hello everyone this is jerry with san pedro mastery my channel is about growing the san pedro cactus and other sacred cacti and today i will show you how to get rid of fungus gnats on san pedro or peyote seedlings seedlings only because fungus nuts do not affect adult cacti of course the information i'm about to give is also valid for many other types of cacti as well as many other types of plants fungus nuts are tiny black flies looking a bit like a mosquito they measure one-eighths of an inch or three millimeters they are particularly annoying as they like to fly close to your face but for the youngest cactus seedlings they can be devastating fungus nuts are attracted to a very moist soil they will drop their eggs into the soil and providing the soil remains moist the eggs will turn into larvae it is the larvae that do the damage not the flooding insects the larvae have clear bodies and measure one quarter of an inch or six millimeters that's twice the size of a flying adult and they can easily be spotted in the top layer of the soil when you move it with the tip of a knife the larvae feed on the thunder roots of the youngest plants of a few weeks of age up to a couple of months if nothing is done to stop the fungus nuts you will notice that a lot of your san pedros will fall on their sides because they have lost their roots if that has happened to your plants i very much doubt they can survive and grow new roots as they are too young and fragile this side don't throw them away just yet just in case they manage to grow new roots obviously you want to avoid getting to that stage so when you first see fungus nuts you will need to act the first thing you can do is give your plants less water and more ventilation you see fungus nuts love a hot summer weather a constantly wet soil and poor ventilation so you will need to let the soil dry between waterings for as long as the plants will permit what i mean by that is that at some point some of your sandpit roads will start dying from lack of water you obviously don't want to go that far as for the hot temperature you are probably not going to be able to reduce it unless you are growing your cacti inside a greenhouse in which case just take them out of there as for the ventilation you could aim a fan at your tray though you want to avoid too fast a fan speed that could disrupt the cacti if your plants are outside and covered by some fabric to filter the rays of the sun you want to remove that fabric as it prevents air circulation and you can place the plant in a shadier but windy spot drying the soil and increasing ventilation probably won't be enough as an extra measure you need at least to use yellow sticky traps there are pieces of yellow plastic with adhesive on them that you place on the side of the trays the flying adults are attracted to the yellow color and will get stuck to the glue like this you can be sure a lot less of them will lay eggs if you do not have access to yellow sticky traps you can use a yellow piece of plastic like for instance this plant marker and cover it with vaseline but this method does not work as well as the yellow sticky traps because depending on the ambient temperature the vaseline can be more or less efficient in trapping the insects now that the population of flying adult insects is better controlled the next logical step is going to take care of the larvae which shine the soil and eating your cactus roots i will offer three options ranging from least efficient to most efficient number one a simple easy trick is to place thin raw potato slices on the soil these are really yummy for the larvae and you will soon find the slices packed with larvae you need to discard them daily and replace with new ones number two is a biological control called bacillus turingensis ischaelensis or bti as you can see here in the video it comes in the form of pills or liquid in north america you can find it under the name mosquito dunks bti works pretty well but you will have to apply it every time you water until the fungus nuts are gone keep in mind that the entire life cycle from egg to adult is completed in about three to four weeks number three is beneficial nematodes which also have an impossible name stainer nema feltier i hope i said it right these are microscopic worms that enter the bodies of the larvae and kill them it's been many years since i lasted a problem with fungus nuts and the nematodes solved the problem immediately when bti not worked very well previously one single application of nematodes solved it all for me very very efficient i bought the smallest back of it possible and it had 50 million worms in it 15 billions they are inert but when you add water after a short while you can see them come to life in the microscope the small bag was delivered in a polystyrene box with ice packs around it and the shop said they could only be stored in the fridge for a couple of days but i found that two months later you could still bring many of them back to life after adding water just don't expect to be able to store it for very long that's it my friends now you know how to solve the problem of fungus nuts on sandpit rose and other cacti seedlings if this video was helpful please press like please also check my other videos all of which are dedicated to the san pedro cactus the bolivian torch the peruvian torch the peyote and other sacred cacti i'll see you in the next one