DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Originally Posted by Heisenberg

That means I will have to purposely give myself slime at some point!

What a horrible thought, but yeah, how else are ya gonna know?

Absolutely awesome info.

I don't have slime but I'm thinking this might be a great, natural way to improve my future dwc grows.

hey heise i know how much you love to hear about people overcoming their brown slime war, hopefully this will be another one of those stories.
i undoubtedly have the brown slime, it was as described all the previous posts. about 36 hours ago i did an entire cleanup and h202 treatment, but this afternoon the clear snot is back AGAIN! luckily i prepared by going to the local grow shop.
the guy working their is pretty cool and helped me to pick out a couple of things. he was somewhat unfamiliar with the tea i described and entirely unfamiliar with the brown slime i described. i did however buy a couple of things for the tea. they also didnt have any of the specific brands you mention in the recipe so i got what i think is close.

1. wiggle worm soil builder earthworm castings organic fertilizer 30lb $24.99 (all they had)

1% nitrogen (0.1% water soluble/ .9% water insoluble)
1% calcium
0.2% iron
(the bag even provides some directions for making a tea)

2. roots organics oregonism xl 1.8oz $11.99 (hopefully this is the right stuff)

contains non plant food ingredients
5% kelp
25% yucca extract
3% humic acid

humic acid derived from leonardite; mycorrhizae content propagules/ gram
pisolithus tinctorious; 80,000
scleroderma cepa; 12,500
scleroderma cintrinum; 12,500
glomus intraradices; 8.6
glomus aggregatum; 11
glomus mosseae; 10
trichoderma harzianumm; 65,625
trichoderma konigli; 187,500

bateria content 275,00 cfu/ gram each
bacillus subtilis, licheniformis, b. azotoformans, b megaterium,....,....,....,....,....and about 12 other ridiculously difficult to type bacterias.(i doubt it, but let me know if you really need to know the other bacterias.


last but not least about a teaspoon of brown sugar. (this should work as well as molasses, right?)

i also got some micro pore airstones things. the guy at the grow shop swears by these things and they were like $5 so hopefully it will supplement my shitty air pumps.

well im going to go start brewing hopefully this will work. hope fully in 24 hours when i put half of this concoction in all will be headed back in the right direction.

Sounds like my first try at tea. My hydro store guys also seem unfamiliar with DWC. The slime is something that non-dwc growers rarely deal with. I bought a small bag of wiggle worm. The results were fine just not as quick or as drastic as when I use ancient forest.

I have heard of a few people using oregonism to successfully fight the slime, so you should be ok. It looks like it has the important disease fighting strains, hopefully Paenibacillus is in there too. Brown sugar is a fine source of food. Simple sugars actually encourage the tea to have less fungi (which is ok) more complex sugars will encourage more fungi.

I personally don't like the micro-pore diffusers. I find that by the end of the grow they have become clogged from salt buildup. You might not have that problem though. I don't see any advantage over cheap airstones, since the oxygenation comes from the bubbles increasing the surface area of the water and breaking surface tension. Additional oxygen is supplied from the bubbles making momentary contact with the roots, so obviously we want some sort of diffusion, but does it really make a difference if the bubbles are tiny? I don't feel it does. Anyhow $5 is cheap enough to experiment with, mine were like $20.

So good luck and keep us updated!

Hey Heisenburg, I think I'm nearly converted to bene-orgs after much reading, thanks for steering me that way. Seems like if they can work so well underwater in your DWC then my top feed perlite should love them. Now I'm just choosing a good micro mix to start with. Have you heard of Fungi Perfecti? I grew mushrooms before plants so I've dealt with them for years, and now they sell a "MycoGrow" http://www.fungi.com/mycogrow/index.html that looks very similar to Great White containing: Endomycorrhizal fung, Ectomycorrhizal fungi, Trichoderma, and Beneficial Bacteria. Do we want all four of these things? I see some mixes with just the fungi? Which bene product have you heard the best of?

I received my packet of the soluble mycogrow today. Getting ready to brew a batch with it tonight. The order was delivered super quick.

I discuss the product a few pages back, but to sum it up:

The soluble powder is exactly the same as great white minus the bio-stimulant package and plant vitamins. If your goal is to fight slime or break down organics, choose the more diverse soluble powder. If you simply want to enhance the roots and foster healthy growth, use the 'hydro' blend. Also, if you have a system with small intricate parts, go with the hydro product.

I'll post the results of my tea made with this product in a few days.

Im a little concered that i may have added too much.. I added 3 gallons microb-tea to about 45gallons in the rez... I did the same before I flushed about a week ago,,, I have been adding about 2 cups every other day.. My roots are growing good, but they smell like fresh dirt and they have a little brown on them.. it doesn't look like the algae I had before ..But the plants are growing great!. heres a pic.. Thx..

Those roots look very unhappy, but there does appear to be some nice white shoots coming out, and I don't see any signs of recent slime. Looks like things are on track to me.

3 gallons to 45 is about right, but you could back off a bit. I would say you could get away with 2 gallons for the initial inoculation. The smell of earth or soil or even moss is a good sign, and the discoloration on the roots is probably from the tea not being totally filtered. As long as the new shoots continue to grow and don't develop mucus, i'd say your fine.