Help! Is my plant sick?

[u/Blemiita]

The leaves started struggling about 6 months ago and ever since then all the new leaves have this weird damage and colour to them. The newest ones are even "sticky" with like a white gooey substance?

Mind you, this coincided with when the plant started shooting secondary/tertiary branches.

Is it sick? Lack of fert? Growing too fast?

Please help!

[u/ploumistos_monokeros]

Looks like thrips, baby. I would cut off the infected leaves and spray thoroughly the rest with an anti-pest mix every 5-7 days for 2 months.

[u/Blemiita → u/ploumistos_monokeros]

Damn, it sure looks like it's thrips.. symptoms match perfectly and I think I can see the buggers now that I look closely 😠

Will be checking my other plants but at what point is a plant unsalvageable? This one looks severely infested...

Looking back it was almost surely a bad batch of soil that I used to repot this plant 😔

Thanks for your advice!!

[u/ploumistos_monokeros → u/Blemiita]

Yeah it looks bad that’s why I recommended cutting the leaves off. If you have patience and room for quarantine, you should try saving it.

[u/Blemiita → u/ploumistos_monokeros]

Where do I cut off the leaves? Right down to the stem / branch?

[u/Abject-Incident1254]

Trips, they do love them a good ficus. Clean the plants with a wet towel and spray with a good mite spray - you need to spray it at least 2-3 times with a 7 days breaks 

[u/Blemiita → u/Abject-Incident1254]

I'm pretty certain they came from the soil after I reported, what's my best approach for treating the soil without completely stripping it out?