Black dots, all plants being damaged (photo).

Good day.

Please see attached image.

We started approximately 70 indoor seedlings, and they are all being damaged by these strange black dots/silvery scale?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Warm regards,
Drake

 

Thrips, possibly? They eat by scraping the top off of the leaves, leaving spots usually described as "silvery," and the black spots might be frass. Alternately, maybe some kind of leaf miner, though those aren't typical leaf-miner tracks, and leaf miners aren't common indoors. (Thrips aren't either, but they do happen indoors sometimes all the same.)

I'm not remotely confident of either guess, but you said "any suggestions," so those are mine.

 

Thank-you so much for your reply. I'll look into your suggestions!

It's weird, as we have other houseplants, all unaffected, bu tall of our seedlings/veggies are :(

 

Hmm...the black sports don't scrape off, so perhaps not frass.

 

I'd go with leaf-miners, which are for some obscure reason particularly attracted to peppers. I've seen exactly that type of tracks on my own plants, and the only remedy I've found is to simply remove the affected leaves.

The black stuff is frass, but it's inside the leaf, so it's not going to scrape off....

 

Thanks Lorax, looks like I'll be saying good-bye to some plants.

 

Remove the affected leaves, not the plants. Leaf-miners usually show up only on older leaves, which seems to be borne out by your photo.

 

Will do. I find leaf-miners insufferable.

 

Looks like Thrips to me as well.