Aphids or fungus gnats? Aphids would be on the underside of the leaves. Fungus gnats are the ones flying around.

I'm very familiar with fungus gnats as tried growing indoors with various mediums. Not my finest move.

These were bright green. Definitely not flying.

When you said you saw them "around the plant" that's what confused me since aphids would usually be on the plant. Sticky cards will do nothing for aphids if that's what you have. Can you get a pic of them?

I had spider mites a little while back. They came in on some strawberry plants I bought to put in my NFT. I dipped the plants and everything but those little phuckers are tough. They got on my snap peas plants too. Had to take them out. Sucked.

I see. I noticed them around the base of the lettuce after I cut a few leaves off. I can't seem to find any more which I would expect if they are aphids. They don't usually come in ones and twos I don't think.

I will get a magnifying glass and see if I can spot any and take a high res picture.

See the little b@stards below... Not sure what is on the yellow box but they're dead.

Looks like aphids. They come in all kinds of different sizes, shapes and colors. Regardless of what type they're all sap sucking b@stards and will eventually do damage to your plants. A lot people go the "natural" route with neem oil or soap or garlic since they don't want to use chemicals. I always blast them with insecticide. Chemicals or not, they need to die! ; )

odd. i've never experienced aphids indoors. personally, i would start over and sterilize everything. you can try something organic like neem oil as mentioned above, but i'm not too keen about spraying leafy greens with anything that i'm going to eat.

I get that about leafy greens, don't want to spray them and then eat the leaves.

if you want to try saving the plants, take them outside and hose the plants down with a garden hose sprayer to try and remove as many of the buggers as possible.

They're kratky method so I would have to pull out the netpot and roots and I would probably end up getting air roots wet. Maybe though...

Maybe this is a crazy idea... maybe I could use a high powered vacuum and suck them out?

Here is what I did that seemed to help:

I filled a 5 gallon bucket half way with water and a bit of dish soap. I put a few sprays of mild insecticidal soap in as well. Then I wrapped the net pot in foil to prevent the medium from falling out when I flip the plant upside down and dunk/soak it in the soapy water. After 10 minutes I thoroughly rinse the leaves, taking extra care not to wet the air roots, and put the plant back in it's Kratky home and turn a fan on to help dry up any water remaining on the leaves.

So far, so good.