Hi there!
I have already some experience with bonsai trees and been growing mine pretty successfully, however today I decided to increase my tiny collection and I have purchased 3 new trees. The place I live at has pretty terrible selection of bonsai trees (I live abroad now) and it seems that people here really don't know how to take care of the plants in the shop. So... not so surprisingly after I brought the trees home I noticed that two of those bonsai trees have some pests crawling in the soil - I noticed it when I started to pick all the old leaves that were left on the surface of the soil.
Both bonsais were clearly waaay too over-watered but I hoped that with good care I can nurse them back to good health. But since there are some pests as well, I think I have to address that too. It's so hard to say what those little bugs can be, but one looks a bit like a tick - for lack of better word, and has dark brown "linseed" color. And the second one looks also similarly, but is green/yellowish. I finally managed to capture them on camera as well : streamable.com/ezwrv and streamable.com/fns19 . Just an disclaimer - usually those pests stay buried in the soil but basically they emerge to the surface only when I lightly tapped the outer layer of the soil (when picking old leaves) but then they tried to go immediately back. They are very spooked and smart when approached by some object and wouldn’t climb onto it.
Any idea what those bugs might be and how to get rid of them in a way that wouldn't kill the bonsai as well? Internet search mostly pointed to fungus gnats, however those small bugs seemingly don't look anything like "ants" - the way fungus gnats seem to look like.
Anyway, hope that someone might maybe have the answer to this here, thanks a lot for any kind of tips!
I have already some experience with bonsai trees and been growing mine pretty successfully, however today I decided to increase my tiny collection and I have purchased 3 new trees. The place I live at has pretty terrible selection of bonsai trees (I live abroad now) and it seems that people here really don't know how to take care of the plants in the shop. So... not so surprisingly after I brought the trees home I noticed that two of those bonsai trees have some pests crawling in the soil - I noticed it when I started to pick all the old leaves that were left on the surface of the soil.
Both bonsais were clearly waaay too over-watered but I hoped that with good care I can nurse them back to good health. But since there are some pests as well, I think I have to address that too. It's so hard to say what those little bugs can be, but one looks a bit like a tick - for lack of better word, and has dark brown "linseed" color. And the second one looks also similarly, but is green/yellowish. I finally managed to capture them on camera as well : streamable.com/ezwrv and streamable.com/fns19 . Just an disclaimer - usually those pests stay buried in the soil but basically they emerge to the surface only when I lightly tapped the outer layer of the soil (when picking old leaves) but then they tried to go immediately back. They are very spooked and smart when approached by some object and wouldn’t climb onto it.
Any idea what those bugs might be and how to get rid of them in a way that wouldn't kill the bonsai as well? Internet search mostly pointed to fungus gnats, however those small bugs seemingly don't look anything like "ants" - the way fungus gnats seem to look like.
Anyway, hope that someone might maybe have the answer to this here, thanks a lot for any kind of tips!
I currently live in Finland but I will make sure to add it to my profile.
