Root pest ID please?

Starfox

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Also my root mealy bugs were a hard ID due to very small size. Here’s pics through scope at 30x. They appear to be more oval than root aphids with legs that do not extend as far past the body outline. The other image is what I think is a predatory mite next to a very small mealy bug. This mealy bug is 1/10th the size of the larger one. So I don’t think that mite is controlling the big guys!

30x is the way to go, cool pics. Thanks for sharing. Yeah they are definitely the same critters as you say the oval shape and legs ruled out aphids pretty quickly.

I have just identified this problem during spring repots. The hot water seems like an elegant solution to spending money on insecticides or beneficials. But doesn’t seem all that feasible for a large number of plants or larger containers. Sustaining the 115F temp to the interior of a 3 or 5 gallon container seems difficult. But maybe I’ll experiment with a water container on the outdoor gas grill.

I did think about using the bath tub but I have a wife and decided that wasn't a great idea, thankfully it was only the one relatively small root ball and not a mass infestation so I just filled a bucket with hot tap water, waited for the temp to go down and gave it a soak checking every now and then with one of those meat thermometers to see if the interior got to the right temp. To be fair if they were actually in the roots of the tree I may have taken a different approach but this was easy enough to do as I didn't have other options at hand, it appears to be ok, the tree looks fine for now so I'm happy if it is.

I wonder if control is similar to root aphids. Arbico Organics recommends beneficial nematodes and “Alternating spray treatments between azadirachtin and B. bassiana for extended periods is optimal.” Azadirachtin is a Neem tree derived insecticide and B. bassiana is fungus deadly to some insects. I am skeptical that the Aza drench fully penetrates rootball and maybe soaking is necessary. The fungus also has some drawbacks as there have been some rare cases of human infection in persons with compromised immune systems.

I think a soaking is the way to go if it is bad, using something like neem or a contact insecticide should reduce the need for hot water too but I'd do both to be on the safe side. I've never really had bugs that bad that I thought a schedule was necessary although that is for the bugs I can see, when they are in the soil who knows how long they have been there.
I do have a large tub of Neem ordered now so when that gets here I'm going to try it out on a few plants and see if it is worth it, don't like the idea of playing with fungus though.

I lifted some 1 gallon liner material from the pot and sprayed insecticide soap on the outside of rootball and container and dusted in DE powder on the rootball and container. Although I’m sure the DE washes out the first watering. I also noticed that the infected plants were all in contact with ground.

So back to the systemic insecticides, I applied to granular Imidacloprid and Dinotefuran (probably banned in EU) to various different containers (all non-flowering). But I’m skeptical on that also, since the roots will uptake it to the top growth and new root tips don’t seem like they’ll retain sufficient concentrations.

Just my long winded 2 cents!
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Both of those are banned here and I know that neonicotinoids are generally the got to advice but the only one I think I can get here is acetamiprid but touch wood I have gotten by without having to go nuclear so far. Don't get me wrong I would if it seemed like the best option but for me it just seems like added faffing about but then that is easy to say when I don't have show quality trees, I imagine perspective changes quite a bit then.
 

TN_Jim

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...another, with my old ass iPhone. These ants (Monomorium minimum) are super tiny ~1-2mm
247257
 

Orion_metalhead

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Never thought of using a hand lens in combination with phone camera! Great idea. I have a nice little sony camera... need to take that out for better close ups. Been using my phone for all photos.
 

TN_Jim

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Never thought of using a hand lens in combination with phone camera! Great idea. I have a nice little sony camera... need to take that out for better close ups. Been using my phone for all photos.
There is a feel to it. You know how you can tap the screen to focus in on a box section within the view of your phone, this is important in my experience, but light-wise touching the area focusing on just adjacent -along with feel for distance from object/specimen can produce some decent macro, even print/publishable.

Finding this was a huge ah-ha for me. For example, I took a photo of my daughters eye a while back like this and was just spellbound. Also, I have used this to get a better/clearer focus on things that I can not achieve with a hand lens alone, even if I don’t nessesarily want a photo of it. Good stuff
 
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