Ok, so I just set the plant in the dog run where it is all cement and where the dogs won't pee on it. It'll be happy there. Didn't know mealies could catch a ride on ants, spiders, etc. lindasewandsew, I've used dish soap/water on whiteflies, but never thought about using it on mealies. But I'd be afraid to dunk the whole thing! But then, it'd sure get rid of the ones hiding under dead leaves that I might not see. I like the idea of drowning the little critters. dellis530, I used rubbing alcohol on the tiny echeveria on my window sill several days ago and it dripped down into the soil. That must be why I haven't seen any more mealies. I thought it would kill the plant, but it must have killed anything in the soil instead. Yea! cactusmcharris, now I find out that there are different kinds of mealies!!! And some attack roots? Now that's a great reason to do a soil drench! Or dunk the whole thing in a bucket. What is a "51 bottle?" I gather that it is like a gallon of rubbbing alcohol? Since it's been years since I've had a mealy, and now I've had two plants attacked, there probably is a neighbor who has an infestation of them and they are making their way to my yard. It happens with wasps too.

I can attest to the effectiveness of regular ol' rubbing alcohol to eradicate mealies but with a few additional steps. Though this post is long, if you have mealies, it's worth the read. I finally got the whole thing under control and have a new plan in place. Here's what I did. I prepared to re-pot all affected plants and took the opportunity to discard all plastic pots & introduce a grittier mix minus calcined clay. I washed away the old soil & replaced with new mix (gritty as the affected plants were all jades, eccheveria & adenium). Each plant got a new pot or scrubbed out & decontaminated old pot. All terracotta, some glazed if that makes a difference, all plastic pots were discarded. I used Dr. Bronner's soap to scrub out pots, I didn't but you could also go the extra step and dip scrubbed pots in a bleach solution while you're at it. I set up a 'sick bay' & sequestered all of my affected or suspected affected plants in a bright & sunny area with supplemental lighting. Probably not necessary but I wanted to make sure that the plants would be able to have all the energy they could get to help me fight off the buggers. Also, I got some reading glasses & with the extra lighting, I was able to actually *see* the buggers instead of just the tell-tale chalky parts on the trunks. I made sure to keep only the plants I really wanted & tossed the ones I could care less about (ie: kept all the jades & tossed the coleus). I removed most of the leaves on my gollum jades & the large leaf jades, making sure to leave a few large older leafs and a few smaller, new leaves. I used straight alcohol in a spray bottle & hosed every part of the plant. I then followed with a spray of plain water to rinse down the plants, but I don't think it's necessary & have since quit doing that. I then set up a small oscillating desk fan to improve air circulation. I inspected & treated once every 3 days & haven't seen a mealy on any of the plants since I started this 2 weeks ago. The plants are now leafing out again & though they look a bit like 'Pepper' from American Horror, all is finally well. The trick is to continue with alcohol spritz in combination with dotting the actual mealies with q-tip dipped alcohol. In the past, I had only tried to treat using q-tip method. The problem with that is that you only kill the adults, if you continue for a series of days, you will kill the emerging hatchlings too & break the life cycle. Also, replacing the soil & scrubbing out the pots helps cut down on the population of bugs you need to find & treat. In all, I am treating 5 large adenium, 4 younger ones, 4 large jades, a p. afra & various eccheveria that I picked up locally cheap, only to find they were infested & needing treatment. I'm still inspecting every day & keep an alcohol bottle nearby with reading glasses so that I can stay vigilant. I've decreased treatment to once a week now & will likely keep these plants separate from my others until next summer when everyone will share my patio =)

You're right about the moss, to be honest this plant was left at my mums and wasn't really given the correct environment. She just had it outside on the patio all the time. I've repotted it into a larger pot with a more free draining mix which should hopefully help with the moss situation. The root ball is extremely compacted though, I know you're meant to repot succulents dry, but I did soak it to try and loosen the roots but It didn't do much. I just ended up repotting it with the root ball as it was!

If OP found a few small white bugs, that sounds like root mealy bugs. Not something you want to ignore. Get the white stuff off as much as you can, and wash the whole root ball in rubbing alcohol. Ideally you would then after 15 minutes also wash the roots with Safer's Insecticidal Soap or a natural soap like castile. Then pot it up. You may have to repeat after 10 days or so. Then your Lithops (singular and plural both are Lithops) should be fine.