DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Gifted0ne said:

Ive brewed tea with ECW maybe 3-4 times each time it came out smellin like old gym socks, switched to Ancient Forest and havent had a bad odor yet. A lot of people use EWC and there are lots of brands but I wouldnt use anything other then Ancient.

I use Molasses in the brew and the smell is gone by the time i filter the tea.. The reservoir is super clean after 10 days of use with tea. ( i been changing the water ev 10 days)

H202 damages roots and hinders growth thats a fact. Sure you can use it but it really does nothing beneficial other then clean up a dirty res. The tea is a super potent/diverse population of bennies and nothing harmful will stand a chance vs it.. its pretty much the only thing "organic" you want near ur reservoir.

Reservoir temps dont have much to do with pythium or slime, they exist at what ever the roots can handle and its been documented by University tests that low temps only slow the pythium outbreak by a few days, either way it doesnt prevent or treat it. The only real benefit to lower temps are more dissolved oxygen, but then again roots are more comfortable in warmer water.

IMO without this great tea I wouldn't even consider growing in a hydroponic environment.

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Hey thanks for the response and the insight GiftedOne. Much appreciated.
Also - I see someone sort of addressed my question back like 50 pages - so thanks as well.

As of the other day, I'm dead set on getting some "Ancient Forest" - it's kind of a no brainer.
Here's what I just found out though; It's effin' ILLEGAL in Canada. That is, you can't import it (because of the species/bacteria in it). That is one of the most ridiculous things ever. So Canada can't even BUY some of the State's DIRT. LOL - WTF?

I'm already thinking of ways around this BS. Any ideas anyone? I really don't wanna brew with s**t.
Also if anyone knows of an alternative that is similar (not worm crap)

Oh and with Aquashield, wondering if "Florablend" is just like a "vegan" (plant ingredients) version of that basically. Cause aquashield is poultry crap.
Thanks a ton.

MJDeity said:

@GiftedOne I noticed you asked a question on making smaller batches. I too am going to use this as a preventative for my next grow. What did you end up doing? Do you make it in smaller batches or are you keeping it in the fridge? I am hesitant to keep it in the fridge because aren't they alive? How do they survive for up to 10 days in the fridge? My system holds about 20 gallons so I wouldn't need to make that much. 2 gallons would probably be too much and I would end up throwing quite a bit away.

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I brew just 1/2 gallon at a time in a cut open gallon jug of water. I use about 4w air pump with two little air stones it this is ample air. just about 1/3 handful of ancient forest in a knee high stocking. Anything from 36-48 hrs is fine, for me as long as the molasses smell is gone its good to go. I use like 1 cup per 2 gal atm and its doin good, the rest goes in the fridge and generally i use it up by day 7 or 8 and its never developed a bad smell so far or caused any issues in the res.

I'm with you though I think is soo wasteful to brew 2-4x more then you actually need.

They'll be fine in the fridge, essentially 'sleeping'. Leave about half the container space for air or leave the top off.

I was wondering about brewing less as welll. A gallon or even a 1/2 gallon should be fine I think, I made 2 gallons once and threw out over a gallon, lol. My mistake there.

PS: good call GiftedOne

Yo shexy the pythium that is still on my roots is lowering the ph from 6.0 to 5.0 in 24 hrs. any idea how to correct this without killin all the bennies? The plants fine and drinkin plenty water the new roots are still growin in new and white but the pythium smell just hangs around and drops ph.. Any advice would be great..

I still can't help but wonder if these "bennies" are some kinda nitrobacter or nitrosomas ("N" cycle bacteria present in most aquatic systems)... unless there is something different in worm guts, wonder if this is just a normal nitrogen cycle type thing and if any bacterial innoculant like that for septic systems or aquariums or both would do the trick.... again, just passing by and typing out loud...

or maybe there is more to it than that (didn't read all 1000 pages ...)

VERY late Edit:

Heisenberg said:

A couple points of clarification:
.........
Microbe preparations intended for aquariums may contain aggressive nitrogen eaters to clean up the fish waste, which is not a good thing to have in your rez.
.......

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duh, I apparently missed this answer

Can I use this recipe enough to make the nutrients in my organic fertilizer available to my plants?

Hey. Thanks for the info. Brewed some tea and my plants have greatly benefitted from it. I'm dousing my soil-bound ladies with it too. Growth on my dwc and vert sog are back to being hard to manage. Thanks.

Greetings. I'm having the same kind of slime issues that are plaguing most of you. I have been running an NFT system for 6 years now and my problems started 3 years ago when we had a sweltering hot summer. I watched as perfectly healthy ladies shutdown and died overnight. As like all of you , I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what in god's name was causing failure after failure. I have isolated it to something in the water that gets past a 5 stage R.O water filter system with UV sterilizer. Once it gets introduced into the res it steals all the air out of the water and then pythium would take over and I would loose perfectly healthy plants overnight.

