Sounds like both larval and adult thrips- the larvae are brown-tan and live on the low leaves of plants, where thye feed and make little silvery munch trails.
Take a paper plate that is large enough to cover the whole pot and cut a slit to the middle. Slide it over the pot around the stem, leaving plenty of air under the plate. This keeps the larvae from dropping off the leaves into the soil to complete their life cycle. The hydro plants only have thrips because you have dirt plants in the room. They NEED soil.
To kill them, no-pest strips are good and pyrethirn bug bombs are too. Only bomb if you have 3 weeks or more to harvest. There is a bomb that is safer closer to harvest but it's only found at grow shops, not at home depot or whatever. Ask the shopkeeper about that.
Bomb well after you harvest, and then again 3-4 days later to kill non-exposed life stages and eggs.
stinkyattic Reviewed by stinkyattic on . bugs on leafs. plants in flowering. need help. I have a DWC hydro set up next to a soil plant. both 7 days into flowering. and I have been notesting these tinny brown bugs crowling on the leafs of my soil plant. they look long. and they don't ever fly. see pic. and I my soil also has white flies. I have been killing all of them hand. And its getting too hard to keep up. and all the bugs I'am seeing WERE only on the soil plant's leafs. but now I am starting to see them on the hydro girlies. but the only part of the hydro that I Rating: 5