Yes, that the ultimate nightmare when these little replicating machines get on you hydroponic farm.
I had no issues whatsoever with lettuce, spinach, herbs, but happy story ended when I started hot chili peppers, like Ghost pepper and later tomatoes.
As you can see above, and also on a cool video on youtube, link HERE, these little alien like creatures are both scary and fascinating, and it will damage your crops and impact the quality of your garden.
I made several attempts to control this pest, starting with garden/vegetable non-toxic sprays found on your regular garden supply store, with little success, then moved to deploy thousands of lady bugs, which are the natural predator of Aphids. The lady bug effort also failed, very little improvement as bug decided to fly away and most that remained on the plant died few days later.
I also suspect that once you get your garden contaminated, you would need to eradicate the pest by basically tearing down the whole crop, sanitize all equipment, trays, media, replace water. Aphids eggs can stay dormant for a long time ans come back to hunt you later, with a new crop. Once you eradicate it, keep you system isolated from external environment and it should keep new Aphids from getting into your system.
Here a pic of Aphids on my hop plans (outdoor).
The Spray product that I used:
The ants protects the Aphids in exchange to a sweet dropping:
These are ladybug eggs:
And a ladybug chasing an Aphid:
