I have not actually seen mites, but have used a loupe looking for them an have a few suggestions.

Before you start looking at your AV... practice for a while on some other leaves and things... otherwise you may become frustrated trying to use the loup at all, it takes some getting used to.

Nex, there are sevearl types of mites... and pictures are on various pages on the internet.... I "think" that all of them have 8 legs which is a key thing.

Also, mites love to hide... in crackes and crevices, and they run away from light. It might be a goof idea to take off a few leaves in dim light ... then bring them to brithter light so the mites will noit hide

I have heard that a lot of times they are on the undersides of leaves.

I have heard that a lot of times you will see them on the neck of the plant where it meets the soil... although this can be difficult to see with a loup

Take your time... look carefully and slowly

I have also heard that sometimes you can find them by tapping leaves over white paper... they fall off and are more visible on the white paper

good luck
ardy

Niki
I just received my 30x loupe yesterday and
Ardy is right -- it is very hard to use. I will be working with it for awhile.

I have the same problem with the hard leaves and brown centers, but NOT on all my AV. I think there is something else going on.

I moved some of the AV with deformed leaves away from the lights to see if it makes any change. Too soon to tell.

Cork

Hi Nikki,

Here's a trick you can try, though it might not work unless you have a serious mite infestation:

Any time after an hour of your grow lights turn off, turn on the ceiling light in your room, and very carefully check your plants. The mites will look like dust on the leaves, to the naked eye, that you don't see when the lights are on. If you learn to use your loop, you may even get to see them looking like bugs!

This doesn't really apply to spidermites though, because they are big enough to see in any lighting and move fast.

Russell

Thanks for all the tips. But it is true, then, that none of us have actually ever *seen* them? Or did you see them Russell?

No Nikki, I've never seen them (yeah right!) I just made all of that up to make you feel like a moron for trying my advice. What you can see in dim lights, and not in bright lights, doesn't make you dim-witted even if it looks like dust! Take it or leave it. I don't care. If I did care, I would ask you what you didn't understand about my posting.
Russell

You know, Russell, this is not the first time I've seen you reply unnecessarily harsh to someone's post. No one else has said anything, so I guess I'll say something now, though I probably should have spoken up earlier instead of waiting for the sourness to turn up in my post. No one is accusing you of being a moron or dim-witted, and I hope you aren't accusing anyone else of being so, either. So ease up. Every time you want to write some sarcastic or biting remark, please don't. Your sarcasm and nasty attitude, I'm sure, are appreciated by no one.

What I was unsure about was whether you were reporting your own experience or just passing along something you had read, as many people do. And also, if it looks just like dust, how do we know we aren't looking at dust as opposed to really seeing the bugs?

Nikki -

I am in a same position as you - but I tried to see them with 15x loope. I heard that they scoot away so fast - you will never catch them while you are trying to figure out how close to keep your loope to get a leaf in focus.

I had tight centers and even went to the Extention office to ask the ladies to look at the leaf with the microscope. They didn't find any - but said it was inconclusive - because they hide. Now I know it was light bulbs too close.
Looks like I finally got mites now - hopefully they are gone after 3 sprayings with AVID - and my clue was that the centers started dying. Not one or two - but the whole tray.

In my experience the best way to untighten the centers suffering because of too much light - is to put them under the dome. High humidity helps.

Happy Growing
and how is your champion Streptocarpus Bethan doing?

Irina

Dang, are they really that fast?! You wouldn't think those tiny little legs could get them away that quickly. I just got my loupe yesterday and have been trying to see them, but no luck. Or maybe that is luck. I don't know. Somebody on another forum did say that they saw them with a 20x loupe that they have.

My centers aren't dying. Yet. There is one plant I have that looks really suspicious to me, though. The center is a lighter yellow and the blooms look splotchy. I think for that one, I may just cut its crown out and examine the removed crown under the light, so that the mites, if they are really there, have no place to hide. If they aren't there, well, guess I just cut up a plant for not much good reason! I guess this is one of the cases where the cure is better than the (imagined?) disease.

Pictures of mites at this site.

http://steverd.com/violets/bugs/htm

Check it out!

Cork

Nikki - do not cut the crown - get just one baby leaf out.
it could be wrong Ph, too much light, fertizer burn.

Though the photos of your collection - episcias and whatnot that I see from time to time on Violet Voice show an excellent care you take of your gessies.

