Alcohol and water 50/50 sprayed on the plant kills mealies as well. I'm not sure if the concoction you are talking about works, because I've never heard of it, but the alcohol definitely works.:)

Thank you SB.

I can attest to the effectiveness of regular ol' rubbing alcohol to eradicate mealies but with a few additional steps.

Though this post is long, if you have mealies, it's worth the read.

I finally got the whole thing under control and have a new plan in place.

Here's what I did.

I prepared to re-pot all affected plants and took the opportunity to discard all plastic pots & introduce a grittier mix minus calcined clay. I washed away the old soil & replaced with new mix (gritty as the affected plants were all jades, eccheveria & adenium).

Each plant got a new pot or scrubbed out & decontaminated old pot. All terracotta, some glazed if that makes a difference, all plastic pots were discarded. I used Dr. Bronner's soap to scrub out pots, I didn't but you could also go the extra step and dip scrubbed pots in a bleach solution while you're at it.

I set up a 'sick bay' & sequestered all of my affected or suspected affected plants in a bright & sunny area with supplemental lighting. Probably not necessary but I wanted to make sure that the plants would be able to have all the energy they could get to help me fight off the buggers.

Also, I got some reading glasses & with the extra lighting, I was able to actually *see* the buggers instead of just the tell-tale chalky parts on the trunks.

I made sure to keep only the plants I really wanted & tossed the ones I could care less about (ie: kept all the jades & tossed the coleus).

I removed most of the leaves on my gollum jades & the large leaf jades, making sure to leave a few large older leafs and a few smaller, new leaves. I used straight alcohol in a spray bottle & hosed every part of the plant.

I then followed with a spray of plain water to rinse down the plants, but I don't think it's necessary & have since quit doing that.

I then set up a small oscillating desk fan to improve air circulation.

I inspected & treated once every 3 days & haven't seen a mealy on any of the plants since I started this 2 weeks ago.

The plants are now leafing out again & though they look a bit like 'Pepper' from American Horror, all is finally well.

The trick is to continue with alcohol spritz in combination with dotting the actual mealies with q-tip dipped alcohol. In the past, I had only tried to treat using q-tip method. The problem with that is that you only kill the adults, if you continue for a series of days, you will kill the emerging hatchlings too & break the life cycle.

Also, replacing the soil & scrubbing out the pots helps cut down on the population of bugs you need to find & treat.

In all, I am treating 5 large adenium, 4 younger ones, 4 large jades, a p. afra & various eccheveria that I picked up locally cheap, only to find they were infested & needing treatment.

I'm still inspecting every day & keep an alcohol bottle nearby with reading glasses so that I can stay vigilant. I've decreased treatment to once a week now & will likely keep these plants separate from my others until next summer when everyone will share my patio =)

About the Dr. Bronner's soap....

A couple of days after setting up sick bay, a really well branched aeonium I bought on Ebay arrived....with chalky spots on the trunk
-____-

Even though I had inspected & not seen any adult mealies, I was suspicious & decided it wasn't worth the risk.

Treatment ala 'Silkwood' commenced =)

I had read about the soap treatment and decided to try it to compare efficacy of treatment. I wouldn't recommend doing it with succulents because it leaves what look like unsightly water spots on the leaves. However, I didn't want to defoliate my new plant. It was already going to have to acclimate to indoor NY weather when it originally came from California, no doubt, outside.

I prefer the alcohol treatment as I've read you still need to follow with it after soap because the soap breaks down the waxy coating of the pest's body but the alcohol kills them outright. Dries those little suckers up immediately.

I took the ebay tree aeonium & put him in a fishbowl big enough to accommodate all heads & filled with tepid water with Dr. Bronner's lavender soap.

I kept him on his head for about 25 minutes with all leaves and a good portion of the trunks under water.

Then, I took him outside & gently hosed off all of the old soil he arrived in & soaked the roots in soapy water as well for about 25 minutes.

I rinsed top & bottom & settled it into a new ceramic pot with gritty mix & did not water. I poked with a chop stick to make sure there were no air pockets & that the mix had settled in sufficiently.

I top dressed with a lovely aquarium pebble & added him to sick bay.

Sure enough, the following day, I found one adult mealy =P

I informed the seller, & continued treatment.

All chalky spots are gone (I don't know, but I read those are egg sacs) and I haven't seen another one since.

The plant has bounced back from it's transition to indoors in NY in the Fall & only dropped it's oldest leaves. It is producing new leaves from the center of each rosette.

I'm tickled pink =D

Thanks so much Hookilah! I did use the 50/50 alcohol mix and today I took long handled tweezers and removed every mealy that I could find. i intend to to daily inspections and spraying if necessary. Because Argentine ants carry the mealies to new cactuses for infestation, I am going to sprinkle diatomaceous earth on the the pot's soil surface to cut up their bodies. That should stop them farming mealies!

lol!
Get 'em any way you can brother =D

I fought them for 2 years but didn't realize that I needed to keep treating daily until eradicated.

I thought you just 'spot' treat whenever you see them, so that's what I did =P

It took less than 2 weeks to clear up what I couldn't do in 2 years! Good luck, can't help with the ants, but the DE should help break the cycle.

Tweezers aren't necessary, if you dot the mealybug with a q-tip dipped in alcohol, it'll kill that little sucker immediately. They kinda stick to the q-tip. Eww. Not sure how quickly the 50/50 solution works but I imagine it should work just as fast.

I've read that eggs take a couple of months to hatch & should these dozen or so plants pop positive for these critters again, I'm going to treat with imidacloprid, it's a systemic treatment that I've read works well.

I've read that Windex, Whiskey, & Vodka also works. Though to my mind, it seems a waste, lol.

Booze for me, windex/rubbing alcohol for plant. 8)

I loaded up on rubbing alcohol at our local 99 cent store, so we'll see how this pans out.

I admit, I'm now paranoid & will 'crop dust' anything with a cloud of alcohol that even has a whiff of the chalky tell-tale white stuff.
har har.

Check out this thread & keep it in your back pocket in case you ever need to bring out the big guns.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cacti/msg0310261221695.html

Thanks for this. I think i'm about to prepare for big time eradication. I have a pest trifecta, slugs in the coleus (I think... could be earwigs, I'm still trying to make sure), mealybugs in the alternanthera (this one is badly infected and since the leaves are so depleted and not at all colorful, i'm thinking of throwing it away but... no) and probably spider mites in my succulents. There are a LOT of ants. So i decided to concoct a "magic" spray that i thought would target them all. It has dish soap, garlic, hot sauce... it's still steeping. I'll probably spray test it first on small portions but i'm scared i will burn the leaves OR not kill the pests at all.

Trying to stay away from Imidacloprid as it harms bees that feed on my cactus flowers. Isopropyl alcohol from the 99cent store works just fine so far.

"Trying to stay away from Imidacloprid as it harms bees that feed on my cactus flowers. Isopropyl alcohol from the 99cent store works just fine so far."

Agreed Chez =)

After further reading, I'd decided that if push came to shove, I'd only use Imidalcloprid on indoor plants.

However, I don't see that happening. Life cycle from egg to adult takes approximately 60 days.

Gah. I guess I'm going back to the 99 cent store, lol!

Follow link below, has more than you probably want to know about mealybugs. I didn't read through all of it, on my way out to the gym right now, but will definitely give it a good read when I get back.

Here is a link that might be useful: Management in Greenhouses and Interiorscapes