# Fern scale?



## Darks!de

I recently noticed that on two of the fronds of my rabbits foot fern, there are these little scale things on the stem. I'm guessing it's some type of scale pest. Any suggestions on how to remove/kill it?

Luke


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## elmoisfive

For light infestations, you can try to manually remove the scale insects (I suspect that might be a tad difficult with a fern) or remove the fern from the viv and use a dilute soap solution (1 Tbs mild dish detergent per gallon water) once weekly for about a month.

Bill


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## Darks!de

Well I manually removed them today. The fern is very young so it has few fronds. I found about 20 of the insects...hopefully I got them all, we'll see if they come back.

Luke


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## Mantellaprince20

LUke, lol, this is a very common misconception with ferns. What youa re seeing is most likely the spore cases (forgot the technical term for them). I used to think that on my ferns too. Crack a few off, and see if they have lots of little dust like specks in them. I guess if they are walking around they aren't the spore cases, but I will bet my bottom dollar that is what you are dealing with . Take care,

Ed Parker


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## Darks!de

CRAP...they did have lots of white dust on them!

Luke


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## jschroeder

Scale, once mature, are not mobile. They also have white dusty particles that are released when you scrape them off. Rabbits foot and bears foot ferns are very susceptible to scale. Ferns don't set spore on the stems of the fronds, and if the spots were on top of the fronds, most likley its scale. I would remove any infested fronds as scale, once it get established, is very hard to get rid of.


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## Guest

i have this same problem. they don't look like the normal scales that were on my broms. they are these tiny white things and they aren't pressed right against the frond, they are raised a little bit, but they are immoble, and i've had no luck geting rid of them. i pulled off all the infected fronds. i have no idea where they came from as i haven't put any new plants in, and they didn't appear until about a month or two ago. i just cleaned up the tank and pruned a bit, and now they are on my one big brom, i don't think it's gonna make it, i might as well pull it out now. and i never got rid of my original scale infestation that came in with a brom i bought online. now all of my original broms are pretty much dead, and i only have 3 healthy pups left. i'm hoping they don't get infested as well.


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