I have tried spider mite predators before but they didnt really seem to help me at that time, maybe i was at faullt somewhere and to be fair they was actually against mites not thrips, i think you need to have the right conditions for the predators to live and maybe thats why i havent had good results before but i have decided to be more open to using them again and have regained some faith in them due to your responses.
I feel like i just had a great idea and cannot believe i havent read this before in my search to get rid of these thrip bastards.
So apparently the thrip has 5 life stages, if im thinking right Nematodes are used for when the thrip is in the stage where it goes into the soil and plots up i think its called the pupae stage. So if you focus on eliminating the hatching of the pupae the cycle has to come to an end right?
Which leads me to ask how effective are these nematodes? Would it be ok to focus on destroying the next generation by targeting them just in the pupae stage because this would eliminate the need for any sprays,smoke bombs,predators.
Especially when using pots because they need to lay eggs in soil so it will be easy to make sure you get them all because theres no other soil about.
As moflow said already thrips dont cause as much damage as the mites and i have easily left them to do what they do for a month at a time without culling them and the damage is not that bad, seems they focus down low on the plant and leave the tops alone, so just focusing on the pupae and letting the adults live out there life wont be so bad, or i might get the microscope out and get some predators in to watch some leaf wars.
What you guys think?