DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Originally Posted by legallyflying

I have a question.. how do you identify the good slime vs the bad slime? I'm not new to growing but new to DWC. I guess I'm a little anal about my grows but it pays to be anal. Originally I didn't add anything to my rez and started to get some slimy roots. The roots were not really growing as well. It didn't stink, but it was definately a brownish gook on there. I used the tea and bam it was gone. Then I was having nitrogen toxicity problems, when I had very low PPM... 600. I think I'm pointing the finger towards the tea for adding soluble nitrogen. but at any rate, I cut the ppm to 330 and the problem seems to be going away.

But then on a recent rez change, the roots looked a little slimy again. kind of a clear slime..but nothing is clear as I am using BC nutes and the stuff just has some chunks in it. No two ways around it. I was bubbling another batch of beni tea and there was slime on the airstone line. I thought WTF is this? is this good slime?

I guess the point is, besides the plants collapsing, when do you know when you have an issue or not? To be honest, I am leaning towards just adding zone to my rez, pumping shit loads of air through the buckets and calling it good. The sterile rez is somewhat a seductive option...I mean, you can say fuck the balance, just nuke everything. I realize there are some issues with going this route; mainly that slime may creek in anyways. But in the interest of increasing my knowledge base before hand... I thought I would ask for some assistance dealing with slime and goo and steralizing agents.

Slime on the airstone in the tea is fine. It comes from the tea being so concentrated and from organic material being broken down. I regularly move these slimy air stones to my bud buckets after brewing to introduce bennies. I personally have never had any slime after introducing tea, unless I added other stuff like RE or superthrive or an enzyme. The main characteristic of brown slime algae is that nearly all root production stops, and it's usually accompanied by swift PH drift. I have seen an 'afterslime' that sticks around on once infected roots, but it never grows bigger or keeps the roots from growing. It eventually diminishes to a faint spot on the root ball. If you experienced nitrogen burn from adding tea, my inclination is that you are making it too strong (too much AF?) or adding too much. It's also possible that the bennies are increasing the overall nute uptake, as Homebrewer pointed out in his tests with greatwhite. I blast my plants when they are young, and then back way off of the tea when they get to bud. I currently add about 1oz per week to my 5 gal buckets. (it seems this is the minimum amount as I get a hint of slime if I add less or less often) A sterile res is great, but often after someone experiences slime, they find sterilizing products don't keep it from coming back. You will probably need something a little stronger than Zone, such as bleach or physan 20. I know I used Zone at 3 times the 'aggressive' dose and it did nothing to slow the slime.

Originally Posted by fallinprince

How would you go about solving a bearding issue? it seems i likely have this problem the plants in my setup that are doing well seem to have a strong ball of roots as opposed to the many others that have a beard/net like shape. Im not sure how much of the algae that grows on the clear tubes of my setup or the sediment like stuff that sits in my res and the bottom of my bars is hurting. but either way my plants look starved and the whiteness of the roots has turned yellow.

If i remove the yellow/brown roots with a slight (and i really do me slight) tug. the plant still grows nice healthy white ones. but the foliage doesn't seem to be getting fed properly. im getting droopy red stems on my leaves and this is after the new air pump. My next solution is to get a timer to do 15/15 on/off intervals. & replace the broken humidifier (RH typically 30%)

Recently to reduce the overall particles ive been filtering though a carbon filter mesh b4 adding to res. (its actually the filter that covers the pump in tube)

Bearding is only seen in areo setups, and it is most often caused from the mist or fog being too fine. If you have something resembling bearding in a DWC it's is probably something else. Do you see new white root tips? It sounds to me like the roots are suffocating and dying, in which case almost nothing will stop root rot from setting in. Some pics might help us to diagnose.

Originally Posted by HPac

First off, thanks to Heisenberg and everyone else for this excellent thread! I'm brand new to hydroponics, and I've been plagued with problems since the first time I filled my DWC rez. I stumbled on this thread last week and read the entire thing over the course of a few days.

After reading this thread I decided to scrap my entire project, clean my rez, and start over using Heisenberg's tea to supplement my rez. I started out with clones that barely had root tips popping through the bottom of the rockwool, and in about 6 days, I had nice long white hairy healthy looking roots.

Unfortunately, my power went out for about 48 hrs this weekend. I knew the roots couldn't survive without the air pumps running, and with my limited knowledge and limited resources, the best thing I could come up with was to get the roots out of the water and manually mist them every few hours to keep them from drying out. When the power came back on, the roots still looked pretty healthy, though a few of them had started to shrivel up a little. I checked the vitals on the rez and everything seemed to be in check so I added a cup of Heisenberg tea and put the plants back in. When I woke up this morning, there was a little bit of clear gunk starting to build up on the roots =/ As the day has gone on, it's gotten worse pretty quickly and started to tint brown in some places. Not sure if it's the brown slime or root rot or what, but I need some advice as how to proceed. Would a rez change with some fresh tea and some cleaning/trimming of the infected roots be enough to keep going? Or since this grow is only a little over a week old, am I better off just scrapping and starting over again?

Start from square one. Clean up as much as possible, and make some fresh tea. If your res set for 48 hours without bubbles it became anaerobic and was likely harboring pathogens. When you placed the shriveled roots into the water you provided food. The pathogens already had a head start so they outgrew the bennies. The cuttings being so young made it even easier for the slime to take hold. Level the playing field and start over and you should be okay. As long as there is still some white roots coming from the base of the cutting you should be able to recover. If the roots have turned yellowish all the way up to the stem, you need to get new cuttings.

I have just started reading the thread, I am down with the info in the first post. Should I read the 22 pages?

Thank you, Heisenberg-san.

Hey lantern theres been some changes to the formula sinse the start, i use 1) humbolt myco madness 2) worm castings
3) molassis and lots of air

Is that a good mix for a drip ring system?

Hmm i dont see why not might ask the hiesinberg though

I've recently tried pouring the EWC directly into the brew, I'm curious how everyone is filtering
theirs? I tried a finer strainer, but I still get some of the EWC in my nutes, and coffee filters didn't
do the trick as the tea wasn't able to get through them.

Thanks