What I would like to know being that this thread is now 297 pages long is "Has the original ingredients in the tea changed for different products ?. I have been using the house and garden line of nutes along with hygrozyme, superthrive and green fuse bloom stimulator. I have been reading that other people on this thread have been using the house and garden root excelerator but that they are adding it to the tea mixture rather then directly to the res. I will now omit the hygrozyme and the superthrive as the add to the problems. How much of the root excelerator should be added to the compost tea ? The ingredients that I have seen listed in this thread are as follows. Aqua Shield, Ancient Forest, Great White, Mycogrow, ZHO, EWC. Out of these products, which ones should I use to make the tea?

Thanks
Dr Gonzo

for anyone just now getting into the thread, you can get through it a lot quicker if you only read Heisenberg's posts... skim/skip where he is repeating info; there is a gold mine of info in his posts in this thread.

EWC can be used instead of ancient forest humus but I believe the humus is more diverse. the original recipe calls for aquashield + zho for bacteria & fungi, but we simply use mycogrow soluble now from fungi.com. great white is very similar to mycogrow and can be used instead, except it has some additional unnecessary stuff like enzymes I think.

the latest recipe is mycogrow soluble, ancient forest humus, unsulphured blackstrapped molasses.

you can substitute great white or aquashield/zho for mycogrow. people add excellerator to tea because it is a known possible trigger of slime if you add it directly to the res without bennies.

drgonzo65 said:

Greetings. I'm having the same kind of slime issues that are plaguing most of you. I have been running an NFT system for 6 years now and my problems started 3 years ago when we had a sweltering hot summer. I watched as perfectly healthy ladies shutdown and died overnight. As like all of you , I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what in god's name was causing failure after failure. I have isolated it to something in the water that gets past a 5 stage R.O water filter system with UV sterilizer. Once it gets introduced into the res it steals all the air out of the water and then pythium would take over and I would loose perfectly healthy plants overnight.

What I would like to know being that this thread is now 297 pages long is "Has the original ingredients in the tea changed for different products ?. I have been using the house and garden line of nutes along with hygrozyme, superthrive and green fuse bloom stimulator. I have been reading that other people on this thread have been using the house and garden root excelerator but that they are adding it to the tea mixture rather then directly to the res. I will now omit the hygrozyme and the superthrive as the add to the problems. How much of the root excelerator should be added to the compost tea ? The ingredients that I have seen listed in this thread are as follows. Aqua Shield, Ancient Forest, Great White, Mycogrow, ZHO, EWC. Out of these products, which ones should I use to make the tea?

Thanks
Dr Gonzo

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I'll just say that Malevolence pretty much said it right, although I would have to point out for me EWC didnt work but Ancient Forest has yet to fail me. With just Ancient Forest and great white with a little molasses I went from slime build up everywhere to completely slime free water. I mean i can literally not even change the res water for 14 days and there's still nothing to even clean off, I just swap out the water. I do add little Aquashield and also ZHO within the last 6-12 hours of the brew but you dont have to use that. I add the tea at about 1 cup per 4 gallons every 3 days. I'd also like to note that the tea doesnt seem to work well in water without decent root mass within the water level.

**if you're going to use the tea dont add ANYTHING organic.. nothing. no exceptions.

I took clones and put them in the cloner 8 days ago and they started rooting 5 days ago. I checked them today and the new roots no more than 1 inch long turned orange. This is the same color as the slimy goo that plugged up the primary filter on my 5 stage to filter. I tossed in a capful of physan 20 until my first batch of tea will be ready in 36 hours. I have a second cloner that I just put clones in 2 days ago. How much tea should I add to a 6 gal cloner and when should I add it. Then the question is...how offen should I re-add the tea to keep things healthy. My tea consists of ancient forest.ewc.60 ml aqua shield . One scoop great white. One tbsp molasses and 60 ml of house and garden root excelator to make 5 gal. I want to think everyone in advance for all your help. There's nothing more heartbreaking then to see healthy plants 3 1/2 weeks old collapts and die overnight .

I use Ozone. O3 is perfect for killing germs and fungus algie and so on. And the best part is that when O3 dissolves it is O2 - the plants love it

Part of the House and Garden line of nutes is some additives. One is called bud XL and the other is called Top Booster. What is your opinion on these two products as well as green fuse bloom stimulator ? would any or all of these products cause a problem ?

drgonzo65 said:

I took clones and put them in the cloner 8 days ago and they started rooting 5 days ago. I checked them today and the new roots no more than 1 inch long turned orange. This is the same color as the slimy goo that plugged up the primary filter on my 5 stage to filter. I tossed in a capful of physan 20 until my first batch of tea will be ready in 36 hours. I have a second cloner that I just put clones in 2 days ago. How much tea should I add to a 6 gal cloner and when should I add it. Then the question is...how offen should I re-add the tea to keep things healthy. My tea consists of ancient forest.ewc.60 ml aqua shield . One scoop great white. One tbsp molasses and 60 ml of house and garden root excelator to make 5 gal. I want to think everyone in advance for all your help. There's nothing more heartbreaking then to see healthy plants 3 1/2 weeks old collapts and die overnight .

