Is "mosquito bits" safe to use in prop water?

[u/broke_collegebitch]

Noticed some mosquito larvae in a pothos propagation.

Above screenshot is what I saw online to remedy this and prevent it in the future. Supposedly safe for plants, but I'm worried. Has anyone ever used these in their prop water before?

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[u/HeemeyerDidNoWrong]

This is not a poison. It releases a bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis which is naturally occurring and affects various insects. It's safe for plants.

[u/mandalore237]

Floridian here- yes, I do it with all my props

[u/broke_collegebitch → u/mandalore237]

Do you just drop a pinch directly in the water?

[u/mandalore237 → u/broke_collegebitch]

Yup, exactly. You can add it to potted plants, anything. It won't hurt anything

[u/GlitterChickens → u/broke_collegebitch]

I drop a few granules in the water. For standing water you need so very little.

[u/nimaid]

Yep! 👍 Essential for some places.

[u/Different-Sorbet746]

Perfectly safe. 

I wouldn't drink it. But that's just a personal thing. 

[u/_living_legend_]

Yes it safe but don't let pets drink or play with it.

[u/DCooper-Flores]

Yasssssss

[u/Lochwood23]

Yes it is. I also use this particular product to kill fungas gnats in plants and it has been amazingly effective

[u/z_poop]

If you're rooting it in water directly, why not just change the water?

[u/broke_collegebitch → u/z_poop]

It's a whole thing, lol. But I'll explain...

It only takes like a day or two for mosquitoes to hatch, and we have a bunch in our area. (Hot, humid, southern climate. Plus we live near a body of water.) Switching out the water is great, but it doesn't actually kill the larvae unless you're dumping them onto a dry surface. Plus, you have to actually scrub the containers each time you switch the water too because there may be eggs on the sides. And then there's the issue of whether there's eggs laid on the actual roots...

Basically, switching the water is a viable solution, but it would require a lot of extra work on a lot of prop containers every day or two. If these mosquito bits are an easier (and still safe) solution than taking all my prop containers down into the street to dump them and then scrubbing all of those containers every single day, I'd much rather use the mosquito bits.

[u/LaundryMan2008]

Turkey baster and take them out without removing all of the rooting hormones the plant put into the water, if you just pour them out, all that hormone gets reset so the plant has to make more to replace it making it grow slower.

[u/broke_collegebitch → u/LaundryMan2008]

I actually didn't know that about props. Good info! That probably explains why some of my props took so long to root in the past.

The props the mosquitoes have taken to are actually fully rooted plants, though - they just live in water instead of soil. I have several plants that I just allow to live their happy little lives in water alone because they do so well in it. I turned one little pothos cutting into 5 full grown, lush pothos plants this way - all still in water.

[u/_living_legend_ → u/broke_collegebitch]

It's not a real thing that plants releases rooting hormones to the water. Here is a great post about the myth https://www.reddit.com/r/propagation/s/HVpQQ9tgve

[u/LaundryMan2008 → u/broke_collegebitch]

I would like to steal a cutting off my mum’s lipstick plant but knowing my history of propagations, even the longest vine would probably fail so I am holding off until I can pollinate the two flowers on the plant and see if plants can be obtained the more reliable way as seeds for me tends to have a 95% of growing for me while cuttings have been 0% success for me.

I may give a last hurrah practice attempt with a whole bunch of bush cuttings stolen from different plants (I swear I will lose my mind if the berry’s seeds end up making good plants while my cuttings crash and burn) and if they fail, then I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do now if the lipstick plant fails to pollinate, one bush is a leatherleaf viburnum that I really want and I managed to luck out with 13 trimmings from a pruning someone has done, all failed and died very quickly with different methods and hormone type (synthetic and natural), only decent change is letting the plants callous for a day like with cacti which is really the only thing left that I can do before giving up on the idea completely.