DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

[Heisenberg]

400 micron is the smallest you should use for tea. If you do use a sock or any sort of bag, it is important to have an air stone in the bag to keep it aerobic and to dislodge microbes. It's best to brew the EWC or other amendments freely in the tea and filter afterwards, if at all. I do not worry for a second about debris in my res because I have nothing to clog. I use a turkey baster to apply the tea, so once the materials settle I just draw from the top which keeps most bits and chunks out anyway.

Anyone who makes tea frequently should invest in some glass bonded bead airstones. They will resist the biofilm that tends to gather and are more easily cleaned. The ones sold for koi ponds are not that expensive.

 

[CamelToeJoe]

Well I don't know what is going on in my rez. About a week after a rez change I notice the top off tank will not drain as much because the plants aren't drinking. Then the next day or the Ph will plummet down to 5.0-5.3 and the ppms will also drop a few hundred points almost overnight. A quick dose with physan and new rez change and things are back to normal.

I haven't had any problems in years and this all started when I was filling my tank from my to tank and noticed a bunch of green water run into my rez. My guess is green algae. I am going to brew up some tea right now I run just chemical nutes. I have no brown slime or gooey roots. Seems like something blooms and chows down on my nutes and depletes them.

But what causes the Ph and ppms to drop almost overnight. Very strange.

 

[Heisenberg]

Well I don't know what is going on in my rez. About a week after a rez change I notice the top off tank will not drain as much because the plants aren't drinking. Then the next day or the Ph will plummet down to 5.0-5.3 and the ppms will also drop a few hundred points almost overnight. A quick dose with physan and new rez change and things are back to normal.

I haven't had any problems in years and this all started when I was filling my tank from my to tank and noticed a bunch of green water run into my rez. My guess is green algae. I am going to brew up some tea right now I run just chemical nutes. I have no brown slime or gooey roots. Seems like something blooms and chows down on my nutes and depletes them.

But what causes the Ph and ppms to drop almost overnight. Very strange.

Strange indeed. Algae outbreaks will consume some of your nutes and can cause PH swings, but overall should cause the Ph to rise. Also strange that you noticed this green water after years of growing. What else changed recently? As im sure you know, algae needs light and even the faintest light can encourage an outbreak. If physan fixes things temporally that does suggest a microbe outbreak of some kind. In any case you should try the tea, it's very likely it will bring things into balance. Good luck!

 

[CamelToeJoe]

Well I have had the to tank for the past year. Other than that nothing really new. It has been driving me up the wall. Where I live was very wet this spring and we had mildew/algae smell throughout our neighborhood very strong for three weeks. My only thought is some made it into my room somehow.

Great thread thanks for the write up.

 

[legallyflying]

That is odd, but definitely sounds microbial because of the ph drop. What about your air pumps? Are the inlets somewhere musty? My plants are soo thirsty I spent an hour looking for system leaks. 12 plants drinking about 15 gallons in a single night! Probably even 20.

At any rate, I wanted to back up to a previous post about certain species expiring in a very short time frame without a root host. This leads me to question both the time it takes a fresh mix to be ready for addition to the rez and the duration that solution can be stored. I have been adding the tea after 3 days regardless of foaming but most of the time I get foam pretty quickly and then it tapers off by day three. Does that seem right? What exactly am I waiting to happen in those three days?

Lastly, why does kelp cause sooo much foaming? It's like adding dish soap to the dishwasher (not that my remnants would ever be dumb enough to do that).

Ok.. Second lastly.. If you use kelp, u may want to look into sea green. The stuff is pure kelp extract and is spent but it is very very concentrated. Like 0.5 ml a gallon. Was at the hydro store and looked at samples of different kelp products under the microscope. While most had a fair amount of microbial life, I about shit myself when we looked at the sea green sample. It was absolutely packed with life. I joked that the slide was going to vibrate away with all the movement. I add 2ml to my 5 gallon tea and the foam gets about 18" tall above the bucket!

