Habanero plant pests??? Whiteflies...mites?

ictus

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Hello!

I am growing some Habanero plants indoors hydroponically. I ordered them as "baby plants" which turned out to be meaningless since they arrived 95 days old in 2" pots, in bad shape. I've only had them about 2 weeks but they have exploded in root growth and now the leaves are perking up. Except for a few leaves.


One of my leaves appeared to be "Sweating" and I know that's a bad sign so I took some macro shots of the underside:

pests_01.jpg


Here's the underside.

pests_02.jpg


At first I thought the black flecks were spidermites, but now I think they are just dirt. I cut this leaf off and photographed it for a few hours on a flat surface and none of the black dots moved, so I am pretty sure they aren't mites.

But I worry about the white/grey looking round disks. They look kinda like Whitefly nymphs or something.

I did get a couple adult whiteflies that came with the plant in shipping. They were kinda stunned in the box so it was easy to kill them, but maybe I missed one? Do these look like larvae or nymphs? Do nymphs move about?

The things that look like nymphs to me are kinda dry and flaky when I scrape them off with a tweezer, it's really hard to tell if they are alive but they seem to crumble up like a flake of dead skin.

The leaf does look damaged all over doesn't it? The rather large scrape mark was caused by my tweezers trying to remove some black flecks. They don't come off easily whatever they are.

This is a higher resolution image link:
http://www.worstkind.com/hydro/10-6-11/pests_03.jpg


btw here's the roots of the plants after about 1 week in hydro. The white roots are the new growth, tan ones were already there wrapped around the 2" pots.

roots.jpg


And 4 days later:

roots02.jpg


update_02.jpg


They are recovering from a yellow tint still but there is alot of new growth, most of the smaller leaves are new. I already got to eat a pepper; the one on the right came with one that was small but green that rapidly turned red in my DWC system.


Anybody here have any experience growing peppers in hydro? This is my first time and so far it's alot of fun!!

Still curious to solve my pest issue but so far it's not causing too much harm that I can see.

Thanks to anybody who can help me out!
 

April Manier

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No experience here.

Hitting the leaves with overhead water usually dispells whiteflies.

It looks a little like scale. Scale is primarily found on indoor plants. Is it gummy or sticky at all?
 

ictus

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I do spray the leaves sometimes and haven't seen any flies for a while.

I thought they looked kinda like scales also. Also kinda like larvae or nymphs for whiteflies.

This pic looked familiar:

05587F02_Web.jpg

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05587.html

But the odd thing is they aren't sticky or gummy like you ask. They seem dead and dry when I scrape em off with a tweezer but like I said they're so tiny it's very hard to tell.

Thanks for the reply.
 

wifezilla

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Got any neem oil? Might not be a bad idea to hit them with a neem oil spray. I had all my indoor peppers wiped out by some bugs. Turned out to be spider mites AND whiteflies, but I keep neem oil on hand now. No more pepper cooties! :D
 

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