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For new clones, more important than tea is rhizotonic. Add about 10ml per gallon and all your problems should disappear. (make sure new roots are not totally submerged under water unless they have grown that way from the start) I no longer even add tea to my new clones. I wait for them to form a root ball and then inoculate regularly until mid-bloom. Drop the roots excellurator, it offers very marginal improvement (if any) and is not even close to being worth the purchase price.

drgonzo65 said:

Part of the House and Garden line of nutes is some additives. One is called bud XL and the other is called Top Booster. What is your opinion on these two products as well as green fuse bloom stimulator ? would any or all of these products cause a problem ?

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For best possible results and yield you need to achieve a very healthy root zone and pest/mildew free plant. Other then that a well balanced chemical fertilizer and an optional pk booster at certain stages of flower will be as good as it gets, as long as you dont overdue the ppm or the intensity/heat of the lamps.. Additives do nothing for people that grow healthy plants, with the exception being rooting clones.

well silica def does stuff and I have been wanting to try saturator and liquid light which is a wetting agent and foliar spray. many people also have to run a cal/mag additive. I would think the pk booster is an additive you don't need and won't do anything besides lock out micros.

Malevolence said:

well silica def does stuff and I have been wanting to try saturator and liquid light which is a wetting agent and foliar spray. many people also have to run a cal/mag additive. I would think the pk booster is an additive you don't need and won't do anything besides lock out micros.

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I have better, stronger plant structure now without silica then ive ever had and ive used it a bit in the past.. Like most additives if you see improvement its because your plant isnt in perfect health to begin with, that why people see varied results with tons of mixed reviews. The only way my branches will fall over right now is if they snap, and thats without silica.

Cal mag isnt a additive at all its a calcium magnesium supplement that is used in an incomplete chemical nutrient formula, pk boosters are also "supplementing" macro nutrients in a slightly stronger amount without N or most micro's, the plants do respond to the added pk nutes in certain stages of flower.

Hello Heisenberg.

I have spent the last week reading this thread in its entirety and taking notes. Like so many others, I want to thank you immensely for the invaluable information. More importantly thank you for the spirit in which you have decimated this wealth of knowledge. You are a gentleman and a scholar my friend.

Peace and one mighty love.

I'll preface the post by saying I have been brewing Tea to combat various issues; my method as described earlier in the thread:

1 Tbsp. Myco Madness
2 Handfuls of Ancient Forest in a tied-off sock
10 Gallons of tap water (sat for 48 hours to offgas)
4 airstones
2 Tsp Molasses
Let brew 48 hours, refrigerate any unused portion.

Long time lurker, first time poster. I've had some issues with a DWC setup I'm helping a buddy with - the problem manifested when I moved 12 plants from a RWDC veg station to a larger RWDC blooming station. I've actually already lost a batch of 12 plants in the bloom station due to this exact same shit and decided to try using tea to combat it, but apparently it is not working for my issue.

Veg station

Lighting: 2 x T5 fluorescent with supplemental LEDs.

EC - 1.2
pH - 5.9
H20 Temp - 66 F
Air Temp - 69 F
RH - 42%

Nutes are KISS'd in Veg, 5mL Foxfire Grow per Gallon of H2O (usually use Ionic grow, ran out) and 2.5 cups of the Tea. pH is adjusted up with Pro-Tekt Silica and down with GH pH down.

Here are a few pics of the ladies in the Veg station. I wish I had taken a few of the roots -- they were nice and white with a small brown spot near the top middle that appeared after the first inoculation with the Tea. I started with the tea 1 week after they were fully rooted (roots in water) in this system, about 2 weeks ago. There is some slight nute burn on the new growth tips, I attributed this to the tea as they are able to absorb nutrients more efficiently so I adjusted the EC down by 20%.



I transplanted them into the bloom station yesterday, which means I just moved the buckets over to a larger recirculating setup. I was going to veg them over there for an additional 3 weeks before initiating bloom.

Bloom Station

Lighting: 2 x 1000W HPS, 1 x LED supplemental for a slightly smaller plant

70 G H2O (Tap, offgassed for 48 hours)
350 mL FoxFarms grow
2 Gallons Tea
30 mL Pro-Tekt Silica as pH adjuster

EC - 1.0
pH - 5.9
H2O Temp - 64.5F
Air Temp - 68F
RH - 38%
CO2 - 900 ppm

So, I go to bed last night thinking everything is gravy. I go down to check on the ladies an hour ago, and I see the roots of some of the plants are covered in sludge, and the pH of the water has shot up to 6.8. Everything else has remained static -- the water temp, the EC, etc.