Cheers

 

[Heisenberg]

At any rate, I wanted to back up to a previous post about certain species expiring in a very short time frame without a root host. This leads me to question both the time it takes a fresh mix to be ready for addition to the rez and the duration that solution can be stored. I have been adding the tea after 3 days regardless of foaming but most of the time I get foam pretty quickly and then it tapers off by day three. Does that seem right? What exactly am I waiting to happen in those three days?

Lastly, why does kelp cause sooo much foaming? It's like adding dish soap to the dishwasher (not that my remnants would ever be dumb enough to do that).
Cheers

You should only brew the tea for 48 hours. What happens during this time is that the microbes both multiply and diversify. Some of the microbes sense the molasses (or other food), which causes them to leave their dormant state to eat and multiply. Other microbes now sense the presence of the first microbes, which they see as food, and so they now leave their dormant state, ect ect. There is a play unfolding in your tea, and it takes 48 hours for all the actors to come on stage. After the 48 hour mark the reverse starts happening. Certain organisms become dominate while others go extinct. Eventually the food and oxygen runs out, the bennies die, the anaerobic microbes sense this and wake up. Placing the tea in the fridge slows things down and preserves the diversity for much longer. Simply adding more food and oxygen to the tea and brewing beyond 48 hours only encourages survival of the fittest, leading to a group of organisms dominating the tea, which is more or less the same situation we have with slime in the res.

There is no need to worry about the mycos dying in the tea if you have a combo inoculation that includes them. The Glomus fungi are what's responsible for increased water uptake, so obviously they are thriving. If you have an inoculation that is fungi only, add it to the tea at the end of the brew, or just inoculate the roots directly, but otherwise this info is only a footnote. There is no benefit to tailoring the bennies in a DWC, so long as some survive to ward off slime and stimulate roots, we don't care which ones.

Foam is largely an indication that the water contains free proteins, amino acids or carbohydrates. Some of this comes directly from the EWC and some comes from the food being broken down. Kelp contains these things as well. It is a sign that there is microbal life feeding in the tea.

 

[italrasta]

thanks for the simple answer, it was more along the lines of making the tea and so what I did was, first I bought some tea that my local grow makes and withing a few hours it was fixed, I also brought the following to make tea at the shops suggestion 1. Biodynamic thunder (1tblsp) 2.VTU's Black Casting EWC (1 fist full in a sock) 3 Ancient Forest (1 fistfull in a sock) mixed with 1.5 gallons dechlorinated water and left in a bucket for 48 hours with a 4 in Air Stone bubbling. Here is the question..do I need to add and bud sweetner or molassas to wake up the bennies or is this set up fine on its own.

 

[legallyflying]

your going to want to add some type of sugar so that the microbes have something to eat. about a tbls a gallon is fine.

 

[Heisenberg]

I've had some questions about reusing hydroton. Some people go to great lengths to clean and sterilize hydroton. You definitely want to sterilize your hydroton before reusing again. It could harbor pathogens that, while they may not have attacked your plant, could kill your clones or seedlings. I soak mine for a few hours in a trashcan full of tap water. I place an airstone in the trashcan for agitation. Eventually I pour this into a bucket with holes drilled into it, rinse a few times, and let it drain. I then place it into large cake pans and bake in the oven at 500 for 20 minutes. This will dry and sterilize the hydroton, which is volcano rock and wont be harmed. After it cools I place it into large ziplock bags and keep it sealed away until use.

I do not reuse hydroton that is tangled into the roots. With my setup this amounts to about 10-15 pellets and I don't feel like digging them out. If you do have tangle of roots to deal with, don't worry about enzymes or h202. Just place it into the oven before you soak and it will turn the roots to ash. Then soak, rinse and re-bake to sterilize.

 

[mr.bond]

Freakin' Heisenberg... always full of good information.

cheers mate
mr.bond

 

[legallyflying]

Heis. Sounds like allot of work. My system used like 300 liters of hydroton. I poured it all on a big tarp in the yard, roots and all and let it bake in the sun for 4-5 days. Then I sifted all the roots out using a tray with a screen. Rinse once with h2o2 and ready to go.

