Spider mites? or soil mites?

i have these little bugs crawling around in my coco coir medium. they are small, completley white and look very similar to spider mites. it is bad in one pot (like maybe a colony? theres quite a few) and the 4 surrounding it have a few crawling around. there are also some plants that dont have any crawlers in the soil at all. unfortunatley, my phones SD card took a shit on me so i cant post a picture. i dont have a digital camera. they are very small (not microscopic, though), and white.

heres the thing though - i have never had a problem with spider mites since ive set up this room. i use azamax as a foliar spray once a week at .8% strength. my leaves and stems have absolutley NO signs of mite damage at all. the one that is mainly affected by this right now is a strawberry cough. 2 other strawberries have a few crawlers, one bubba kush has a few crawlers, and one strain my buddy crossed called Hindu Death Potion (Love Potion #1 x Hindu Kush) have a few crawlers. i mostly have sour diesels in my room, along with bubba kush. they are looking very lush green and are growing very fast. the strawberries aren't as lush green, but i feel like the one strawberry that really has the problem looks a little bit more N deficient than the others. this strawberry is also larger than my other strawberries. ive had spider mites before. they have taken over a whole bud of mine with a web before. that was over a year ago though. i have really improved all of my preventitiveness since. plus i changed locations with all new plants + equipment. there is absolutley NO spider mite damage on ANY of the leaves in my room at all. they are just crawling everywhere in the soil. i used about a half gallon of azamax + water (.4% strength) mixture to water directly into the medium. i did this yesterday and havnt seen any of them slow down (not like i would expect the neem type effects to work so quickly), but im hoping when i go to apply the second application in 2 more days i see a reduction in their population.

the tips of a few newly devoloped leaves on the plant turn a dark green and shrivel up. nothing like the plant is curling over and dying, but it looks as it could be an early onset to somthing else. it is actually more prevailent on the one bad strawberry. i dont believe it is pH related or nute deficient, it looks more diseased or like it is getting pestered (like that word? )

could they be aphids? i dont really see any gnats flying around. i may see one flying around every other week, but its always only one and its never frequent. i did see the one land in the soil of other plants i have in the room, but they have no crawlers. they are also in pro mix mycorise sphagnum peat. i dont see sap or anything on the stems, though.

i called my more experienced friend and asked him, and he said they may be some kind of larvae. he told me i should use a product called "go gnats"? i am using all organic, so i really wouldnt like to take that route. he didnt see the problem up close and personal, but he also told me they could be soil mites? he said some soil mites are actually benificial and eat fungus gnats. im not sure. i really wish i could post a picture but god damn cell phones...we used coco but we didnt flush it out completley for salts like everybody recomends because we didnt research it that much before we planted. we transplanted these about a month ago, though, and yesterday was the first time i noticed the problem. well anybody have any ideas? thoughts? feedback? solutions? can spider mites live off of things in the soil, and nothing above the dirt? anything would be greatly appreciated

 

i hope they are not root aphids. i have never had an aphid problem before, nor seen them in person so i wouldnt know. when looking for the insects you have to look really close at the soil and concentrate on one area by waiting for movement to see them. the root aphids on google images looked quite large compared to the base of a plant, and the insects i am having a problem with arent as large as the pictures. they also crawl on the side of the pot above the dirt. i never drenched my soil in azamax (or neem) but have always sprayed, so i think that may be what is in the soil.

 

bump...

even though thats a very detailed, informational sticky, your post was helpless to my cause. no offense but thats why i made this thread, to diagnose my problem specifically. i read freakbro's guide way before i had my insect problem and posted this topic.

so i used 2 applications of the azamax watering directly in my medium, with bad results. they didnt die at all . my leaves still have NO sign of getting eaten, but they are yellowing even more now. theyre deff. not spider mites.

my local shop thinks theyre either root aphids, thrips, or soil mites. i bought this product from them called GoGnats, made by HydrOrganics (people who make Earth Juice.) i have never used it before, but they say its all organic and works wonders. i didnt think a fogger would help, because the pests are in the soil and all the airborne insecticide wouldnt be able to get them all. they agreed with me.
so hopefully it will work and ill let you guys know if i like it. i really dont want to use anything hardcore like avid but if its the last straw than i guess thats it.

