DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Dustybowlz said:

Hmm, so my H202 amounts were WAY low, I probably never even killed a single spore with my "mild" ratio.

If I didnt kill anything, then the brown im seing probably isnt after slime. It would be the pathogen, right?

Should I try to flush, again with h202, but this time with correct ratio OR just let the bennes try to take care of it them selfs?

ONLY reason I ask is I am worried that the pathogen is still there and very much alive. I really dont like how brown the core of my root mass is. Its very tightly tangled and soo tight I cant spray stuff out of it. Id probably cut it off, but its part of the whole root ball. I dont know if its live pathogen, dead roots or after slime?

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sotamomo said:

Hey Everyone,Heis hey, I see you've been staying with this thread faithfully.Which is good because I've read from begininng to end. And I

have a few questions in regards to a problem I'm having. I have two plants that have been innoculated with the compost tea. In my case I used Grey
White for Microbes, I still added the Aquashield into the tea and the reservoir because it was ok to do so with Aquashield though some
might think redundant(I thought of it as earlier help or damage control) I put about 1 ounce of it in the reservoir that has 5-6 gallons
of RO water in it. I added the spoon full of unsulphured mallasses(added to tea compost ONLY). and I used the Ancient Forest EWC as recommended. I let that brew for the 48 hours and applied it to both plants I applied this past Sunday (4 days ago). and Things seem to get well, almost within 2-4 hours
both plant had new growth roots.So there is no doubt that the innoculation worked. But Today and late yesterday I noticed some weird growth coming back on the roots...which also looks like the same browning that caused me to be concerned in the first place. So when I noticed this yesterday I went and added 2 more cups of tea. Then I tried to go wash the roots to see if it would come out but it really didnt do much. What is this stuff? on my roots?

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ramen86 said:

Ok guys its been about a week and a half since I had those slime troubles (and about 3 weeks of vegging total in the UC), and this is what 3 out of the 8 plants look like now, keep in mind these 3 had NO SIGNS of roots a week and a half ago. Once again, the tea we are using is not the same recipe as Heisenbergs, we just use SubCulture-B and Mykos. But all thanks goes out to Heisenberg and everyone else in the thread.

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sotamomo said:

my next question is how can I compensate for nothing using the Organics frm Advanced Nut. ..I have b52 & Voodoo juice that I dont use but would like to know what to substitute the two with.

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Heisenberg said:

When a clear snot forms on roots in a DWC, and the normal course of treatment for root disease doesn't work, you probably have something called brown slime algae, which actually isn't algae at all, but a cyanobacteria. It loves oxygen and doesn't need light to grow. It doesn't care if your res is chilled or not. Safe levels of H202 slows it a bit but doesn't cure it. It can show up for DWC growers for no apparent reason even after years of successful grows. Once it shows up it's often a nightmare to get rid of. It WILL eventually spread to other DWC tubs, although it almost never gains a foothold on older well developed healthy plants/roots.

Several root conditions will cause a slimy build up; doesn't mean you have the brown slime. Common root disease is almost always caused by improper res conditions, and they improve greatly when those conditions are corrected. This isn't true of the slime. When to suspect brown slime algae is when you are doing everything right and still can't get rid of it. People who get this try the normal stuff... More bubbles in the water, cool res temps, and h202 treatments. The slime may appear to be gone at first, but comes back strong in as little as 12-36 hours. It starts out subtle like a clear coating of mucus on the roots with no odor. Plants often still appear healthy for a while, but all root production stops. In a very short time it will cover the entire root base and become thicker and sometimes turns yellow. Eventually it strangles the roots which causes pythium to set in, and at that point turns brown and finally has an odor.

The treatment is to clean up and sterilize the root base, and then populate the water with beneficial microbes. Simply running a continuous sterilizing agent such as SM-90, Zone, ect will almost certainly end with the slime as the winner. Some people have had luck running bleach or physan 20 continuously in the water, but most do not want there plants soaking in these particular chemicals. Making a microbe tea is cheap and easy, and IMO the proper way to fight this slime in a perpetual DWC garden.

Clean up the root base as well as possible. Best thing to do, if you can, is hold the plant over the sink and use the sprayer to vigorously rinse the roots, trying to get all the dead roots and gunk to slough off. It's OK to spray 3% h2o2 solution directly onto the roots at this point. It's also okay to give the dying roots a slight tug to see if they come off. Now let the roots soak in a strong h202 solution, or a mixture of whatever sterilizing agent you have. Physan 20 works great. This is a good time to sterilize any equipment and give the res a good scrub. After a few hours, no more than 12, of soaking in the solution rinse the roots really really well again, prepare a fresh res, and inoculate the res with beneficial microbes. Wait another 12 hours before adding nutes.

Once the slime is gone be sure to practice proper res maintenance, which includes keeping any type of organic material out of the res. Trying to sterilize the res is often a losing battle. In fact, since most hydro products fail to kill this stuff, when you sterilize the water you are removing all competing microbes except this one. There are people who use RO filters and then run their water through a UV sterilizer and still end up with the slime. The answer always seems to be beneficial microbes.

Below is my previous introduction to preparing and applying a microbe tea.