 

[Heisenberg]

Heis. Sounds like allot of work. My system used like 300 liters of hydroton. I poured it all on a big tarp in the yard, roots and all and let it bake in the sun for 4-5 days. Then I sifted all the roots out using a tray with a screen. Rinse once with h2o2 and ready to go.

lol, I can just imagine root balls sitting my back yard. Must be nice to have that sort of freedom. I use about 1 cup of hydroton per plant, so cleanings are few and far between. I can see how it would be a pain to scale it up. It doesn't make sense for me to use any extra products, even h202, for cleanup. However if I had as much as you I would spend far more than that just keeping my oven at 500 all day.

 

[hellraizer30]

Heis. Sounds like allot of work. My system used like 300 liters of hydroton. I poured it all on a big tarp in the yard, roots and all and let it bake in the sun for 4-5 days. Then I sifted all the roots out using a tray with a screen. Rinse once with h2o2 and ready to go.

Dam that a fast method but not a option for me

 

[legallyflying]

I would say its more back breaking than anything. Up the stairs, down the stairs, Up the stairs, down. Shake then bake. Then shake and put in buckets, then rinse, then the whole stair routine. So you can probably see why I said you know what, fuck this, I'm switching to a small net pot and DWC.

Hydroton cleaning will now go as follows:
Throw everything in the compost bin. Grab a couple buckets of hydroton from garage.

 

[hellraizer30]

I would say its more back breaking than anything. Up the stairs, down the stairs, Up the stairs, down. Shake then bake. Then shake and put in buckets, then rinse, then the whole stair routine. So you can probably see why I said you know what, fuck this, I'm switching to a small net pot and DWC.

Hydroton cleaning will now go as follows:
Throw everything in the compost bin. Grab a couple buckets of hydroton from garage.

Im done with rock and going back to RW just dont like washing anything anymore

 

[CaliMackdaddy]

Before and after pictures, pretty obvious which one looks better, Trimmed off most of the dead roots and started from scratch. It stayed healthy left some roots for it to survive, the next day there was massive root development, 3 days later as you see.. amazing results. The beanies WORKED. I know you love these success stories.. Gonna get my mixture down perfect this time and keep you updated on the progress.

 

[sqydro]

never light proofed my container for veg cos im a lazy idiot mainly, i thought they would only be in there a few days but ended up a few weeks, ive now gave them a shot of h202 and lightproofed the container, i will change out res tomorow and rinse roots out, they are youg roots so will they pull through and after i res change i can use my EWC tea to battle this problem mr hiesenberg??

 

[hellraizer30]

so ive been using the tea for a grip now and have tweeked it trying to get a more clean brew but seems
I still get a brown resadue on my hoses and stones in the res even on the ph/ppm probe but nothing
down stream of the res? ph is rock solid and always moves up never down! the brown doent smell or
look like slime just a dark brown coating on my stuff in the res, anybody else have this?

 

[mr.bond]

so ive been using the tea for a grip now and have tweeked it trying to get a more clean brew but seems
I still get a brown resadue on my hoses and stones in the res even on the ph/ppm probe but nothing
down stream of the res? ph is rock solid and always moves up never down! the brown doent smell or
look like slime just a dark brown coating on my stuff in the res, anybody else have this?

yeah i have gotten something similar but it just appears to be a benign bio-film. downstream of the rez, the bennies are residing on the roots which may be why you aren't seeing any bio-film there. if your pH is staying stable you're probably good. how are your roots reacting? good growth?

cheers,
mr.bond

 

[mr.bond]

never light proofed my container for veg cos im a lazy idiot mainly, i thought they would only be in there a few days but ended up a few weeks, ive now gave them a shot of h202 and lightproofed the container, i will change out res tomorow and rinse roots out, they are youg roots so will they pull through and after i res change i can use my EWC tea to battle this problem mr hiesenberg??

yeah or just forget the h202 and put some tea in there. if youre using around 1cup/gal. then that should be more than enough to rid you of any slime and turn the roots' frown upside down.

cheers
mr.bond