need confirmations. mealybugs

Stini

Stini

Carnivore
I figured these are mealybugs......

I have a tray of lowland Neps I've grown from seed and keep them with the dome on the bottom self away from enclosed grow shelfs . I never check on them or water them.maybe once every 3-4 month a finger poke in the soil to check dampness . RH is so high they do just fine. however I checked on them today and noticed I neglected it for a while and soils was dry , plants dying. did a clean up and found these critters .. sprayed them all down with safer's 3in1 and bleached all the trays I used for them.


how did they get in there and not the rest of my collection ( I hope - everything looks fine and healthy ) . never had this issues before. thrips yes and thats it so far.


sorry for the crap vid

 
Yep looks like mealy bugs to me. Could be the ones that live in the roots, you can remove pots and check for the white waxy powder on the inside of the pots/on the root ball.
 
They do look mealy. However I was tricked once by some detrivores that lived in the wet medium; they looked sort of like mealy bugs but were different. They just ate dead plant material. Also like your bugs they were more active than mealy bugs and sort of thinner and more defined. The white stuff could be fungus.
So I'm not sure. But keep a close eye out for the plants losing vitality. That's often the first sign of pests or disease.
 
Root mealy bugs! They spread quickly so I would isolate infected plants asap. They're difficult to eradicate due to their protective waxy shells. A thorough root drench with good systemic pesticide should help with control but I would also combine that with a repot
 

Mealybugs / Home and Landscape / UC Statewide IPM Program (UC IPM)

ipm.ucanr.edu ipm.ucanr.edu

I still think that the bugs in the video are moving around too much to be mealies. Now babies do move around but those ones looked a bit old for that. Also they don't have the hideous cottony look. The white stuff could be fungus that detrivores would eat. Still I'm not saying don't treat or quarantine. If it was my plant, I would look carefully for the disgusting mess of white cottony stuff with evil, bloated mealies like gluttonous demons.
 
My guess would be that these are root mealybugs (Rhizoecus). They seem to operate a bit differently than the type that attack above ground, and don’t always leave the obvious white fluff until the infestation gets really bad.

The only success I had eradicating them was with a systemic and a repot. They’re really persistent and I wish I had a better alternative than to use pesticides, but I don’t know of one.

I guess my advice would be to be *really* careful with new plant additions and always quarantine them before adding to your grow environment.
 
Ive read that a hot water soak of the root ball at 49C for 20 minutes will kill root mealy bugs. Looks like the protocol is for cacti though, not sure if neps would survive that temperature.
 
Cacti and succulents with root mealy bugs are easy. Remove all the soil with running water and plop the whole plant in 99% isopropyl alcohol for a few minutes. Wash off the alcohol and no more mealies. I wouldn't try that or hot water with CP's, though.
 
Lloyd, you definitely have a point about the speed of the bugs. I remember they moved fairly slowly when they were bothering my plants, but they did crawl around.

Root mealybugs also all appeared similar in size, whereas in the video the size of the bugs seems to vary… hmm


Edit: I still think they’re mealybugs
 
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Safer to treat but take a look around. Once you see the globs of cotton, eggs and adult females, you will know in the future.
 
Thanks everyone for the info. @Lloyd Gordon @cpgeek @Avery @Will20013 @VarunA


a little background on those. - Nep seedling are in the grow dome tray -pics below.

I grew the neps seedlings from seeds and they stayed in the same tray the whole time. been a year +++ . no new additions to that grow dome tray . my other plants above are growing just fine. I had a thrip issue little back and and solved that issue with systemic and later on with natural predators insects. https://ladybug.ca. great site and located in Quebec .

