the soil. If it turns muddy looking, stop and let the soil dry more. Reapply. then just leave it alone. after you water or feed again, do the whole process over. Do it a couple watering cycle and you will be amazed at the differenceā¦How it works is this. Imagine this DE powder on a microscopic level. It looks like tiny razor blades. When your soft bodied bugs crawl over it, it slices there soft abdomens and causes the to dehydrate and die.
I aint making this up. I have researched what DE does. Look i up for yourself.
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Plants donāt look like the fungus gnats are messing with them too much, though. They look good. If theyāre really outta control, Iād quit top dressing with compost of any kind; EWC/compost is a fungus gnat magnet. I used to always top dress with a little EWC or compost when I transplanted into my flowering containers and never had an issue, until I started having issues. Itās like the fungus gnats showed up one day and from then on, any time I top dressed with compost, Iād get gnats. I quit doing that a few grows ago and havenāt gotten any since. Or not really. Iāll find the odd gnat stuck to the sticky traps that I put in all my pots as a preventative, but I havenāt had a full-on outbreak in at least three grows, I donāt think.
That Gnatrol should really help, too. But yeah, quit top dressing with compost.
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I can relate to your struggles, Iām battling gnats too. Gnatrol has helped control them but it hasnāt been a cure all by any means, but Iāve coupled that with a weekly spray of dr. Zymes and itās helped. Iāve heard Jeremy from BAS claiming that a thick layer of EWC can smother them, but that seems counterintuitive based on what @minitiger said and the fact that the gnats are attracted to the decaying material in the first place. Iāve heard DE works to a degree too like @BigMike55 said but I always heard it becomes useless when you water through it and get it wet. Iāve also heard subcool say that he puts a thick layer of berm cake on top of his supersoil to kill gnats, not sure if you could do that with a or that has a plant in it. Either way I feel your pain bud, it seems like thereās no magic bullet, just gotta stay on top of things, although if you do stumble in a magic bullet please for the love of god share with the class! Plants look great though, try not to burn the tent down just yetāš»
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Itās tough in recycled soil systems because you may not reuse your soil for months, so the beneficial bugs may not survive in between uses. But beneficials are the best overall strategy if you can keep healthy populations around, because the soil mites and rove beetles eat both fungus gnat larvae AND thrips larvae.
Gnatrol works if used according to the directions. It takes 4-5 weeks to break the lifecycle, but it works 100%. Hereās a reminder of the lifecycle:
Thatās a 5 week lifecycle, so you have to actually apply gnatrol for at least that whole cycle, and probably one additional week just to be safe. If gnatrolās not working, either youāre doing it wrong or you donāt have fungus gnats.
Iām not trying to be rude. 
It may require an inspection of your soil surfaces and entry points to really figure out why you still have them, but if youāre using gnatrol in the proper doses at least every 5-6 days AND youāre getting it everywhere the gnats live, they will not be able to reproduce because they canāt eat. But, that means getting it in the bottom drain holes of plastic pots, and down the sides of cloth pots where you donāt normally think of paying attention to. And, gnatrol has to be used to break the cycle AND THEN for at least one application after that to get the eggs being laid and hatched by all the extra flyers you have hanging around. Hopefully sticky traps help control those.
Diatomaceous earth doesnāt work beyond its initial dry application - it becomes deactivated as soon as it gets wet, and drying out does not reactivate it. Itās also a pain to work with - do NOT breath it in as itās really bad for your lungs.
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