 

UPDATE: Phylloxera. aka root aphids.

i used an application of azamax on the soil first with no results. i than used a product called goGnats, still with little results. after storming out of my house furious, i went to the store and bought blue (thrip) and yellow (whitefly & aphid) traps. the bugs are attracted to the yellow pad. i have absolutley no flyers whatsoever, no leaf damage, nothing. i went over my stuff with a 20x microscope and saw no insects, nor direct sucker damage (i spray the leaves with azamax once a week, the last application is day 14 of flowering) on any of the leaves. looking at them with a microscope they look like the bugs pictured below.


the only thing is with my infestation is that the insects are white, and not as green like first one. they seem more brownish. but 3 legs on each side, two antannaes that never stop moving....they give me the eebeejeebees.


root aphids mate and reproduce without producing eggs before they are flyers, and than once they become flyers the females lay eggs.

ed rosenthal reccomended pyrethrum sprays (which actually seemed to help) i sprayed the top of the soils with Don't Bug Me (FoxFarm). i than let off two foggers, since i saw the little fuckers crawling all over the side of my pots.

botaniguard which is a fungus that gets on the bugs and supposedly kills them. this is what im purchasing next.

he also reccomends nematodes.
Root aphids | Cannabis Culture Magazine
Root aphids | Cannabis Culture Magazine
he didnt even reccomend his own Zero Tolerance product. so i have a good feeling he knows what hes talking about

my guess is they infested me via nutrifield brand compressed coco.

 

i hate to double-post, but these things are harming my plants. since i have been trying to treat the problem i have seen stunted growth, and an N deficiency on my plants.

my damage is only really on my lower leaves and it looks like this


a normal miticide like azamax didnt do any good. also, in my above post, they are attracted to yellow sticky cards, when compared to the blue.

i really hope this botaniguard works....because i would really not like to use avid.....but its there for emergencies (only on the veg though for petes sake!)...i really would hate to use it but...

im going to use h202 once before i purchase the botaniguard, because i know the hydrogen peroxide will most likley kill off my colony i already have going.

husky you say sand works? hmm ill try it worth a shot

 

thankfully i dont see any springtails, i feel they would be somewhat easilly distunguishable because of their ant like appearance. their bodies can look like mites but their faces look somewhat like an ant.

even if they were soil mites, i figured i would have seen a reduction with a miticide like azamax. after two applications i really didnt see any difference so i voted spider mites out. i really think i have a sheisty case of these root aphids. i am also using all organic so i am trying to go the easiest on my babies as i can.

 

yes i have read about it - rosemary and clove extracts. i believe it may help - but i have spent over $150 so far on organic extracts that havnt given me a 100% success rate, yet. i feel like if you gradually see them dissappear over numerous applications of things, their chances of coming back are pretty large. ive read numerous threads on icmag of people getting them once they think they are gone

not saying those combinations of extracts dont work, but after so many extract-based applications without complete success, i want to take a different direction.

even though botaniguard is a fungus that gets on the aphids skin and kills them, it seems like it is the same concept of gnatrol. gnatrol is a bacillus bacteria that infects and kills in 24 hours fungus nats, mosquitos, and black flies. so i like the fact that there is a living organism in my soil, working for me, feeding off of these pests. it really sounds promising, and i would like to give it a shot. now i may use sns alongside my azamax just as a precaution from now on, but i would have to see if they carry it at my local shop.

here is a thread all about them on icmag
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=159960

 

Im hoping a 100% success rate is possible. Think about it - they infested your garden and multplied rapidly because in an indoor garden there are no natural predators to these pests. they usually get eaten by nematodes and ladybugs. Introducing a bacteria or fungus that speciffically infects the insect is basically like causing the black plague for the bugs. i guess you can say they would be like microscopic predators.

but i havnt used the botaniguard stuff yet. gnatrol worked great for me before to get rid of fungus gnats, so im going on a pretty good hunch this would work great for these little fuckers.