DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

The Dawg

Well-Known Member
Check This Out.Im In A Party Cup Compitition And Of Course I Went Hydro With A SWC.I Have An 8oz Res And I Add 15ml Of Tea To My Res.My Roots Are Amazing Thank You Mr Heisenberg :peace:

RoseMary Day 37 005 (533x800).jpgRoseMary Day 37 004 (533x800).jpgRoseMary Day 37 003 (533x800).jpg
 

tyler.durden

Well-Known Member
If you use any of the higher quality microbe mixes chances are you already have a mild dose of BT and/or BTI in your tea. (BTI is more specific and aggressive) For a boost you can add the gnatrol to the tea 1 hour from finish just as we do with mycos. You can also add BTI pretty cheaply with mosquito dunks. (throw them in from the start of brew) It only takes a little chunk to give the tea a boost, or you can add a chunk directly to the res. Dunks act as housing and will continue to release BTI for several weeks, so they can be left in a res over the course of a number of water changes. The dunk material is also attractive to larvae as food which increases the chance of infection.

If you wanted to make a drench for soil just soak a couple of dunks for 24 hours. You can let the dunks dry and use them again.

BT is anaerobic so it does not multiply in the tea. It will remain in spore form until it enters the gut of a host. After the host dies it eventually becomes a fruiting body and will release BT itself. So the best way to multiply BT is to infect larvae!
Wow, what don't you know? Impressive as usual, thanks for the thoughtful and super quick response...
 

Budie

Member
Most DWC setups do not require bennies. It is an unnecessary step with the exception of organics or if you are in an environment prone to root disease.
I followed the advice and now have a white slime like snot 48 hours after adding the bennies. I usd root rot stop product from garden aid and vitalink biopac. the slime and res doesn't smell like it did before it just seems like iv gone from one problem to another. my res temps are 19-20 degrees c thanks
 

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
I followed the advice and now have a white slime like snot 48 hours after adding the bennies. I usd root rot stop product from garden aid and vitalink biopac. the slime and res doesn't smell like it did before it just seems like iv gone from one problem to another. my res temps are 19-20 degrees c thanks
Sorry to hear about your situation. Did you put the vitalink directly into the res, or make a tea with it?

From the vitalink website:

"VitaLink BioPac also contains molasses, an organic food
source on which beneficial microbes feed and develop,
which ensures a long shelf life."

Remember part of my advice is to never put anything organic into the res. If you put it into a tea brew, did you also add additional molasses? If so, 48 hours may not have been enough time to break it all down.

The white film you see should rinse off very easily. Look to see if you can notice tiny new root tips/shoots. If so, then it is probably just a bio-film rather than the brown slime algae.
 

firsttimeARE

Well-Known Member
On 2/20 I changed the res out with a clean bucket and filled it up with RO water and set PH to 5.8.

Before changing the roots were mostly white aside from a few spots were there was this brown residue, not slimey, almost like dirty water(can see specks and if I touch the roots it comes off on my hands). Since changing the nutes it seems to have spread causing them to look like this now.

DSC04621.jpgDSC04622.jpg

Not sure whats happening. Ph was 5.6 from 5.8. Water temps are 63F.

Using 5LPM in each bucket and water looks turbulent enough.

Been dealing with this for a couple months now.
 

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
On 2/20 I changed the res out with a clean bucket and filled it up with RO water and set PH to 5.8.

Before changing the roots were mostly white aside from a few spots were there was this brown residue, not slimey, almost like dirty water(can see specks and if I touch the roots it comes off on my hands). Since changing the nutes it seems to have spread causing them to look like this now.


Not sure whats happening. Ph was 5.6 from 5.8. Water temps are 63F.

Using 5LPM in each bucket and water looks turbulent enough.

Been dealing with this for a couple months now.
Tell me a little about how you make your tea, and what your plants go through from clone until they get to the bud room.

It looks like maybe you have recently xferred these to bigger pots? Good news is the white growth on the bottom tells me there is no slime and the plant is healthy.
 

firsttimeARE

Well-Known Member
Tell me a little about how you make your tea, and what your plants go through from clone until they get to the bud room.

It looks like maybe you have recently xferred these to bigger pots? Good news is the white growth on the bottom tells me there is no slime and the plant is healthy.
1gal water
15ml aquashield(the date on it is past due, out of two bottles from two different stores they both were, im wondering if thats a born on date)
1/8th of a scoop that comes with Great White
Handful of casings(Wriggle Worm is the brand) and tie it off in a sock and throw it on top of an air stone
Tablespoon or so of molasses
Bubble for 48 hours with same air stone and hose. I rinse off every time with hot water.

I usually just brew it and use right away and don't end up using whats left over.

I used two cups for 4 gallons of water on those two I posted.

