Bugs inside of my seeds! What are they?

Sick Plants & Problems
#1

Hello everyone! I’ve been waiting to grow for at least 8 years and was/still am slowly accumulating knowledge along the way from many different sources. Including this site of course! Which I learned about due to Subcool.

Here’s the deal. I have seeds I got from a Jinxproof auction about 5 years ago. I decided to germinate 5 9lb hammers and 3 Shangri-La directly into my medium after a 24 hour soak.they’re in a roughly 85-15 coco/EWC mix and been given tribus original and a tad of molasses once.

I decided to carefully inspect my seeds and uncover them after 6 days with no signs of any germination.

Pretty soon to mess with the seeds I’m sure. But I’m antsy and couldn’t help but carefully peek. Glad I did since I found bugs inside three of the seeds and right outside of them. But not the surrounding soil. Just directly in and next to the seeds. So I’m questioning if they were in the seeds to begin with… idk if that’s possible.
I only cracked the seeds and checked inside once I saw bugs on the outside of them.

Two 9lb hammers and one Shangri-La
The Shangri-la had what I believed to be just a baby worm potentially but that was after seeing these other bugs in the two 9lb hammers. They both had at least three of what I believe to possibly be bulb mites inside of them.

Would love any info or perspectives on this situation. Thanks a ton :v:t3:

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#2

First off, it isn’t a bad bug so you’re fine there, no need for fire lol but you have a healthy soil biology as evident by your awesome little cleaner mites… Only problem now is you’ll need to start seeds and let them get a few nodes then transplant them over…I have this problem as well, if my seeds go straight to the soil they almost never come up

What those little things do is stick around your soil and munch on whatever organic matter falls to the ground… When they get a good colony going,. Nothing escapes them, including fresh popped seeds, they’ll crawl in and strip them out…

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#3

They eat the embryo? Great info btw. I never heard of these critters.

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#4

They’re kinda half the reason my new cover isn’t sprouting right now, but yea… Anything in the soil they can gang up and eat

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#5

Looks like acariform mites to me. They are a water creature, if it dries up they die.

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#6

Awesome, thanks you tons for the info. That’s exactly what they were doing. Crawling inside of those seeds and eating away at them :joy: little punks. Great to know they’re not bad once I get a plant established enough to withstand them.

Plus the fact I can just let my medium dry out and let them dry to death with it if needed. Thanks for that @JoeCrowe

How would you go about letting a new seed germinate and sprout to a few nodes without it being in some sort of soil or other medium.

Maybe I should germinate them longer in a paper towel? And only put them in coco not a mix with EWC? Just until they’re a few nodes and then I could transplant them to a better mixture with more nutrients and lively organic materials.

That’s the best way I can think of besides buying some Rockwell cubes or whatnot.

I’m doing a synganic grow btw. I’ll be using jacks 321 in conjunction with EWC, tribus original and molasses.

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#7

If you need to start it in a plastic cup or some such with some nuked soil as not to have little seed munchers in it

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#8

Ok, I was starting them in solo cups with my medium.

I’ll make sure any new seeds I start I’ll hit the cup with a h202 mixture for the first and maybe second waterings before building back the biology with tribus. and I’ll research some other safe pesticides too.

Hopefully I get lucky and my remaining 5 seeds sprout. Nonetheless, I appreciate your help!

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#9

I add 2 or 3 drops of peroxide in my shot glass before dropping the seeds, then bake in the oven the soil of my starter pot, al least the first weeks they are safe … :sweat_smile:

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#10

Great idea. I’ll use some of my old mushroom skills to either pasteurize or sterilize some of my medium for the first few weeks of life.

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#11

I soak seeds first for 12 hours then onto wet kitchen roll once I see a tap root into a solo cup it goes once it gets bigger I put it in a bigger pot,I’ve never had any luck just sticking
A seed into soil

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#13

I agree, I first thought they were mold mites after looking up what they could be and seeing that those looked quite similar.

I’m definitely not able to tell though, apparently there’s tens of thousands of mites!

I’ll look into those hypoaspis mites, thanks!

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#14

Ahh and apparently you didn’t even have a typo. They’re actually called Miles not Mites…

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#15

I almost positive those won’t eat healthy tissue. The seeds probably started to decay/rot and then the mites found them . They definitely weren’t alive inside the seed . If you want to see a whole wack of them congregate neem cake and avacado is like a magnet for them.

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#16

I do feel like I was over watering those seeds, plus the fact that they were old and not stored ideally probably lended to them rotting or whatnot.

I’m used to germinating vegetables outside in soil so the coco indoors is taking me a second get. I was worried my medium was gonna dry out too fast but it didn’t and I probably drowned my seeds. Plus creating a nice extra moist environment for hose bugs.

I’m trying again with 2 x Jailhouse Hooch and 2 x Deadhead OG f2 from Norstar genetics. So hopefully with these newer seeds I have. Plus with just coco they will work better.
I also gave them a soak in water and a tad of peroxide for a day just to be safe.

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#17

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#18

I would get a 1/8-1/2 taproot via paper towel method and pop it into just about any media -vermiculite, purlite, Rockwood, coco plugs, peat pucks , rapid rooters, florist sponges, car sponges Not hydroton but I’m sure is been done . Personally i just buy a bag of jiffy or promix seed starting mix Just put seed taproot down and it will do the rest.

If I planted my seeds in coco using a Solo cup or a 4 inch nursery pot I would maybe start thinking about watering 7 to 10 days after initial watering.

Take an empty pot fill with coco, water it and check on it a week later. Id bet its still moist enough.The seedlings aren’t going to use much water until they get a few sets of leaves. Dryer the media the more the roots explore

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#19

Yeah I’m just so used to germinating things outside directly into soil. Some days the sun will dry my small pots of soil pretty fast in my veggie garden. So I definitely overwatered this first round of cannabis seeds IMO.
The whole coco drys super fast thing worried me but it’s not even a slight issue for me. It actually retains water easily especially with a cooler more controlled environment than outside. Which I wasn’t used to since It’s most often warm here in Texas
I start all my garden seeds outside in the soil like that. If they’re good seeds I always get at least a 70% germination rate.

I think with everyone’s input and help so far I can adjust from my recent mistakes and hopefully things start pulling together.

Thanks a ton! :v:t3: