Bennies(heisenburg tea) and neem oil (or other gnat treatments)??

I've been fighting gnats for about 3 years now, using mosquito dunks(BTI) to keep them under control and hydroguard and pondzyme for beneficial bacteria (I'm in flood trays in case your wondering). Well anyway, shit went sideways cuz I wasn't on top of it and I got root rot AND gnat population exploded!! I'm almost finished with what's in flower so I hit em with Bayer Advanced (4 ml per gallon) followed by the rest of my hydroguard and I'm just letting them finish the week and chopping since they're basically done anyway.

But, I'm tired of the gnats and want to ERADICATE them!!! (and BTI is just not doing it) I've now got Neem oil, Bayer Advanced Complete Insect Killer (Imidacloprid), and Sevin 5% Dust. I'm also going back to heisenburg tea for my benificial bacteria. I treated my seedlings, clones and veg plants with Neem oil (3oz. per gal. mix) foliar style, but I'm unsure how to fully eradicate the gnats without killing all my bennies too. Given what I've got to work with, whats my best course of action?

I'd like to know better approaches to this, because I'm fighting the little bastards myself in soil. I think they were in the soil itself, I never had them before this new batch.

Go organic. The. Easiest. Way. To. Grow.

Well AllenHaze, I don't see how going organic will do anything about my gnat problem, care to elaborate?

Unless someone chimes in with some real advice I think I'll keep up the daily neem sprays and give em a weekly Bayer advanced treatment just before I do my rez changes until I'm sure they've been eradicated. Then just keep the yellow sticky cards in there for monitoring (probably keep spraying the neem in veg too, but not daily). Wish me luck on my bug war! I'm going starship troopers on their asses lol.

I think what @AllenHaze was referring to is using all organic living soil with beneficials that kill or eat gnats living in it, nematodes and whatnot. I'm not super educated on the topic, but that's my assumption about what he meant.

What is this, "real advice" you speak of? This guy nailed it on the head ^ ^ ^ You're having a gnat problem because you're currently dealing with an unbalanced ecosystem. As such, you have one or more different organism taking advantage of the resources available. In this case, gnats and their larvae. I always have fungus gnats flying around my plants. However, since I make the effort to balance my system, rather than buying into gimmicky wonder potions, I don't have a problem with an overpopulation of said gnats. Taking the time to understand the actual environment you're dealing with can make all the difference. I get that your route is YOUR route and I respect that. With that in mind, you could use hydrogen peroxide. This will kill the soft-bodied larvae instantly. It also kills bennies, so take that into consideration. I wish you all the best!! I'm also not a hydro grower, so... yea.

Ok so Im not going to advise you I'm just gonna tell u my current situation. So after many successfull and gnat free grows in rockwool with a sterile res (h2o2) I decided to try brewing my own ewc tea. I got the hang of it and Im bein honest when I say my growth rate increased by about a quarter which i was over the moon with. Unfortunately last week I went into my flower room and seen about 10 gnats flying around. 1 of my prized nl5xhaze plants started to show signs of nutrient imbalance and General poor health. So I've went back to using h2o2 and keeping a sterile rootzone. Hopefully this will stop the problem although it's too early to tell. What I will say is that if I had continued to run a sterile system then the gnats would never have been able to take hold. This dude will not go back to using bennies. I can now say I've been there, done that, n got the yellow sticky traps to prove it. Any extra yield gained from using bennies would be wiped out overnight if even one of my girls died. I'd rather have slightly slower growth rates and lower nutrient efficiency than loose a full crop. Just my honest opinion and my experience. Hope this helps.

Tallen, still fighting that hydro system huh? Theres a product by growstone i think theyre called. They make stuff to grow in like hydro medium i belive. The product you want is called gnat mix. Its organic too and from what their rep told me its selling like crazy.

BTI works great for fungus gnats but mosquito dunks are crap, you need stronger concentrations. Get gnatrol, its biologic and kills them dead fast. Best shit ever and I run it monthly as a preventative.

Next up for root rot, eliminating the fungus gnats will go a long way to help here. If you are using hydro ditch all the beneficial crap products, they are only helpful for soil, they offer slight protection in the form of bacteria competition in hydro, but that is it and I suspect the source of them to actually cause some root rot issues. Ive used hydroguard, root exculator, great white, orca, actinovate, hydrozyme, sensizyme, and many more in my quest to eliminate pythium from my coco system and they all suck. The best fix Ive found is running a "dead system", Look at the DM zone product or just add bleach to res at a rate of 1ml per gallon or so, this will kill everything in your res except the plants roots. It will also kill your BTI so you want to deal with the fungus gnats first. Good luck.

edit to add: neem oil has like 0 effect on fungus gnats.