2 pests in my nep pots

[cpbobby]

i was watering the plants when i seen a small brown worm make a run for it when the light hit it.......looked like 1-2mm long..kinda skinny......also there are small bugs in the soil.....they are very small and white or silver in color....look like they may have wings but do not fly.


they dont appear to be fungus gnats but ill try to get a pic.

 

[cpbobby]

took another look. man they are fast....they are iridescent. they match whatever color the background is. They hate light and not very fond of neem oil either.....heh heh heh.

 

[maxima]

The silvery thin bugs are most likely thrips and they thrive on moisture + dead plant matter. If you cut back on watering and keep the top part of the medium dry, they won't be able to survive. They are very easily killed by chemicals but I am fond of more natural methods myself.

 

[cpbobby]

update:

Thrips looks like a definite possibility....think I also see a few spider mites in there too or maybe they were just larger thrips....eh who knows.

I decided to take the shoot first; examine the corpse 2nd method to figuring it out. Just finished repotting and quarantining everything. I left the old dirt to bake in the sun until mother nature takes care of the issue there. I found 2 brown worms and they were just earth worms.

Also gave everything a nice coating of neem oil so hopefully whatever they were will not return.

Man I just hate repotting nepenthes....probably take em a solid week to stop complaining especially that mirabilis var echinostoma....I had just gotten it settled in .