I barely took care of those new seedlings . in the dome they had 90% + RH and barely watered. last summer ?? I did a clean up of them, trim/ repot , and I sold half the collection of the seedlings and never had any reports of infestation. only reports I got were they all grew very well..

sooo have no idea how they got in there. ??????????????? part of me thinks , based on their looks , they dwarf white isopods . I have a colony in my gecko tank and was told they can spread .

same day as this post I checked on them , noticed the neglect went to long and needed to water as they were wilting away . trimmed the dead stuff away and watered hoping they would bounce back, thats when I noticed the PEST .

sprayed them all down very well with Safer's 3 in 1 . see what happens. I will spray again in a few days . don't feel like using systemic spray yet. more work then I feel like doing. kinda over low land neps to be honest. but a part of me wants to save them.

all my other plants have been growing very well and don't see them spreading - no signs of dying plants. first two pics are the "dome tray " the seedling are in, been living there the whole time.
empty spaces on the rack are for the Sarr's and VFT I have in the fridge for dormancy. soooooo. if anyone is interested. I have a lot to thin out. lowlands also once the pest situation is dealt with. lol.

mind the mess , condo living and limited space.


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@Lloyd Gordon if you zoom in on the last pic , upper right side you can see the paradox type I got from you while back as seeds. bunch sprouted , gave away a bunch and kept a few. very tall growers and one split into two stems.
 
The paradoxa type 1 are nice but they get so tall and when I tried to cut it down and repot it, it died unlike a lot of other dews which do grow back.
 
Hi @Stini maybe they came from contaminated soil/tools? Ya I would think if they were sealed it would be very hard for them to crawl into there. I also have dwarf white isopods and they look similar, but so do mealy bug nymphs. Hope that is the last you see of them, your collection looks super happy!
 
If it was isopods, you wouldn’t see white fluffy shells/webbing in the pot near the roots. Also, if the bugs are moving around and on the roots themselves, that is another tell-tale sign. I have pretty much dipped every single highland nepenthes, cpehalotus and every plant in hot water to kill these guys. I had to do this at least twice and each time I completely bare rooted and dunked it in hot water being careful to measure it with a thermometer. Some plants do take it badly: most of mine had their growth tips go black, but after a while they recovered. Some of them didn’t survive. Plants like VFTs and cephs are pretty tolerant. they will look rough for 6-12 months, but it will survive. So I would really make sure if it is root mealybugs, that you check everything. Also keep washing your hands in between handling plants/sections/trays. the bugs will spread through water and runoff…so be very careful. Root mealybugs are the worst and to be honest, I feel like they are even worse than scale or surface mealybugs since you can’t see them until it’s too late. I have PTSD from root mealybugs… just when you think they are gone, you spot them elsewhere. That is why I had to do drastic measures. All it took was one plant (a Sarracenia purpurea Montana (which I still have as a reminder of the plant that brought my hobby almost to an end)) and it spread everywhere in the tank.

Note: I never tried the hot water method on nep seedlings, they might be much more sensitive. But that publication up there was my reference.
 
VarunA said:
If it was isopods, you wouldn’t see white fluffy shells/webbing in the pot near the roots. Also, if the bugs are moving around and on the roots themselves, that is another tell-tale sign. I have pretty much dipped every single highland nepenthes, cpehalotus and every plant in hot water to kill these guys. I had to do this at least twice and each time I completely bare rooted and dunked it in hot water being careful to measure it with a thermometer. Some plants do take it badly: most of mine had their growth tips go black, but after a while they recovered. Some of them didn’t survive. Plants like VFTs and cephs are pretty tolerant. they will look rough for 6-12 months, but it will survive. So I would really make sure if it is root mealybugs, that you check everything. Also keep washing your hands in between handling plants/sections/trays. the bugs will spread through water and runoff…so be very careful. Root mealybugs are the worst and to be honest, I feel like they are even worse than scale or surface mealybugs since you can’t see them until it’s too late. I have PTSD from root mealybugs… just when you think they are gone, you spot them elsewhere. That is why I had to do drastic measures. All it took was one plant (a Sarracenia purpurea Montana (which I still have as a reminder of the plant that brought my hobby almost to an end)) and it spread everywhere in the tank.

Note: I never tried the hot water method on nep seedlings, they might be much more sensitive. But that publication up there was my reference.
Click to expand...


I have used ladybug.ca before to kill off thrips with predator insects with great success and was considering placing an order to treat the root mealy bugs. it can add up with follow up treatments.
link below from the website.

https://ladybug.ca/category/80/root-mealybugs
 
Awesome. That is pretty cool. I didn’t know these biological controls exist. Let me know how it works out. I might have to get some and set up my plants with these treatments once I finish my new setup and repot some plants.
 
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