These were in RW as seeds. For these I let them root in the cubes for two weeks until the bottom was full of roots and then transferred. I planted higher up than I normally do and that took the plant a long time to send off roots(about 12 days or so). I usually see roots in 3 days planting like 12mm from the bottom of the pot. I may have been feeding a bit too much and their growth got stunted because this strain was slower than the last time I grew it.

DSC04616.jpg
Plant with the longer roots. Feeding .6EC. Topped a few days ago.

DSC04617.jpg
Plant with the lanky spread out roots. Feeding .6EC

*EDIT* Whatever it is I can see this brown stuff on the rocks on the bottom of the pot. Roots didn't seem to improve today(2/24). If I touch the brown roots the stuff comes off on my hands. Smells sorta earthy.
 

frsba

Member
Heisenberg, Undercurrent told me to just use Worm Castings, bubble for 6 to 24 hours and use that. Just dump in 2 cups of worm castings and 4 gallons of water thats it. It worked much better for me than adding zho, great white and the other things I added to the ancient forest. Undercurrent said that adding the sugar will grow sugar bacteria and those are not what you want.
This simple tea worked very well for me, after $100 worth of bacteria, $8 bag of worm castings worked wonders. BTW I filtered using a dish rag and used about 2 cups of the tea for each 5 gallon bucket, UC said to use 10ml per gallon.
 

frsba

Member
The UC systems work very well, but I have had more problems with them than all the other things I tried combined. Getting the Slime Cured will be a huge help for me. Thanks for sharing this information, I thought it was other problems not slime......BTW my last grow I had a 29 oz plant of the 6 in the 13 gallon uc system and one was only 2 1/2, so there is much room for improvement, and great potential.
 

UNICRONLIVES

Well-Known Member
quik Q's!...do I ph the tea afterwards or leave it alone!?..its at 8.4 right now. And 2nd Im using MYCO-MADNESS soluble from humboldt it has all the trichs-glomas-bacillus n such...but says pure organic!?..WTF>> got the bubbles n foam so am I good?!..
 

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
1gal water
15ml aquashield(the date on it is past due, out of two bottles from two different stores they both were, im wondering if thats a born on date)
1/8th of a scoop that comes with Great White
Handful of casings(Wriggle Worm is the brand) and tie it off in a sock and throw it on top of an air stone
Tablespoon or so of molasses
Bubble for 48 hours with same air stone and hose. I rinse off every time with hot water.

I usually just brew it and use right away and don't end up using whats left over.

I used two cups for 4 gallons of water on those two I posted.

These were in RW as seeds. For these I let them root in the cubes for two weeks until the bottom was full of roots and then transferred. I planted higher up than I normally do and that took the plant a long time to send off roots(about 12 days or so). I usually see roots in 3 days planting like 12mm from the bottom of the pot. I may have been feeding a bit too much and their growth got stunted because this strain was slower than the last time I grew it.


Plant with the longer roots. Feeding .6EC. Topped a few days ago.
Plant with the lanky spread out roots. Feeding .6EC

*EDIT* Whatever it is I can see this brown stuff on the rocks on the bottom of the pot. Roots didn't seem to improve today(2/24). If I touch the brown roots the stuff comes off on my hands. Smells sorta earthy.
I get a similar problem when I use cubes (plugs) to clone. It's as if the 'air roots' turn brownish a day or so after going into the water, while new white roots shoot out in the meantime. I have found using lava rocks for housing really helps. (brew them in the tea) I have also started using rhizotonic in my tea and see a real boost from it. (10ml per gallon).

So try to do a shallow water cloner one of these times when you have extras. This will avoid ever making air roots. Also, I and several others have found that making less than two gallons of tea at a time reduces it's effectiveness. There just isn't enough room in one gallon for everything to happen properly.
 

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
Heisenberg, Undercurrent told me to just use Worm Castings, bubble for 6 to 24 hours and use that. Just dump in 2 cups of worm castings and 4 gallons of water thats it. It worked much better for me than adding zho, great white and the other things I added to the ancient forest. Undercurrent said that adding the sugar will grow sugar bacteria and those are not what you want.
This simple tea worked very well for me, after $100 worth of bacteria, $8 bag of worm castings worked wonders. BTW I filtered using a dish rag and used about 2 cups of the tea for each 5 gallon bucket, UC said to use 10ml per gallon.
The UC systems work very well, but I have had more problems with them than all the other things I tried combined. Getting the Slime Cured will be a huge help for me. Thanks for sharing this information, I thought it was other problems not slime......BTW my last grow I had a 29 oz plant of the 6 in the 13 gallon uc system and one was only 2 1/2, so there is much room for improvement, and great potential.
UC is a different beast than DWC. If brewing just EWC works for you then great, others might find the same results. However some of what you say (or what you have been told) just doesn't make sense to me. What are 'sugar microbes'? We know which sort of microbes we are adding to the tea. If sugar microbes are not what we want, then why do soil growers add molasses to grow their micro-life? Since we are in synthetic hydro, why do we care what microbes we have so long as they displace disease? I trust you that plain EWC worked better for you, just do not trust the logic behind it. Seems to be something more to the story.
 

