Pests
We all hate pests (bugs). Over the 30 years or so of indoor growing I’ve seen a good bit of them. Have had spider mites a few times, thrips a few times, powdery mildew once, and fungus gnats more times than I can remember. Hell, I have fungus gnats right now and they are the only real bugs I’ve had in over a decade. At least fungus gnats are easy to get rid of.
Prevention
The best way not to get pets is through prevention. Worst time to get bugs is in the middle of flowering because it sucks to have to spray your buds with anything made to kill bugs. So it’s best to make sure your plants don’t have any bugs when they go into flowering by doing lots of prevention while in veg.
I spray my non-flowering plants with a Neem oil product every couple weeks as a preventative measure. Some people go even further and use multiple products along with Neem, like Azamax and Spinosad, and rotate them every week. If you get a lot of bugs, that is something you should consider.
So even with preventative measures in place I still got fungus gnats. Well, those measures have kept out or killed off spider mites, thrips, and who knows what else. But can’t do much to prevent fungus gnats, one follows you in, then 1 makes 20 and 20 makes 400, yeah don’t let it get out of control. It’s rained more than usual here, thus a fungus gnat explosion outdoors, literally clouds of them out there. So it did not take long to notice a couple fungus gnats in my room where the tents are. So, found the mosquito bits and put on top of soil so when you water, it gets applied to your soil which will kill the larvae. But the adults are walking around on the soil, yeah hate seeing that so I get some diatomaceous earth and apply to top of soil so they won’t be walking around long.
Famers never take a day off
As indoor farmers, we must check our crops everyday, there are no days off, no vacations, cows need to be milked and plants need to get watered and fed and checked. Every day, you should be checking on your plants, look closely at the leaves for any damage, look for any signs of bugs, anything moving in the soil. Finding a bug problem early is much better than finding it late. This also gives you a chance to check if watering is needed.
I like nothing better than to come home from work, load up a pipe and spend 30 minutes checking on my plants, every day.