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My Hydro Habanero's: DWC with DIY LED's

Funny how a mite problem seems to always show up first as a sort of calcium issue.

The first sign of trouble for the right plant was no growth and dying innner stem tips, a sign of calcium deficiency.


Now the plant on the left has *some* leaves with the curly look that is classic of calcium deficiency, but I think that is also just the mites. Lots of the new growth looks fine. Interestingly, the plant on the right has nicer new growth now, I think I sprayed more neem there so got rid of more mites, but at greater cost :)
 
hows about you stuff those plants into a trash bag and bomb them with no pest vapor. put the bags outside even... anything to kill those things.
 
The reason I got a bit scared of using the dichlorvos is because we temporarily have some chickens in the garage. We are technically not allowed to have em in this current house due to town laws, but they are allowed at the new place. So they have to stay hidden for a few weeks :)

So I spent a while reading health studies and dichlorvos is used in farm houses around chickens as one of it's recommended uses to control pests and there is pretty much no chance of it accumulating in the animals and passing to the eggs. So decided to move forward with some precautions.

Last night I taped up the cabinet as best I could and put a strip in there. It's around 2'x2'x4'. So around 16 cu ft. I'm still running pretty heavy ventilation in the garage itself since we have to go in there to care for the chicks.

Anybody know how long I should leave the strip in there to be effective?
 
i know ive heard of those strips destroying thrips and whiteflys in just one night in a sealed grow room, but they will emit vapor for like a week. ive always wondered if you could reuse them.

but id let it go like 48 hours to be sure, do you know if it kills the eggs as well? i know alot of these mitacides dont... but ddvp is something crazy on its own so i would not be suprised at all if it does. id also put anything that regularly comes in contact with plants nutrients etc in there as well. measuring spoons and w/e
 
When I put the hot shots in an 11 X 14 ft. room it took 2-3 days to start seeing dead mites only.
I left it there for another week.
Mite eggs can hatch in 3-5 days depending on conditions and the kind of mite.
I put my strip in a foodsaver bag, hoping that oxygen is what makes them evaporate/work.
I'll put it back out if I get more bug problems latter on.
It was the only thing that worked for me with mites.
I tried a couple hundred $ worth of benneficial bugs,every poison in the book and 3 miticides at a gazillion $ an OZ.
Bug bombs didn't work using 3 cans in the room.
I used all the different bombs I could find-roach,Flea and spider ones.None even fazzed them.
Alchahol spraying worked but kills the plant eventually.
I tried both Ethonol and isopropyl.Iso killed plants and mites real fast.

I think mite eggs hatch immune mites if the eggs don't get killed by whatever poison you use.
Bennificial bugs can't keep up with mite reproduction.

The problem is,once you see mites you are screwed.

They hibernate egg ladened females when conditions get tough.

Weeks after I cleared out my grow shelves I had mite webbs hanging down off my Fluoros.
The mites went insde the fixture and hid out/hibernated until the poison was gone or danger that made them hide was gone.
The only thing inside that worked was Hot Shot pest strips.
Outside just spraying my plants dayly with water worked as good as poison or neem and soap sprays.

I too thaught that i had a nutrient problem at first but it ends up mites eat the chlorophyl layer of leaves and they look yellow...
Like I said,once you see the mites,you are screwed.There are tons of them and get out of control really fast.

PS: I found a lot of the miticides stunted my plants.
I don't know if it was the mites ,poisons or miticide but it took a LONG time for buds to form or buds to set after the mites were gone and a LOT of the few pods that grew were miss shaped and colored.ALL were seedless.
I don't know if it's a mite or miticide side effect but a lot of the few pods I got were Black colored after green,then ripened to red or whatever color they should look like.
Second pod set,latter on was normal.
 
hey what mitacides did you try out? just curious so i know what to avoid. spider mites are something nasty, they destroyed my hop plants in the two weeks it took me to have the mitacide delivered to my house, the undersides of some of the leaves were absolutely covered in webs. the spider mites, i think never made it to my pepper plants. i did however around the same time get red mites on a few annums.