I am in a same position as for now. I sprayed everything - but who knows - you can always miss couple eggs - and if it was not mites at all???

Irina

I have two noid AV at work (along with a few others) in the window and they got the brown crown and I guessed mites. Because they are at work I have no bug spray or other stuff to take of the problem, so I used my x-acto knife and cut the brown crown out. That was about a month ago and today I have so many suckers growing I can't count them. One of them is also in bud about ready to open.

So -- I don't think they get too much light as the days are shorter and shorter. Not too much fertilizer. And the other 10 or so AV's seem to be "OK".

What do you think????

Cork

Hi Cork - way to go!

Just root your suckers and instead of 2 NOID you will have 20.

The only guess will be that hopefully it was not mites, since it is hard to get rid of all of them with X-acto knife - and it seems to me that happy and healthy suckers prove it.

What do you think? I mean if the center of the plant dies out - the mites do not die out, they move to older leaves and chew on them just to survive, Would they be there - they would go to the fresh juicy suckers and destroy them as well.

Irina

Okay, I will just take a leaf to look at.

Cork, I'm not sure if your cutting out the crown shows anything yet. Maybe. How long have they been growing the suckers. I did that to one of my plants too, a chimera, so it's something I would have done anyway. I rooted the crown and it's growing roots and looks just the same, no better and no worse. The mother plant has put up so many suckers that it will be difficult to separate them. But I'm still suspicious. I'm going to go look carefully at that crown now.

Thank you for commenting on my once-beautiful plants. It's just that the summer was really hard. I was out of town the whole summer studying in a different city. I left most of my plants in my apt. and subletted, so some other people had to take care of them, and they didn't do a very good job. Plus, it got really hot and I don't have AC. And I had dismantled the lights for them. I took some of my plants with me, we drove there, and tried to take care of them there, but the placeI was staying in had almost no light, so that was very stressful too. I really hope that they are just going through shock from all the changes they've gone through recently.

Thanks for the advice.

Hi Irina & Mwedzi
My thinking was that the problem was NOT mites, and these were noid's from Walmart so I was willing to experiment.
Sorry I did not date them when I cut the crowns, but I am sure it was late summer or so. I am really surprised at how fast they started to send out suckers and they are quite large now. Because I see a bud I am going to wait a while before removing the suckers to their own pot.

I am beginning to think that perhaps I got the crown wet and this may have caused the problem, but don't know for sure. I think if it were mites or some other bug the other AV's that share the window whould have got the bug by now.

I'll keep you posted.

Cork

I'm just reading this thread for the first time. I've never seen cyclamen mites but I, personally, see no reason to ever look to see them. They show themselves by their damage. On gesneriphiles, some years ago, someone posted that they searched and searched for them, and finally found them under the skin of the plant, inside rather than outside. I don't know if this is the case, but I certainly have heard lots anecdotal commentary that they are very hard to see with magnification. So, my methodology is to concentrate on damage, as that is much easier to diagnose.

African Violets are notorious for cyclamen mite susceptability. A late friend of mine, who for a while was commercially growing mini violets, found he had to spray frequently to keep them under control, although thrips were probably even more difficult to control. Now, in a greenhouse mass-propagation situation bugs become much more of a chronic problem than in a small collection. They come back fast whereas in our collections we can get rid of them for a long time between infestations. But, what I have noticed, having a mixed gesneriad collection with a small part being AV's, is that cyclamen mite damage has always made itself apparent first with episcias. In fact I noticed that episcias will get quite a bit of obvious damage before I see anything on the violets. So, keep your episcias happy, so that when they get mites, you will be able to quickly ID the situation. Once you suspect or actually know you have an infestation, then treatment is simple and effective. I have had three or four infestations in the last five or more years. Each time I sprayed with one application of Avid, and had complete and lasting supression of the mites. The badly damaged episcias showed recovery by putting out new crowns from the axils of the leaves. Stolons sometimes were dead, and sometimes recovered. Violets that didn't show damage, did not later develop damage. They just regained normal vigor.

I would go as far as to suggest, that if you think you have mites, you have two options. One--you can wait until you are certain that the conditions you are seeing are from mite damage, and then spray. This methodology will result in more damage, and a longer period for recovery; but it will teach you first hand what the damage looks like, and what the pattern of damage and time frame of development is like. Then, at least, the next time you will know more about what is happening with your plants--whether a problem is mites or something else. The second option is to spray if you suspect damage. Then if the problem continues you will know that it isn't mites. But, if the plants soon begin to show increased vigor, and lose the problem foliage that concerned you then you can suspect that mites might have been at fault.

