I'm becoming semi-anti-mite!

They MIGHT be my Mighty White Mite Warriors. (Or, they could just be invading my homeland.)

Heroes or Villains?

After "waiting and seeing" for a couple weeks, I posted here asking for information and opinions about these little uninvited settlers. I received 3 "undecided" responses, and one "good" response, leaving me still uncertain how to proceed.

So, I weighed the pros and cons:

Pros

---

• there are NO webs anywhere
  
  no spots on leaves
  

  nothing visible on underside of leaves
  

  plants appear very happy
  

  no significant increase in numbers

  ---

  Cons

---

• they're walking around on the plants!
  
  they might be biting stems, like aphids?
  

  are they planning a trichome ambush?

  ---

  Here's another attempted closeup...

This time, it's walking on a glass bead:

By my estimation they're less than 1mm long, full grown. There do appear to be wispy white appendages.

Pretty gross, right? But like I said, the plants appear healthy:

In fact, I'd like to show you the top of a Northern Lights seedling I snipped the other day:

2 gorgeous healthy new tops! They start just above the 5th true node. Now, check out this beauty:

At 6 weeks old (from seed), these plants are doing fine. If they're losing any juice to their invaders, it's not enough to make a noticeable difference. (Yet?)

And Steem OG?

All 3 are doing well, despite the unidentified white settlers. I used the FIM ("fuck, I missed!") method on one of them, resulting in 2 new tops, along with strange bonus growth from the snip:

Here's another view of that interesting top:

Summary

The plants are happy, but could be getting abused by these friendly-appearing newcomers. They're not spinning webs, which is always a relief when we encounter animal wildlife in our gardens. Their numbers don't seem to be getting out of hand, but to be honest I'd rather they'd never shown up.

And with all that said, remember, this is a 100% natural garden that uses only soil, light, water, and air to grow cannabis. If there's a solution, it will have to consider that. I don't want to have to resort to something drastic, like yanking them and washing their roots so they can go into fresh soil and new pots. Or worse, culling and starting over. Ugh.

In my previous post, I said I wasn't necessarily anti-mite. After further research, and consideration, I think you now understand why I'm becoming...

Semi-anti-mite.

Your input welcome. Thank you.
DRutter