i know what you mean by gazilions of cash for mitacides, i bought a product called e pro which is like 100 bucks a quart... but a quart will spray like a small orchard. i ended up buying a single 1 ounce container of e pro for like 20 bucks( one ounce still does like 100 gallons of spray). thing is that e pro only kills mature mites that suck on the leaves, so you have to spray like every other day so you catch them once they hatch, but before they can reproduce. e-pro had pretty specific instructions on how to prepair the solution as well... distilled water ph'd to 5-6 etc. the product claimed to be "Translaminar" meaning it somehow absorbs into the leaves surface and makes it down to the bottom where the mites live. for what its worth tho it worked killed all the red mites i could find, i didnt get a good chance to see how it worked on spider mites; i sprayed the hop plants a few times, then decided to toss them.

i hadn't thought of how the mites could hideout on tools etc tho. i wonder if mites and their eggs are sensitive to temperature? i wonder if you could freeze things infested to kill them off.
your 11x14 room... was it sealed of? or was it air conditioned?
 
Thanks for all the tips. Since my cabinet is so tiny, I think 2 days will be a pretty potent dose in there.

Tonight will be the end of day 2. I think I will take the strip out tonight, seal it in a bag, and observe the plants a while.

Maybe in a week or so I'll do another 2 day treatment.


I didn't think to put all my hydro tools in there. Good idea. Next time. For now I will rinse them all in a bucket with an alcohol/water/vinegar mix or something, maybe throw some ice cubes in the water afterwards.


Overall, my garage is a freakin mess right now. We have some boxes in there for moving, which now occurs to me could be a bad idea: what if some mites hitchhike on some box for the kitchen supplies and manage to somehow get back to my plants? I'm worried since I have so many cabinets and drawers in my garage. Maybe before moving the garage, I will open ALL the cabinets and drawers, and put 2-3 strips in the garage for a week or so. I will need the time to build new cabinets in the new garage anyways.
 
Also the design of my garage closets seems a poor choice; there's pegboard all over the place which provides a place to hide behind that I can never clean.

Going to need to think about designing the new garage to have as few innaccessible nooks and crannies as possible.
 
Well I untaped the cabinet and took out the no pest strip last night. My plants look like they were raped.

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The one on the right lots tons of leaves and generally looks fried:

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I don't know whether to blame the NoPest strips or the high temps and humidity that happened with the cabinet sealed.

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According to that, my temp went up to 90 F and almost 90% RH. Would that fry the plants too?
 
I'g guess the water got too hot.
Plants can probably handle 90 but not the roots.
Whenever my water gets over 75 or so my plants mess up big time.
Roots die off.
 
You're probably right.

I just checked the roots, and while the EC didn't rise much, they sucked down almost 2" of water!! That's way faster than normal.

The roots submerged in water looked ok, but the air roots towards the top of the netpots were all brown/black. hard to say if its from the lower water level meaning no bubbles splashing to keep them moist, or the hot air/water temp...


either way, when I just went to pick off a few of the crispy looking leaves.... just merely touching the plants caused about 1/2 of all the leaves to just fall away, even ones that didn't look burned. Looks like I screwed up big time by not planning on increased temperature and water consumption.

Both plants look truly pathetic right now... maybe worse than when I originally got them :P I think its time to trash these and look forward.
 
Ictus said:
You're probably right.

I just checked the roots, and while the EC didn't rise much, they sucked down almost 2" of water!! That's way faster than normal.

The roots submerged in water looked ok, but the air roots towards the top of the netpots were all brown/black. hard to say if its from the lower water level meaning no bubbles splashing to keep them moist, or the hot air/water temp...


either way, when I just went to pick off a few of the crispy looking leaves.... just merely touching the plants caused about 1/2 of all the leaves to just fall away, even ones that didn't look burned. Looks like I screwed up big time by not planning on increased temperature and water consumption.

Both plants look truly pathetic right now... maybe worse than when I originally got them :P I think its time to trash these and look forward.
Click to expand...

Well on the plus side, pepper plants are resilient and bounce back quickly if you fix the problem.

I thought one of mine was a goner after over watering:
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But it came back just fine.
 
I didn't see it addressed yet in the thread, so if this is a repeat, my apologies up front.

