DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

I've been reading this thread in my spare time for the past week or so. I got to page 100, when I decided to jump to the end & see if it's still going. Wow, 2 years, and nearly 2000 posts. Do the Guiness people know about this thing?

After 100 pages, I've seen more than a few redundant questions but I hope my questions haven't been beaten to death in the second 100.

I veg in hydroton, in a DTW system. From there, some go right to flower in a similar system, and some go into further veg and subsequent flower in biobuckets (the bio part is relatively new to me).

For the past year or so, I've been noticing clear snot balls floating around in the veg res., but not in the flower reservoirs. Here's the weird part: the plants in veg have continued to do well, but about 3-4 weeks into flower in the DTW, the plants start taking a beating. Leaves yellow & necrotic. I've been chasing nutrient management all over the board, to no avail. I have noticed that when I transplant up at flower, I used to get vibrant roots coming out the bottoms within a couple of weeks, but for this same year-long period, I've gotten no roots out the bottom.

So for a year, I've been trying to figure out if it was the jump that made the goat fart, or if it was the fart that made the goat jump. I mean, sick roots aren't going to build a healthy plant; but neither is a sick plant going to generate healthy roots. It's hard to really check out the roots in that system, so I guess I just sort of dismissed the root issue.

We started the biobucket gig a couple of months ago. It went well for a couple of weeks, and then a few of the plants started going south. To date, we've lost 3 of 18 plants in flower, and 3 of 12 in veg. About half of the remainders are not well, while the other half are doing quite well. So, it's easy to inspect the roots in this system, and so it's become apparent where the culprit lies. It was indeed the jump that made the goat fart. It only took me a year, and a whole new system to figure that out.

The roots were yellow, at best, many brown, with globs of brown goo here and there. I don't really see slime on the roots, unless that's what you'd call the goo globs. More like a brown coating (which will come off), on most of the roots. I'm thinking what I have going on is Pythium, but I'm not positive.

I have a friend who's a biologist, and a couple of weeks back, she suggested Great White to deal with my situation. I got some ordered, and started researching the "bennies", which led me to this thread. The GW came in just before finding this discussion, so I added to the res, according to the label. After starting into this thread, I immediately added a sock of AF, and a bit of molasses to each reservoir, thinking that everything can brew in the reservoirs. After reading a few dozen more pages of this thread, I've reconsidered, and got my first batch of tea into the reservoirs today.

To date I have definitely seen improvement. Some plants have crazy new root growth, while others have none. I poured the tea right on the base of each plant today. I'm hopeful that doing this by the book is going to get my situation under control.

So after that brief introduction, here are my questions:

1. I'm not sure, but I think "Pythium" is the name of my current adversary. From what I've been able to glean about it, the best control for this one is good bacteria and fungi, not unlike dealing with brown slime algae. So would any variation in the innoculants provided, or methodology be better for "root rot"?

2. My other variation from the general theme here, is that my systems aren't DWC per se, but the biobuckets are real close. Should I do anything different in either of my systems? The DTW is a way different environment. And the biobucket is designed to harbor bennies, so should they be brewed right in the res., or would the molasses still not be good?

Many thanks to all who have contributed here, and especially to Mr. Heisenberg, who has obviously given a considerable chunk of his life to this thread. I'm so glad this thread was still alive when my need came along. Any thoughts about my unique situation would be deeply appreciated.


Grow well,
B.B.

Originally Posted by Soupsah

Signed up to say thanks for giving me my first successful grow ever and to show off my babies like a proud dad should. After 2 failed attempts due to root slime as well as many rookie mistakes, Looks like I will be getting my first harvest ever. I am still making mistakes though. Example I am growing in 13 gallon 6 bucket RDWC. I made the rookie mistake of growing two strains (Alien OG and Harlequin) in the same system. The Harlequins like their nutes about 300PPMs less than the Alien and I burnt the leaves bad on the Harles while getting perfecting tip burn on the Alien. I add a gallon of unfiltered tea thru the netpot of hydrotons twice a week. I don't have root problem anymore but feel that it's helping my plants grow better. <-- Nothing to back this up but it doesn't seem to be hurting them so... I am only using AN 3 part with botanicare cal mag + and was foliar spraying SSU per your recommendation. Thanks again.

Great looking plants. Glad you were able to get some results. Thanks for sharing. Looks tasty!

Cheers