I understand that a solution of rubbing alcohol/insecticidal soap/water is best. What % of each should I mix together in a bottle? Will this harm my plants at all? Do I need to wash it off after I am done? How often should I continue to spray? Any other ideas or suggestions would be helpful.

1. do i need to change ALL the potting medium on all of the orchids (if so, yikes... that will take time and money to get all new fresh medium considering that I just repotted many) Half my orchids are in bark and half are in moss.

2. how do I apply the alcohol/soap/water mixture to the orchids? Do I soak the entire pot in a bucket of the mixture? Or just spray the plant? My concern is that there are eggs or bugs in the pot that may not be gotten if I just spray.

I'm very concerned about losing my collection.

I killed off a mild infestion of mealy using simply Bayer Advanced Rose and Flower Insect Killer (available at lowes and home depot). Its systemic, containing imadicloprid. Worked wonders on my mealy AND scale! I went the route of insecticidal soap and it just didn't do anything for me. Granted, soap is known (at least in the interior landscaping industry) to be more effective on scale, horticultural oil being more effective on mealy.

Then last night I was looking at another phal and found teeny tiny dots on its roots (like whitish, clearish). Almost like itty bitty flakes. I used a toothpick and scraped a few off. I know what spider mites look like and that's not it.

Now I see on a few plants leaves this:

Is all of this related?

I don't know if I can find neem oil. I read in this forum about the use of Bayer. Do I just follow the instructions on the bottle? Is there any certain percentage you should use for orchids? I assume the Bayer won't hurt the orchids in anyway? Do you recommend dunking the entire pot into a a bucket of the Bayer solution? Do I need to repot? Thanks!