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
quik Q's!...do I ph the tea afterwards or leave it alone!?..its at 8.4 right now. And 2nd Im using MYCO-MADNESS soluble from humboldt it has all the trichs-glomas-bacillus n such...but says pure organic!?..WTF>> got the bubbles n foam so am I good?!..
PH your res water after adding tea, but do not ph the tea.

'Organic' is a strange word because it is constantly misused by marketing. Chemically organic means "with carbon". Beyond the world of chemicals, it means nothing specific, it's just a buzz word. Gardeners often use the word to mean 'non-synthetic', IOW material produced by life's processes.
 

Doer

Well-Known Member
Hey, Mr. H. Great stuff and right up the alley I try to bowl. I use lava rocks in a "housing" to take the return water from the Fresca Sol.
I know it can harbor and foster benies.

So, when you say housing, do you mean a pump filter box, where the pump is covered in lava rocks? I've heard of that in outdoor ponds. The pump is in a milk crate buried in lava rocks. Something like that?

Or can the rocks just be in the bottom of a bucket with the pumps on top....if you know?
 

firsttimeARE

Well-Known Member
I get a similar problem when I use cubes (plugs) to clone. It's as if the 'air roots' turn brownish a day or so after going into the water, while new white roots shoot out in the meantime. I have found using lava rocks for housing really helps. (brew them in the tea) I have also started using rhizotonic in my tea and see a real boost from it. (10ml per gallon).

So try to do a shallow water cloner one of these times when you have extras. This will avoid ever making air roots. Also, I and several others have found that making less than two gallons of tea at a time reduces it's effectiveness. There just isn't enough room in one gallon for everything to happen properly.
I look back in this thread and I had this issue last year when I first started using the teas. Stopped using them and everything pretty much and the browning stopped even with like 80 degree water in the summer.

I'm cloning now and the first two I put into buckets browned within 24hrs of putting in the water (roots were white in the aerocloner), they looked like this:
DSC04600.jpgDSC04599.jpg
Used tea and got the white back, there is still a brown part in the middle, doesn't seem like color will come back to that. But this was caused by not enough oxygen(was using just the air tube and it rose to the surface so didn't aerate my water properly)

They look like this now:
DSC04619.jpgDSC04618.jpg


I'm going to start making 2 gallons at a time so it's more complete I guess.

Will I have this many issues in Flood & Drain? Trying to make the switch now that im near 100% cloning.

*EDIT* This is a good picture showing white roots all the way until water.
DSC04577.jpg
Thats the plant I showed a couple days ago about 2 weeks ago.
 

tyler.durden

Well-Known Member
I look back in this thread and I had this issue last year when I first started using the teas. Stopped using them and everything pretty much and the browning stopped even with like 80 degree water in the summer.

I'm cloning now and the first two I put into buckets browned within 24hrs of putting in the water (roots were white in the aerocloner), they looked like this:
View attachment 2542084View attachment 2542085
Used tea and got the white back, there is still a brown part in the middle, doesn't seem like color will come back to that. But this was caused by not enough oxygen(was using just the air tube and it rose to the surface so didn't aerate my water properly)

They look like this now:
View attachment 2542089View attachment 2542088


I'm going to start making 2 gallons at a time so it's more complete I guess.

Will I have this many issues in Flood & Drain? Trying to make the switch now that im near 100% cloning.

*EDIT* This is a good picture showing white roots all the way until water.
View attachment 2542121
Thats the plant I showed a couple days ago about 2 weeks ago.
Hey, Firstimerare! I did DWC a couple years back, and it looks like you are out of the woods if you've solved your aeration problem. That brown will probably stay, but the new white shoots tells the tale that the tea is indeed doing its job. When I got cloning down I switched over to F&D al a Al B Fuct, and I love it. I recently won a battle with thrips, but the medium drenches did a number on my roots. I brewed up three gallons of tea (just Ancient Forest and aquashield) and dunked almost 100 pots in a half-strength nute, heavy tea solution. I can't believe the difference in only 3 days! New growth like crazy and my tray that's due to be harvested this Friday is really packing on the weight! All leaves are standing straight up as if on crack. When I switched to F&D, I started to run a sterile rez with h202 to keep out the nasties, as the tea made the reservoirs harder to clean (left a film of bio-gunk behind). But I'm seriously considering switching back to the tea and chucking the peroxide. Even if I don't fully make the switch back to the tea, I will be dipping each newly transplanted clone pot into the same tea solution, as I guess even one treatment will pay off throughout the plants' lives. Thanks again, Heis! This tea always seems to save me when my back is to the wall...
 
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