The purple coloring you see is anthocyanin. Simply put- it is plant suntan/sunscreen. It is not harmful in any way to the plant- however, it serves as an indication that you are putting out more light than the plant needs. That being said, I would not go off half-cocked and turn down your lights. Since you are using LEDs, there is a definite possibility that the anthocyanin is a reaction to a specific wavelength and, again, since you are using LEDs, you could possibly manipulate that particular wavelength while keeping the rest cranked up. Anthocyanin is generated to protect against UV radiation and intense blue light. The short and intensely bushy growth of your plants with almost no internodal segmentation would also indicate high levels of blue/UV. Turn down your blue and crank up your red and they will start reaching out.
As an aside, I would start planning on moving them into 5 gallon buckets sooner rather than later- when you go to red/white, the root balls will outgrow that reservoir in a hot hurry.
 
Probably the last picture of this plant in a healthy state.
Mites are back...Putting out new Hot Shot pest strips in case it's just because the other one is used up.
I'm thinking the mites have become immune.
Same thing happened last year.Buds start opening and the mites show up and the plant eventually gets messed up.
I've only found a couple mites but if you find a couple there are probably hundreds...

28in+ tall X 18in wide.
Hand sized leaves.
Container is 10in. X 20in +/-.8 in. deep.

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Going to figure out a way to put the top pannel hanging over the plant.
My pannels need to be farther away but I have no room.
 
Tried several hundred $ worth of mite predators.
Didn't work.
Mites reproduce too fast and the dry hot grow area inside doesn't suit most predators and mites love it.
Ladybugs didn't eat mites.

Lacewings do but they don't multiply as fast as mites,nothing does.

I tried:
Lacewings , Ladybugs , Mantis , Feltiella acarisuga , Mesoseiuslus longipes , Neoseiulus californicus , Phytoseiulus persimilus , Stethorus punctillum , Amblyseius fallacis.

After that I tried every poison and mite killer I could find.
One or 2 seemed to work but only for at most 6 weeks+/-.
Some poisons actually increase mite production.

I tried everything I could find in the last 3 yrs.
Some works for a short time then the mites get immune...

Outside spraying the plants down with water every day worked better than most stuff I tried.

Neem is a joke.
Mites lined up with their bath brushes every morning to get a shower with it.

Mites are too good at hiding out and hibernating until things get good for them.
Egg ladened females go off and hide until conditions are good then they come out to start again.

I totally cleared out my grow shelves,2 months latter I see web strands hanging down from my Fluoros.
Mites had climbed inside and hid out in hibernation.
They decided the coast was clear and came out to find no plants to eat.
They went around making webs all over the room searching for new plants to munch on.

From what I see and UC Davis told me,Once you have mites you can't get rid of them.You can only somewhat control them.
No poison will work long term,they are experts at becomming immune to even miticides.

I'm looking for a sulfur type spray now to see if it works.

All I can find is powdered Fungus treatments.

Can't use a powder on inside plants.

The stuff gets everywhere,even though I treat the plants outside then bring them inside again.

I found out with powders when I tried Boric acid and Diatomacious Earth powders earlier.

Mites are forever!
 
I've been using Hot shot no pest strips lately that seem to be working.
They are supposed to last up to 4 months.
They only really last 2-2 1/2 months.
Doesn't get all the mites though.
As soon as the strips get past 2 months old I started seeing mites again.
I put a new one out and they dissapeared again.
I think they might need a very high dose of whatever is in the pest strips or because the room they are in is always about 75-80 degrees they evaporate faster.
Either way,I'm looking for a liquid sulfur spray.
According to UC Davis and Cornell,mites actually prosper if you use Pyrithrins(SP?).

Mites are just too good at getting immune and hiding out so you can't get rid of them.
Outside a dark thirty AM spray and a spray of just water from the hose kept them somewhat controlled but in the winter I can't do that more than a couple times a week or I'll over water the plants.

The plant above has over a dozen pods on it now.
don't see any mites yet either.

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Nice.

I wonder how much your LEDs are really doing. It looks like the plants are mostly stretching up to the window.
 
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