It seems like before we do any investigation we should determine what questions we want to answer. Here is what I am thinking, sort of a brainstorm at this point:

Question 1:
Product A cost X money,
Product B cost Y money.
Will I get more benefit from
A/X or B/Y


Question 2:
Does Product A or Product B have more aggressive strains of microbes.


Question 3:
Does Product A or Product B protect against pathogens more.

Question 4:
Do Product A and Product B have different side effects, change ph, use more nutes, ect...


Any other things worth investigating. Maybe this list is too big but I'm thinking too many ideas can be sifted through.


I am thinking each of us using the exact same nutes and soil is not 100% realistic and we should come up with a system where we each have a no-myco control plant. Unless we keep the soil mix super simple and therefore suboptimal, like just pelite, vermulicite, and earth worm castings, so it is easy to replicate.

The other thing I am thinking could be worth doing is a fungus race, we each get say 1 pound of earth worm castings or something in a tube and inoculate 1 side and measure the visible fungi?

Curious.George. Your fungus race sounds interesting. I have been reading the thread and those who have posted and I have a question of my own that relates to a few points from each of your responses.

Growing in soilless medium, using "essentials' synthetic frets and no organic beneficial additives such as, worm casting, kelp, fish emulsion etc, '"does my fungi, bacteria, protozoa and enzyme production go straight to shit if I do not feed my Bio-culture?? I know if I use Chlorinated water, or any water with cloromine, it kills of the bio culture. Now does it do it rappiely or does my culture continue to thrive slowly? Remeber I am using soilless medium with no benefical additives to feed my culture.
I can understand the benifical parts of an RO/DI system for my water, but it is not going to happen at this one location.
Any info on that would surely help me with some critical thinking-maybe nut lock up will never happen.. heha!
Thanks.

Basically yes. I asked this question to one of the support staff at fungi.com: "Will the spores you sell survive in a pure salt-nutrient solution used for plants?" The answer was "no, the fungi and bacteria need organic matter to live". The thing is if you grow a plant it will have some waste. That is organic matter that they can live on. So once your plants are big they can support micro organisms, but you would need a lot of spores because they would not have enough food to thrive. By feeding the microbes you save a lot of money since you grow the stuff, it is not necessary to use enough spores to saturate the rooting medium.


Chlorinated tap water has more of a downward pressure on fungi and bacteria growth. I use regular tap water to initially hydrate my medium. My guess is I use a million spored and several hundred thousand are killed by the water. Since I use ebb-flow and re-fill my reservoir once every 2 weeks, the chorine is not a big problem.

Yes! reapply. The only reason not to reapply is cost.

This brings up an important point. I do not use the fungi for faster plant growth! It has no measurable effect on growth in a good hydroponic from what I can tell. My reason for using it is pathogen control. I live in a humid climate, mold & pathogens are in the air. So if I do nothing the grow room starts to smell like a mold pit, and I will get thriving pathogens in about 45 days. I can control them with H2O2, the stuff works great. The H2O2 was my biggest single expense. It was like being addicted to a hard drug. If I stopped for even a short while things would go bad fast. The fungi I use keep the pathogens from having anything to eat.


like I said, I use city tap water. What medium do you use? Do you sell some of your pot or are you otherwise in the money? I dont sell my weed so for me its about getting the wife to ok the expense, it this your situation, too?

Have you ever tried Consan Triple Action 20? Great sanitizer, fungicide, etc.

http://consan.biz/

__________________
PLANT MOISTURE STRESS aka leaf edge/tip curling - symptoms and solutions
Note- Due to some technicality, I can not reply to "New visitor messages"

no I have not. What is in it?

Tertiary molecule of ammonium chloride.

__________________
PLANT MOISTURE STRESS aka leaf edge/tip curling - symptoms and solutions
Note- Due to some technicality, I can not reply to "New visitor messages"

Well thanks for the response.. What I learned from this, is that my soilless medium has some bio-culture growing because of the by products that my plant's produce. This is the only means for my bio-culture to become feed. What would you recommend as a bio culture feed in a liquid form? My medium is sterilized soil-very little, if NON organic mix.. It's primary use up here because it's cheap and works well- we provide the essentials to our plants, not from the soil.
In the past, I was feeding my plants a big stack of frets, that also included a bio- feed mix. I was new and I was not sure what was working for me.. Now I simple go the NPK of a three part program-revised of course, I add some Carbload, and VitaMax and my results are termendous. Sometimes I apply some bloom booster (once a crop) and MAYBE overdrive for a week but that is at best it gets now..... My yelid averages about .9grams/perwatt. Ofcourse, my grow style does not just start at my feed program..
I usually get my lock up around week 3 in flower or 4.. I know this is a good time to start seeing def. It usually happens when I apply 0-50-33 bloom booster.. I make sure my pH is at 6.4.. Usually after this, my stuff's starts to show trouble- so guess what- I dont use it anymore lol.!! Now I might just use overdrive instead around week 5.
So, what would u advise to a bio-culture feed?

Woops, somehow I thought from your last post you were using fox farm soil.

I don't know about all those products. I have better luck when I do not add to much stuff that I buy at the hydro shop or from a magazine like the growing edge. But if it works for you go for it.

You get lock up? Maybe you should drop the extra nutes. How do you know you get this problem?


Your basic poop or fish emulsion works. I use this alaska 5-1-1 fish fertilizer, I have also used earth worm castings and I am quite sure the bat guano products out there would do quite well. You can experiment on a small amount of medium that has no plant in it and is moist. Add your bio-culture feed (strong dose) to it and wait 1 week with in in normal room temp. The fish smell should be gone and when you tear apart the medium you will see a little white thin fibers that will hold your medium together. If the medium stinks and just falls apart then you need to add some spores to inoculate it.

Why joke? You find these fungi funny?

I started a reference doc that is useful for understanding the different microbes.

I found the epsoma brand was basically the same except for the lack of Trichoderma fungi. The ones with the -- in the epsoma are the ones not in myco grow. I have not looked in to those yet.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcrtvnq8_70dkv7mtcw