has any one have had the problem with that and colocasia, I Planted 2 colocasias Rubard under a lagustrim? tree bush thing "cant spell right" well They would get a leave and fall over and come back and I thought that was werid so I dug them up and notice that they were soggy at the end root, It looked as if it was going to hevan if I didn't move them? well my question is is that fungus gnats. it seemed not to affect my alocasias. one thing i did notice there were lots of roll-e-poll-e's? It was also in the sade.
what do you guys think?
ely
Fungus gnats??
I have many fungus gnats - I will be using the beneficial nematodes before I bring them indoors this year for the first time. You simply water the plants with the stuff mixed in the water. I can't stand the little creeps inside the house! They will eat roots, especially rotting ones. They are not beneficial to any plant.
Seems to me, Ely (is that your name...it is my husbands surname too)..that perhaps your roots were rotting and that's what attracted them.
I have to hand yellow tape around to get them...I have found them flying around inside the fridge, for gosh sakes. I hate them!!!!
I don't know what gets them, but they get me!!!
Buy a spray that treats fungus gnats, it has to treat ova (eggs) also. A combination of sticky tape and saturating the soil once in while with the spray with get rid of them, unless of course you're bringing in veggies from the garden...
Fungus Gnats mainly feast on decomposing organic material and though it's said that the larvae may damage fine roots of plants it is more likely that the roots where rotten first and then the gnats arrived to feed of the rotten parts. Where there is decomposing organic material there will be Fungus Gnats, it's the nature of things. Biological control via nematodes, parasitic mites and BT (Strain made for Fungus Gnat, I think it's sold as Gnatrol) do help control these critters but may not 100% eliminate them and do have to be reapplied regularly. Best long term control on interior plants are soil trenches with systemic insecticides.
I don't think that's entirely accurate. I have tons of these guys but I check my roots frequently and they're in good shape.
Researchers say they lay the eggs on overly moist soil (I've watered less but it didn't help) and putting down some sand to confuse them (b/c it dries quickly) is suppossed to help also.
I was able to completely irradicate an infestation by the method I posted previously. But if you have plants, you can expect to keep getting them everytime you bring in something new or chance the soil
Decomposing of organic material happens with moisture. Ever seen Fruit Fly larvae on a dry piece of fruit? Same goes with fungus gnat larvae. You'll have to have the soil regularly dry out to overcome the life cycle of those guys since adult and pupa don't absolutely require the moisture. Now the problem is that there are many tropicals that will not tolerate dry soil for short or longer periods thus the dry soil method cannot be used get rid of the gnats unless you want to kill your plant with them :).