DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
Ok,
So answer me this. I disinfected my system. high levels of bleach. Cleaned and rinsed. Brewed tea for 48 hours. Put new ro h20 in system. 80 gallons. Put 2 gallons of brewed tea in system. Let run for 24 hours.

Put in new clones. Added Nutes. DM gold. Grow a+b+silica at recommended ratio from dutch masters chart. .9ec. 12 hours later I have a mild bad smell emanating from veg room and the Uc buckets. Not terrible but a noticeable smell. Have drippers running full time for taht 12 hours. Clones were small, with small roots when put in system. No roots comming out buckets, only an inch big when I put them in.

Is this bad? What the hell should I do?
Bad smell indicates you made the tea wrong or are under oxygenating your res. Start from square one and wait till you have a decent root ball before adding silica. Keep anything organic out of the res.
 

sprechenz

Member
Bad smell indicates you made the tea wrong or are under oxygenating your res. Start from square one and wait till you have a decent root ball before adding silica. Keep anything organic out of the res.
The tea didn't smell when it was first done. It wasn't till it was in the UC for about 12 hours till I noticed the smell. Should I drain the 80 gallons in the system and re bleach or H202 or just brew more tea and add?

Is the silica an organic?
 

sprechenz

Member
Also. I made the tea in the following manner

2 hadfulls of Alaskan Hummus
30 ml aquashield
30 ml sweet botonicare
1/2 scoop Zho
Bubbled for 48hrs maybe 58 by the time I put it in res.

Did I do something wrong?
 

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
The tea didn't smell when it was first done. It wasn't till it was in the UC for about 12 hours till I noticed the smell. Should I drain the 80 gallons in the system and re bleach or H202 or just brew more tea and add?

Is the silica an organic?
Also. I made the tea in the following manner

2 hadfulls of Alaskan Hummus
30 ml aquashield
30 ml sweet botonicare
1/2 scoop Zho
Bubbled for 48hrs maybe 58 by the time I put it in res.

Did I do something wrong?
Keep an eye on your roots. Chances are you don't have to drain the system until your next scheduled change. Just make up some more tea and add a bit. Since you have ZHO, you could also mix up a bit in some distilled water and pour the mixture through the netcups or spray it on the roots. The mycos will germ on the roots without being activated in the tea first. Silica can aggravate diatoms, which is yet a different problem than the slime, and much more rare, but I still do not take chances until I have a decent root base. Brew the tea no longer than 48 hours. After that it starts to lose diversity.
 

sprechenz

Member
Great. Thanks so much for your advice. Do you think that the "new" tea will take the smell away? Or will adding the Zho to the root crown do this? The roots are not yet visable. They are still small and contained within the net pots.

This round of clones did not have the slime. It was the plants in the system before this that had it. I disposed of them as they had been through way to much stress. I was adding the tea to this round as a preventative.
 

mr.bond

Well-Known Member
It shouldnt be an issue to reuse the same bucket without sterlizing. Although I generally just rinse it with hot water and then get started. Make sure you use new humus in the sock.
 

sprechenz

Member
It shouldnt be an issue to reuse the same bucket without sterlizing. Although I generally just rinse it with hot water and then get started. Make sure you use new humus in the sock.
Thanks mr bond

You think I should add some sm 90 to the system to try and get rid of the cause of the smell. I am a little worried that I may be brewing some badies in there. It's weird the smell isn't really "bad" to me, but my girlfriend thinks it smells like slightly like a dead mouse.
 

sprechenz

Member
Keep an eye on your roots. Chances are you don't have to drain the system until your next scheduled change. Just make up some more tea and add a bit. Since you have ZHO, you could also mix up a bit in some distilled water and pour the mixture through the netcups or spray it on the roots. The mycos will germ on the roots without being activated in the tea first. Silica can aggravate diatoms, which is yet a different problem than the slime, and much more rare, but I still do not take chances until I have a decent root base. Brew the tea no longer than 48 hours. After that it starts to lose diversity.
Do you think the smell could be because there weren't big roots on the plants yet. Or did I add to much tea? I added about 2 gallons to 80 gallons of h20. You think that may be to much for the UC system? What would adding to much to a system do?
 

farkface

Member
Thanks for the reassurance.

So after 2 days sitting in the res change with the 3ml/gal H202, every single root tip that is fulled submerged in the dwc has about 1/8" of black tip. Never saw this with the tea, except for a few sideways stragglers that would get stuck on the res wall. Not all the roots in the air gap had the black tip, but more than before.n All the roots look thinner, and I see almost no hairs on any roots in the airgap. Before it seemed they were covered.

So I went ahead and did another res change (incase some h2o2 was still active), and added the 1 cup per gallon of tea. My tea has been in the fridge exactly 10 days, but it had no real detectable smell. at one point I thought I smelled sewage... and it turned out to be my kitchen sink garbage disposal instead :D

I cut off every black tip I could see by about a 1/4", and cut some of the thick tangles back further. It's only been about 3 hours since I did this and added the tea (2 cups in the res, and 1 cup each netpot poured from above), but I swear I already see the roots perking up a tad. I'll post a pic of comparisons of how the roots go from awesome-crappy-back to awesome if they indeed recover super fast.

The habanero plants themselves look ok still.
 

ramen86

Well-Known Member
IMG_0182.jpgIMG_0183.jpgIMG_0184.jpgIMG_0180.jpg


It's been a little while since I last posted on this thread. But here is my progress almost 5 weeks in (1 week into flowering). If you look back at my previous posts and pictures you will see quite how much they have progresed, I give big thanks to Heisenberg and others on this forum that have been helpful on how to treat this slime.

