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wildstripe

Possible Scales and something else? panicking

Wildstripe
11 years ago

So, I have a few potted plants that I keep on a shelf on my porch. They were doing perfectly fine up until a couple weeks ago when I moved one of them, and tons of these little bugs came out. I panicked and immediately went for soapy water. I continued watering my plants and realised that not only that plant was infected, but so was my orchid. I don't know what these bugs are and I can't find anything on them, but they're rather small like ants, reddish-orange in colour, and are in the soil with eggs until you tap them or water them...then they swarm and go every where.

Anyhoo, I thought that would solve the problem. Then they moved to two other plants, and were just one or two on the orchid and other plant. So I just started using soapy water on them all.

However, we were preparing for storm Isaac (I live in Florida) when I noticed that, aside from the little ant-like bugs, there were white, fuzzy (yet beetle-like) bugs on two of them. Now, my kalanchoe has been doing pretty bad, but I associated the problem with the ant-like bugs and snails...but now I'm not so sure. And I mean I'm really badly panicking because I love my plants so much and I'm so terrified and I just don't know what to do.

Of course, I immediately just left the two plants outside. I was like, "oh hell no." But I'm so terrified of getting scale, I KNEW this would happen and I had been dreading it so badly since reading about them online. I will take any and all precautions/remedies. I want to save all of my plants, but if I have to...I'm willing to trash them. :(((

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