Either way, you will have dealt with mites and succeeded. I found Avid was very effective. It has an odor, that is apparent and not too dissimilar to some natural plant odors--Kohleria allenii comes to mind. It is something like the natural scent of Nematanthus albus too. It shouldn't be objectionable unless you are especially susceptable to changes in room odors. A small quantitiy of Avid will last a long time. One shouldn't need to use it very often (less than once a year, mol), and a quarter teaspoon will make a gallon, which is about four times + what one would typically need to treat two or three multi-level lightstands. So, that is my methodology,

Jon

Hi Jon. Thanks for the advice. I can't follow the first possibility (do nothing until it becomes obvious that it's mites), but I did follow the second, in a way. So I sprayed my two worst-looking plants and left the others alone. I sprayed with Kelthane, which is all I have right now. I have to find an affordable supplier of Avid. I don't need a quart of it and except for my chimeras, it's cheaper to start the AVs all over than to buy Avid. Anyway, I will watch the plants and see if the ones I sprayed with Kelthane get better, or if the ones I didn't spray get worse. I'm wondering if I wasn't just too heavy-handed with the fertilizer. they weren't really fertilized all summer and grew in the dark. Maybe the shock of being stuck directly under lights and fertilizing got to them. Actually, on some of my plants, I do see dark brown/orange drops at the ends of the hairs, and I think this is a sign of overfertilization.

I do remember you saying that about Episcias before. I got freaked out about it last year and killed many of my Episcias trying the hot water mite-control method. Maybe I just go through a yearly mite-scare. I only have 2 Episcias on my stand right now, that have been there long enough to show anything. They are immediately adjacent to each other. One looks terrible, like it has some horrible virus or something. Or like I didn't water it for very long time and then threw a bunch of cold water all over it and the leaves and also put it on a windowsill and left the window open with temps in the 40s. Yeah, I did that to it. The new growth looks better than the old. The other plant, which didn't have to suffer such abuses from me, looks fine.

More and more I am starting to doubt that it's mites. There is one plant I have, a miniature, and it is just a baby miniature at that. It looks suspicious to me. But since it's so small, there's hardly anything to it at all, not big overlapping leaves and whatnot, so it should be really easy to examine. It should be easiest to see mites on it than on the rest. But I still don't see anything.

What is the active ingredient in Avid?

Abemectin is the active ingredient.

I have heard in the past that Cape Cod Violetry sells smaller quantities. I think the way to go is for a club to buy a quart and divide it up into one or two oz. tiny bottles with dropper tops, so it can be measured by the drop. I have not looked into this but have been told such bottles can be obtained through a pharmacy. Obviously all the info that comes with this product should be xeroxed for each bottle. It would then be sold at cost to members and any left over could be sold at club sales.

I have had cultural problems that made me think I had mites. It happens. Also, I think kelthane should be a fine alternative. It hasn't sold in California for many years so I have never used it.

Jon

Nikki

I got AVID from Muncy Rose Emporium - 8 oz for about $100
I think it is enough to kill the mites off all around Chicago.
https://muncyrose.com/frame.html
Irina

Jon

- can you tell us more about symptoms of a mite infestation on episcias?

On te club meeting we just talked about a botrytis that kills episcia - the dying off which starts at the growth points, the ends of the stems become brown, and die off, then brown death moves lower until the whole plant is goner. And you cannot stop it.

What will be your opinion and the cure you would think of in both cases?

Regards

Irina

HI, C-mites begin with brown hairy tiny leaves in the growing center. These leaves die. The next set of leaves brown from the petiole. The stolons also die at the growing point. So, the plants stop growing. There may be a brownish or discolored patch on the younger leaves. Usually, if you don't do anything the problem just spreads or becomes noticable on more and more plants. One spray with Avid and the problem stops. Dead tips don't comeback but the plants soon make new growths from buds at the base of leaves. It can take several months for the plants to recover, and usually you need to take cuttings of the new growths to make a nice new plant. But, you should do this anyway with healthy plants, as episcias like to be restarted often. I haven't had botrytis, as far as I know. I think good culture, warm growing area and good light make a huge difference.