But now we have 2 other minor problems that I know I should be posting elsewhere than this site, but I figure why not just post it in here since it is a pretty active thread.

1. As you can see these things are getting HUGE, and they are only 5 weeks old. We dont have much height to work with, and we dont want to scrog. I've seen others people on other threads saying "as long as you have fans pointed up towards the top of the plants then they shouldnt burn". Tell me what you guys think. They are about a foot now, and if they grow about a foot and a half more they will be pretty damn close to the lights.

2. We have an Under Current setup on 1 side, and a ebb and flow table on the other. Both setups are in the same room so that they veg and flower all together. We are starting to see a significant amount of gnats/fruit flies around the ebb and flow tables (near the bottom of the pots) and inside the UC buckets! Now I've read that if you go out and buy that sticky yellow paper stuff that would do the trick, but as far as getting rid of the gnats IN the buckets. How would you go about that?

I'm also starting to think that we might of vegged in the UC for a little too long after a little reading. Most people suggest vegging in a UC for 2 weeks MAX, and we did it for 4, but at the same time, the slime had stunted the growth of our plants for about a good week. I just hope everything goes good from here on out seeing as to how we have at least another 6 weeks to go.

Appreciate all the help guys.
 

farkface

Member
Bubonic,
I am a noob here, but I've had good results with the Tea. not sure why you brewed it in the fridge, but I think that's your problem. The good guys in the brew need high enough temps to be able to metabolize the sugars and grow. At fridge temps, that's probably is not going to happen. The reason we put it in the fridge AFTER they multiply is to try and keep them stable, as in keep them from eating faster and dying faster. We'd freeze them if it didn't kill everything.
 

hellraizer30

Rebel From The North
Bubonic,
I am a noob here, but I've had good results with the Tea. not sure why you brewed it in the fridge, but I think that's your problem. The good guys in the brew need high enough temps to be able to metabolize the sugars and grow. At fridge temps, that's probably is not going to happen. The reason we put it in the fridge AFTER they multiply is to try and keep them stable, as in keep them from eating faster and dying faster. We'd freeze them if it didn't kill everything.
if you brewed it in the fridge thats your problem, you just to store the extras in the fridge
 

mr.bond

Well-Known Member
Bubonic,

Keeping the tea brew chilled in a refridgerator while brewing will basically cause it not to brew at all. The bennies will never wake up because of the cold temps. Clean up your system, re-do your tea brew in normal room temp for 48 hours, then add to rez. Let us know if you have more questions. Good luck.

Wheelman -- I use Sub-M (similar to ZHO) and I also have the double-sided scoop. I normally do about 1/2 scoop of the small side (1/2 Tsp).

Cheers and good luck
mr.bond
 

Dustybowlz

Well-Known Member
Been a while since ive last posted.

I seem to be fighting it about the same now as I was before the tea. I have tried a few different combos of the tea too. I just dont get it.

I just moved to bloom and have had the most stable ph ever. No real root growth though. I have had b52 out of the buckets for some time now, I have the same color in the rootzone, except im losing a lot of green. I was told to foliar with the b52 so I started. They look pretty happy, no burn and new growth isnt wilting. Im just going to continue to LITFA.

VEG was my first trial of running shock in my aero cloner. They dropping them into everything fresh.

So I did, roots looked bitchin, Dropped into dwc, roots were long enough to just go straight to the water, 300ppms/5.6. of AN 2part a/b+sensi cal+TEA. First two days, ph rose to 6.0. and ppms and water level remained the same and roots bright white. Now im on the 3rd day. and I am noticing half are losing there nice boney roots (from the aero+pool shock) and going slick, two more buckets are brown and one is straight the most brown I have ever seen any of my roots. Actually like pythium brown. No environment changes.... WTF man.

(ps, I dont know if it was from the random EWC or what, but I have been LITFA in bloom and I popped the lids just to see how it looked, I saw some freaking small ass, baby worms or somthing on the net pot. Hmm, Ok now how could they logically get there? Now my head is really spinning...)
 

Dustybowlz

Well-Known Member
I washed roots off (3 day old in veg) into clean bucket.

Let bucket dry and observed the tds. It looks like hydroton sediment.

Is it possible to not be cleaning the hydroton well enough, then the water brings the sediment into the buckets then the sediment chokes out the roots? Causing the pathogen? I did everything text book and still ended with same result.

Anyone have a link or process for cleaning hydroton?
 

farkface

Member
I just put my hydroton in a bowl and poured tap water to fill the bowl, stirred and discarded the water 3-4 times. By the end the water was basically clear, but if I top-water my plants I still see a tiny amount of dark-red sediment coming down from the hydroton. I think it's harmless personally, just as inert as the rocks themselves.

Sorry you've had so much trouble with the tea. What do you mean when you say "Let bucket dry and observed the tds."

Does that mean you top-watered the plants to 'rinse' them and collected the runoff in a bucket for testing? sorry just not sure what you mean by that.



I don't mean to rub salt in your wounds, but I'd like to report back that after my little foray into h2o2 territory (which made the roots look like ASS overnight), 3 days of tea (and 10 day old tea at that!) have made the roots even nicer and more branched than before. I was actually already getting the first signs of slime with h2o2 (should have just trusted Heiz but it's awesome to see the results yourself too).

The 10-day old tea behaved a bit different. The day after dosing, my res was very cloudy. But the next day the cloudyness was all gone, and there's no slime anywhere. Maybe the cloudyness was the result of some bloom caused by old tea... or maybe an actual battle between good and bad guys taking place?? Either way it didn't concern me and the roots thrived in the cloudy water compared to h2o2.

Ramen thoes roots of yours look good enough to eat :)
 
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