Got thrips ! What to do?

I’ve recently noticed this silver shine on the leafs in my flower tent …got up closer and I can see tiny white bugs crawling on my leafs :open_mouth: …its 6weeks in and i was going to start flushing it! But now I’m wondering if I will have to get rid of it ?or would I be ok until harvest ?

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chop and dry before they get out of hand. then try a living soil so the bugs have predators.

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You are lucky that you are just heading to harvest and spotted that problem very early… lotus is right, just chop them earlier till they spread… maybe you can still give them few more days…

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What kind of bugs are they?

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Salutations,

M’well, for starters i’d try to account for the fact that temperature can boost the little critter’s activity. So here’s an early preliminary advice:

IMO it would cost little to lower the temperature, if applicable.

Good day, have fun!! :peace:

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Sounds like you have mealybugs or (gasp!)
spider mites…hard to tell without pics.

The advice given above is sound.
Lower temps- will slow them down some.
Chop a little early…
Good luck🙄

I don’t know …was hoping someone could tell me …they are like a maggot but much smaller … @Egzoset My temps is reaching 27*c and a little higher some times depending on the weather in my area. I will get on that asap. Thank you
If I finished out the last 2 weeks will My bud still be smokable ? Or is it effected by these bugs ? I really don’t want to have to bin it :sweat:
Thanks again

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Theres no point to finish the 2 weeks. Thats asking for problems. And with the stress from bugs you wont get much more bud. Chop er now.

Here is what has me curious. The only thing i know of that will leave a sheen like that is slugs or snails. If that is the case all you have to do is remove them from your grow area. Is that the case?

There’s definitely no snails or slugs …its only a small tent with 1 plant inside.
Unless I’m so stoned when I open I it that I don’t noticed them :joy: Ha … @lotus710 thanks for advise man …do you not think I need some sort of flush if I want to be able to smoke the bud ? Even 2-3 days heavy flush ?

I had a pretty bad thrips infestation that looked similar to this. If it is thrips, you should see them hanging out in the tiny space in between the fingers of the leaves next to the stem. Looks like you can maybe see one in the pic if you zoom in. Extremely small, straight white/tan bugs. Lady bugs worked for me but it did decrease my yield. Also, I found the occasional black, mature thrip on the inside of the bud while trimming. Maybe time to chop sadly…

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You got thrips bro… See the trails, thats the rasping activity in how they feed. Verify by shaking the plant over some paper to knock the bugs loose… thrips cant hold on very good to leaves.

Thysanoptera can be identified under a microscope by looking at the wings. It will have a feathered appearance. Thrips can move around, and they found your plant as the new food source.

Spinosaid, works wonders thrip specific… and its derived from microbes and is oked for organic production.

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Not totally true, thrip damage can occur with balanced insect populations. Thrip controls are usually not deployed until significant economic damage occurs. With cannabis thrip tolerance is zero. Thrips are vectors for viruses.

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Ok guys I’m going to take it down today !! Went in to flush some water through to try get some nutrients out! I gave it a shake while lifting it from the tray the clear the run off. Took a video, you can see lots of movement! But I can’t upload it from my phone !
Should I bin the buds ? or will it be ok to dry it and cure it to smoke ?

Here’s a screenshot of the video

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Salutations,

At least that doesn’t look like “The Borg” so i’m not sure those insects behave the same relatively to temperature, but if they do then i’d be worried that at 27 °C it won’t be long before things are gone out of hands. My plant also got generously showered under its leaves, twice by the way. It seemed “saved” though its harvest felt modest nonetheless…

Good day, have fun!! :peace:

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That is something new to me. Some sort of larvea so i would assume moth or butterfly got in. That is a guess so use your best judgement.

I thought this was cool. I didn’t know that the eggs were laid in the leaf. I thought they were laid in the soil.

Thrips lay extremely small eggs, about 0.2 mm long. Females of the suborder Terebrantia cut slits in plant tissue with their ovipositor, and insert their eggs, one per slit. Females of the suborder Tubulifera lay their eggs singly or in small groups on the outside surfaces of plants.[56]

Thrips are hemimetabolous, metamorphosing gradually to the adult form. The first two instars, called larvae or nymphs, are like small wingless adults (often confused with springtails) without genitalia; these feed on plant tissue. In the Terebrantia, the third and fourth instars, and in the Tubulifera also a fifth instar, are non-feeding resting stages similar to pupae: in these stages, the body’s organs are reshaped, and wing-buds and genitalia are formed.[56] The adult stage can be reached in around 8–15 days; adults can live for around 45 days.[57] Adults have both winged and wingless forms; in the grass thrips Anaphothrips obscurus, for example, the winged form makes up 90% of the population in spring (in temperate zones), while the wingless form makes up 98% of the population late in the summer.[58] Thrips can survive the winter as adults or through egg or pupal diapause.[10]

Thrips are haplodiploid with haploid males (from unfertilised eggs, as in Hymenoptera) and diploid females capable of parthenogenesis (reproducing without fertilisation), many species using arrhenotoky, a few using thelytoky.[59] The sex-determining bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia is a factor that affects the reproductive mode.[36][59][60] Several normally bisexual species have become established in the United States with only females present.[59][61]

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Another interesting thing about thrips… they are predators of spidermites.

This is why controls of thrips are generally not suggested (except cannabis) until Economic Thresholds are being exceeded, I’m more or less crossing over into general gardening with this train of thought. Gardens treated with a broad spectrum insecticide, like Sevin and spider mite enemies are eliminated. SM populations then can grow unchecked.

The adults are easy to distinguish, colombera (springtails) usually have a furcula on the underside. Thrips do not, I usually look for feathered wings.

Springtails are immune to spinosaid,. And thats a good thing to have springtails in the soil.

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Of all the bugs I’ve gotten, thrips have honestly been the least destructive of them all… including spider mites, root aphids and even fungus gnats imo. Sadly though, I’m about 99% sure you had thrips from the pics I’ve seen. You can spray and do soil drenches but they always seem to come back for me, the only thing that worked for me was to completely start over which sucked but I been bug free ever since… :crossed_fingers:

Preventative measures is pretty key to avoid these issues… and of course not taking in infested clones like I unfortunately did helps immensely…

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