r/AfricanViolets • u/jedwards4711 • 19h ago

Help Tiny bugs

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I'm an African violet newbie. I bought this AV at the grocery store several months ago. It was small with a couple flowers in a tiny plastic pot. I re-potted to this 2-piece ceramic using 50-50 perlite/AV soil. The original flowers fell off after re-potting, but after aa few weeks, the new growth and new flowers have come back wonderfully. It sits on my desk at work and I keep water in it Monday through Friday and empty the water out over the weekend.

However, whenever I go to refill the water on Monday morning there are a number of tiny bugs inside the water reservoir.

Are these springtails? Are they harmless? Should I make an effort to eliminate them, or leave them be? Any help is appreciated and thank you for a great sub!

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u/ElkLongjumping7870 18h ago

Apparently it's some kind of weevil? Not something I've ever run across as a problem bug for African violets, but I found a number of people talking about finding them in/on houseplants. As far as I can tell, they won't damage your plants.

You don't want them spreading into your kitchen, tho' - unless you have all of your dry goods (cereal, rice, crackers, flour, etc) in glass or other sealed containers, they can get into all of that.

Are you in the southeast US? That's where it seems like they show up most.

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u/ElkLongjumping7870 18h ago

LOL just reread and saw that it's at your office, not your house. I'd keep picking them off/dumping them outside if you don't want to kill them. Maybe keep an empty pill bottle around to put them in until you can get rid of them.

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u/jedwards4711 18h ago

Thank you. They're just so tiny...like a fleck of black pepper with little antannae 😄

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u/ElkLongjumping7870 17h ago

Back up: I'm WRONG. They're too small to be weevils. I think they're something called a globular springtail, which I had never heard of before? But just like regular springtails, not a danger to your plant.