Reptile & Amphibian Forums

as i examined the tank i keep my pietschmanni in this morning, i noticed the ficus tree was not growing quite right. a lot of leaves were folded and looked sick. i looked closer, opening one of the folded leaves and found these lil bugs. can anyone ID them for me? i clipped all the folded leaves, cuz thats where they seemed to be, but they were so abundant in some leaves i wonder how many more are still in the tank, and if they can do any harm to my lizards. help!!!!

luckily i took an invertebrate zoology class last semester and i had a teacher who knows his stuff, and was able to identify them as "thrips." anyone heard of these? im gonna try spraying the tree with provent-a-mite and hopefully that will take care of it. some articles my teacher linked me to says that these guys will bite humans as well as animals, like nice, humid temperatures...no wonder there was an outbreak in the tank.

They sure thrive in THERE ! I knew they were not plant mites, but never saw these before.

Does that mean the eggs were origianlly on the tree when you got it? How long had it been in there with them ?

Just curious as to how long it took for them to breed like that!

Cool pic, thanks for the Thrip lesson
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Eve

well, i set this tank up at the beginning of may. the only other things in the tank are a few other plants (all non-infected), peat moss, and cork bark. im 99% sure they hitchhiked in on the ficus. they're so tiny that im not sure when they begain to flourish, but i definitely think it was in the past 2 weeks. anyway, they attack the new leafs as they bud, causing them to fold in half. i immediately made sure to prune off all infected branches, but im even pondering taking out the plant to treat it, if not re-doing the entire tank.