Small white dots/insects on dying plant leaf in T enclosure

[Poffypoffa]

I have a live plant in an enclosure. I noticed these very small white dots on one of the dying leaves near the bottom. I cut it out of the plant, and they don't seem to be moving at all, and they wipe or scrape off pretty easily. My initial instinct was a mite of some kind eating the dying leaf, but the lack of movement threw me a bit, and there's a very active and healthy springtail population in this enclosure. Any thoughts? Maybe eggs of some kind, instead of a live insect?

I do not see anything on the tarantula and it seems totally nonplussed. These were however in an area where it sometimes hangs out or crawls on the plant. The plant is a dracena, if that's helpful.

 

[The Snark]

Possibly mealybugs

 

[Poffypoffa]

Thank you. It’s hard to tell from the photos but i think they’re a lot smaller than mealy bugs, and I’m not seeing any cottony fuzz or honeydew. But if they are, I know wiping with alcohol is a treatment. Do you know if a T would tolerate alcohol fumes? I would leave the top off a few minutes until they dissipated. I could of course just temporarily remove the T, which is likely the better choice.

 

[The Snark]

Ethyl alcohol is a mild neuron scrambler that can have long term effects. Why take the chance?

 

[Ultum4Spiderz]

Thank you. It’s hard to tell from the photos but i think they’re a lot smaller than mealy bugs, and I’m not seeing any cottony fuzz or honeydew. But if they are, I know wiping with alcohol is a treatment. Do you know if a T would tolerate alcohol fumes? I would leave the top off a few minutes until they dissipated. I could of course just temporarily remove the T, which is likely the better choice.

I don’t think those bugs can hurt the tarantula. You could just remove the bad leaf.

 

[Poffypoffa]

Ethyl alcohol is a mild neuron scrambler that can have long term effects. Why take the chance?

Fair point--the T is way more important than the plant.

And @Ultum4Spiderz that's exactly what I did. The older growth has a fair amount of yellow spots, and perhaps a white bug or two. The new growth is flawless. What I think may be going on is that the leaves are getting ODed with fluoride and too much water, leading to the yellow spots (Dracena are very sensitive to fluoride); and something is taking advantage of its decreased health. So I'm going to dry everything out for a while and cut off the worst of the old leaves, and see what happens. I might try some A. cucumeris mites, which are much more targeted than H. miles and go after thrips and some spider mites, but nothing else.

Worst case scenario, if it blows up, is I'll make an entirely new enclosure with a fake plant, trash this plant and clean out the enclosure, and move on.

 

[Kada]

The plant itself is stressed. Even if one manages to wipe and eradicate these bug pests, it's probably going to happen again because the plant is not healthy. Best bet is to choose a more suitable species of plant for your enclosure's environment.

These likely won't harm your spider. But the predators of those bugs are a bit of a wild card if they manage to find the enclosure (ants, mites etc).

I love live plants. But need to be real about the spider species your keeping and the setup/climate it is in.

 

[Poffypoffa]

The plant itself is stressed. Even if one manages to wipe and eradicate these bug pests, it's probably going to happen again because the plant is not healthy. Best bet is to choose a more suitable species of plant for your enclosure's environment.

These likely won't harm your spider. But the predators of those bugs are a bit of a wild card if they manage to find the enclosure (ants, mites etc).

I love live plants. But need to be real about the spider species your keeping and the setup/climate it is in.

That makes a lot of sense. It was doing great for months, but then just...wasn't. I think it must just be too moist/humid for it (mind you, it's not wet, but the bottom layer is moist, and the moisture doesn't dry out very quickly in acrylic enclosures).

I have an identical empty enclosure, so I'm just going to set up a new enclosure with a fake plant and rehouse her. Do you think it's safe to take some soil from the old enclosure to seed my springtails? The new one won't have a living plant, so I assume whatever is on the old one will just die off, even if it were in the soil.

I could just pull the plant, but it has an extensive root system, so I'm feeling like it's better to start clean.

 

[fcat]

Could be thrips? But I wouldn't rule out really tiny mealybugs either

 

[Poffypoffa]

Could be thrips? But I wouldn't rule out really tiny mealybugs either

I was kind of thinking thrips, too. In any event tonight I rehoused her into an enclosure with a fake plant and I threw this one away. I could have started playing with parasitic mites, but it ended up feeling too complicated to save a single plant.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to borrow some springtails for the new enclosure, or just start from scratch with those too (although even if these are thrips or mealybugs I'm assuming they'll just die off without a plant to eat, even if I should bring some over in the soil).