Disease and Pest prevention starts when your room is being set-up. You will reduce the chances of any problems if you set-up your room properly.
General Advice
Start by killing anything in the area. A sulphur candle set off in the area will kill anything currently living there. Remember to follow the instructions on the candle
Seal everything.
Lay some heavy-duty pond liner or visquene on the floor, seal up all cracks and holes. Then make holes for your ventalation.
Try to cover your inlet and outlet fans. Use a backdraft shutter on your outlet, use a pair of tights (yes a pair of tights) over your inlet ducting. This reduces the chances of pests coming in.
Keep your room sterile
You control everything for your plants, this includes the amount of light they get, the amount of food they get and the amount of oxygen they get. It also means you have control in the chances of your plants getting sick. So keep everything as clean as possible. Your room should be like a lab
Clean out everything between crops
We suggest that you sterilise every tank, fitting and pump that you use with some liquid oxygen. This will reduce the chances of bacteria growing in your equipment.
So you're room is set up. The plants are ticking over nicely and your expecting good results. Then you find some little black critter munching on your leaves. What next?
General Pests
There are several chemicals that you can use to deal with a pest problem.
Pest Off
A good general pest control chemical, we would recommend that you use this as it kills most pests.
Neem Oil
A good organic alternative to pest off. Spidermite
Posssibly the worst pest you can get. If lest untreated you will get webs all over your crop and your plants could dry out and die.
Spidermite control
This is a very strong chemical and the best chemical on the market for spidermites. Don't let too much get into your plant roots.
Spidermite Predators
The natural way to dispatch of these littles pests is to set their natural predators on them.
S Dop is the webmaster of http://www.grotec.co.uk, one of the biggest hydroponics shops in the UK.