In DWC the roots sit in water constantly putting them at huge risk for disease. Some people have great luck using nothing at all. Others find sterilizing products keep their roots white, but a few of us have found that even with proper res maintenance and doing everything right, we still get a slimy build up on the roots. This is when a microbe tea can really make a difference by robbing the slime of housing, food, and actually attacking it.

By making a compost tea with a diverse selection of microbes you will have a super tonic for you res that will ward off nasty gunk and build up while at the same time keeping your roots stimulated and growing. Best of all it can be made for just pennies per batch.

Ok so we wont be starting from scratch. You have to buy a few products. But instead of using the products directly in the res, you will be breeding them in a tea. This way, you can use a fraction of the regular dose and make your products last much longer. Plus, you will end up with a freshly active tea that is more diverse than anything you can buy on the market.

Aquashield ($12) The product composition consists of: Bacillus subtilis, Paenibacillus polymxa, Bacillus circulans, and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens. This gives you a base population of beneficial bacteria.

ZHO Powder ($10) The product composition consists of: Glomus intradices, Glomus aggregatum, Glomus etunicatum, Glomus mosseae, Trichoderma harzianum, and Trichoderma koningii. This gives you a base populartion of beneficial fungi.

Ancient Forest EWC ($14) - Soil amendment provides a high diversity of microorganisms, including more than 35,000 species of bacteria and over 5,000 species of fungi.


The recipe is really simple. Start with non-chlorinated water. I make 2 gallons at a time, but you can easily adjust the additives for whatever amount you wish to make. Now put the water into a bucket and throw in a couple air stones. The more air the better. You want the water to be almost turbulent from the bubbles. Now add 15-30ml of aquashield and about 1/4-1/2 scoop of the ZHO powder. You will be breeding these into the billions so it doesn't really matter how much you start with. Now take an old sock or pantyhose and fill it with about 2 handfuls of EWC. Tie off the sock and place it in the water above an air stone, or better yet, feed an air stone down into the sock itself. If you want, you can just throw the EWC directly into the water and strain it out later with cheesecloth. Next add about a tablespoon of molasses to wake up the microbes and give them something to eat. You could also use any sort of bud sweetener. We will only be feeding the microbes in this tea; never add food for the microbes to the res itself. It's okay if the bennies in the res starve. You will be replacing them every few days. Now let the tea bubble at room tempeture for 48 hours. It can be used after 24, but will be more active and diverse at 48. You can now store the tea in the fridge where it will stay fresh for about 10 days. Once it starts to go bad it will develop an odor. If you ever detect an odor from your tea, throw it out and make a new batch.

Initially, add about 1 cup to your res for every gallon of water, and then add 1 cup total every 3 days after. Your water might get a little cloudy but your roots will stay white and stimulated. When you use tea and practice proper res maintenance you can feel confident your roots will be healthy. By breeding the microbes this way your products should last about 5x longer. Once you have eradicated slime and simply want protection from future outbreaks, adjust the tea dosage to 1 cup per 10 gallons.

If you are interested in why the tea works, or what products you may use for substitution, continue reading the rest of the thread.

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Isisyogi said:

Great info Heisenberg. Thanks.

Curious if it is possible to freeze the tea above?

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RobertInAz said:

Mr. Heisenberg,
I may be taking a thought to an absurd conclusion, but consider this: Since the idea behind keeping a batch of tea in the frig is to slow down the microbes' activity, which allows you to keep the tea longer, would freezing the tea allow you to keep it indefinitely? If so, you could make up a batch of tea, freeze it in an ice cube tray, and pop a tea cube in the res every day as a preventative. What do you think?
Thanx again, Bob

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Heisenberg said:

The bennies can only survive freezing in spore and cyst form. When you wake them up, you cause them to leave this form, so putting them in the freezer would then kill them. Some of them might manage to revert to spore form and so survive, but then they would need woken up again before adding.

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Dustybowlz said:

* When putting cutting in cup, where do u place stem in relation to water line, under, at or above?

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* You said not to ph the water. My water is about 7.4ph, is that ok to run with no adjustments?

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* How do you prep your hydroton? I wash mine very good. But I use my well water, not RO. I know hydroton is porous. Do I need to alter my methods because im allowing stuff to invade my hydroton? Possibly soak it in chlorine solution vs wash with well water? Im very open for suggestions here.

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*Should I be treating my RO rez? I have a brand new 55g drum and want to make sure it isn't breeding grounds.

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medicine21 said:

Gentlemen, I have been using the tea and happy with it, but there does seem one thing that it cannot stop or cure. I have a top drip DWC veg system with silica rocks. This time around I noticed VERY slow root development and plant growth. After weeks of wondering why I think I have found the problem. Upon closer examination I have found MOLD to be present on the rocks in the net pots. There is quite a bit of it and I even see some on top of the rocks. Earlier I dismissed it thinking it was salt build up.

When I thought about it, I remember seeing a bit of white on one of the Rapid Rooters which I cloned in. I still put this in the system. I believe now that mold had spread through the water to the other plants and now it is present in all the net pots.

I have now turned of the top watering since the roots are in the DWC anyway, hoping to dry the mold out. But it's real humid under the lid so I doubt it will just go away. Should I bother trying to flower these laggards and potentially spread this mold to my flowering system? Anyway to get it rid of this?

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