I was hanging my hot shot pest strips above my flower plants and noticed some browing on the leaves on top of the tallest part of the plants by where the strips hang, it always happens a couple/few weeks into flower and will continue, is this a problem that anyone else has had? Also is hanging them above the plants best or would placing them by the growing medium or on the floor be better?
2 or 3 feet above the canopy works very well in my gardens. There's some literature about phytotoxicity and dichlorvos but it deals mainly with foliar treatments. Not much on the vapor.
never noticed an issue before, i will say to be effective you need to make sure your exhaust turns off. Had a bout with mites a few years ago, wondered why they all didn't die immediately, turned off exhaust and next day nothing moving at al
I had it lower thinking the fan blowing up on the plants and the air out take by the celing was blowing/sucking (lol) the pest vapors, but those vapors must be strong, i also have it in a 3'x4' area, prob overkill. I will raise it and see how it looks, Nip: I turn the exaust off for 8 of the 12 dark hrs, do you think this is long enough? So far no mites.
This is imperative. Most of the folks who bitch about pest strips not working never shut down airflow or exhaust. If you leave the exhaust on you might as well not use them.
I would make sure its off at least 10 hours daily. don't do 24 unless you have a real problem going on. you don't want to trade one problem (bugs) for another (heat)
I'd suggest that the required saturation time (exhaust fan off)depends on the room size. 2-3 hours of saturation proved sufficient for the small closet i used to use but now with two 5x6 flower rooms I try to shoot for 4 hrs or so. One problem I've noticed is that RH shoots to 90% or so during the time the exhaust fan isn't running. So far so good but I feel like it's only a matter of time before that causes an issue of its own. Knocking on wood like a big dog here but so far I've not seen a mite on almost 2 yrs. the hot shots work well if you give em a chance to do their job
duc brings up a solid point. It pains me but I run a dehumidifier 24/7 to combat RH. The reason it pains me is because same elec could run close to another 1k in lighting. but rather have less than mold you know
Bumping this older thread for a question about the pest strips.... I have/will always have mite issues because of the dogs in my house (and I'm a slob) so these strips are a god-send. I've noticed the same thing when I leave my exhaust on and the mites aren't killed right away - of course they're not, the gases are getting sucked out. Turn the fan off, you say? Ok.... so what about that damn smell, then? Because of my house structure, right now you can smell the 4 week old clones I have downstairs that are still in veg. They're maybe a couple feet tall at most, and I've got 5 of them. Standing upstairs in my front door (directly above the room) I can faintly smell them. I can strongly smell them downstairs when I'm still 15 feet away from my room. How in the sweet fucking hell am I supposed to turn my fan/filter off every day without stinking up my whole house?? I haven't even really gotten started yet, and it already smells! But I direly need those pest strips!! (I should note that I don't have my ventilation set up yet - that's today's project.)
add secondary odor control like ONA or add in room scrubber to scrub 24/7 so house doesn't stink instead of focusing on just the exhaust so you can shut down exhaust without stink
So my odor control is an ozone generator. I also have a carbon filter, but based on the fact that it's almost a decade old, and didn't really do much the last time I used it (hence the addition of the Big Blue...) I'm not even hooking it up this time. Turn both off? BB & fan every day?
Did you always pull air thru your filter? You can flip the fan and push and maybe get a little more back up use of that filter...but that is pretty old. Honestly I would kill it all for as long as you can for a night or two. Pest straps are awesome cuz they'll drop anything almost overnight when it get to the levels it needs to be at but killing your filtration. But running it half ass just like any other pesticide you run the risk of shit getting immune to it and it not working....and stripes are the nukes so you don't want that Leave the strip out constantly. Kill your filters at night and have zero exha7st running at night for as many hours as possible for at least 2 if not even nights. Then return to normal exhaust. That should kill everything. If I were you, I'd follow up with a two part azamax treatment ( root drench ) about 5-7 days apart and scrub room with bleach. That should knock out mites and then use pest straps normally with exhaust running or outside the room as a control method to stop reinfestation
Thanks, bud! I think for the odor control it will be trial and error. My front door is directly above my room, and it already reeks - all I have going are some 4-5 week old clones. If I switch vent off every night, and then back on in the a.m., the test will be when I walk through that front door when I get home in the afternoon, if I still smell it. I definitely don't want to risk mites again. I get lazy about shit like that, and I burned myself doing so with the lone grow I've had in this house a few years back. One day it was a few mites, and then two days went by without me visiting (because I'm lazy) and when I went down there the third day, it looked like someone's shitty halloween decorations, spider webs on every leaf. Never again!!!
I had these mites a few times and these pest strips keep them in line. I did what useless said and controlled the room better by spaying every two weeks. Works great.