Above and below the bloom station:



Whatever this shit is, it rinses right off with very light spraying and leaves a residue in the water that initially floats in suspension, a few particles on the surface of the water and eventually settles in clumps on the bottom of the container. Very little adheres to the walls of the reservoir or growing containers, but there is a slight film.



A bit of background and initial hypothesis:

I lost a previous set of 12 ladies to the exact same issue. I did a bit of research and started brewing tea and cut out some of my nutrient regime. I was able to salvage 3 of the 12 and am currently blooming them out in simple bubble buckets. I treated with tea and there is some new root growth but they never fully recovered. Here's an example, apologies for the HID washed photo:



As I stated, I began brewing the tea just over 2 weeks ago and treated this set of 12 with it in the veg station as a preventative, and they did fantastically as evidenced by the initial photos except for the slight overfeeding. When mixing a fresh reservoir, there was an initial cloudiness and ph spike (from 5.8 to 6.6) but I adjusted it and the cloudiness cleared up in 48-72 hours. The pH to date in that system has been rock solid, varying between 5.8 and 6.2 as the plants were drinking. When I mixed the fresh reservoir in the bloom station prior to transplant yesterday, and the resulting cloudiness and spike today, it exhibited the same behavior that I experienced in the set of 12 that I lost 6 weeks back. The water clouded, there was a pH spike, and then a few days later it cleared up. I'm beginning to think this is an algal bloom of some kind; the bloom station is not light proofed nearly as well as the veg and has much more powerful lighting.

Any thoughts or advice anyone has is greatly appreciated. Cheers and sorry to shit up the thread; I read about 150 of the first 300 pages over the last few weeks and have learned a great deal, hat tip to Heisenberg.

Heisenberg...Thank you for the info on the root excelerator My setup runs two rooms with six 600 hps fixtures in each. I'm running a wide trough NFT system with 14 gallon res. What I was running for nutes was house and garden A & B, Cali-mag, root excelerator, 10 drops of super thrive, hygrozyme or multi zyme, and after 3 weeks I would drop the zyme and the excelerator and add in the bud-XL. I have a friend that runs the same thing with no problems at all and he pulls 40 OZ's per trough with 3 lady's in each trough.

2 1/2 years ago the funk hit me when we had that crazy hot summer that started in june. my temps in the rooms never got above 85 but I watched as one trough after another just up and died on me like a wave. I couldnt figure out for the life of me what the hell was going on. I tried everything and it kept kicking my ass. H2O2, eagle 20, 5 stage RO filter with UV sterilight...you name it. Always the same thing, I'd get to the 3 1/2 week mark and BAM !!! . so I read up on pythium and started doing comparative tests to try and narrow down what the hell it was. One time when it hit me I tossed in an entire cup of 29% h2o2 and it made the funk coagulate and turn white on me. I really thought up until a week ago that it was a systemic funk from the strain and not the water until I went and bought a water chiller and plumed it with some 3/4" clear hose. I had some custom made 1/2" stainless steel cooling coils made so I could cool 4 reservoirs with one chiller. I filled up the chiller res with RO water and ran the closed loop chilling system at 65 degrees which gave me 68 inside each of the NFT res. After a week I noticed that a white film was forming inside the clear 3/4" water lines that come in and out of the chiller. I let it go for another week and then the clear lines became solid white. I put my hand in the chiller res and their was a clear slime covering the pump. I then went out to the grow shop and decided to give physan 20 a try because I had yet another trough of 3 lady's collapsing on me after 3 1/2 weeks. After seeing what it did to my NFT res's I decided to throw in a shot glass of physan 20 into my chiller res just for the hell of it. All the sudden after 2 hours the clear lines that were solid white were clear in most of the line again but still had white patches in spots ....AHHH HAAAA. THROW IN ANOTHER SHOT GLASS OF PHYSAN 20 !!! One hour later both lines were all clear. Lets me look at my hong kong book of kung fu. IT sez Here...What ever this shit is ...it can survive 5 cups of bleach in 12 gallons of water and come back 2 days later with a vengeance (no joke). It can survive in 120 ml of 29% H2O2 but not 180 ml's and you must add in 60 ml's every 2 days. It can survive a 5 stage RO water filter with UV sterilight.

Had I not used clear tubing and seen the funk turn white only on the inside of the chiller lines I would never have found this thread. I always thought the white goo that clogged up my 2" air stones was just dead by-product and not the very thing causing my insanity. So lets review...Theirs a clear funk in the water that cant be seen or killed by UV and loves air. Along with the clear funk is also a fungus called pythium. It loves anaerobic conditions. The clear funk clogs the air stones and then sucks the DO levels of the water down to an anaerobic level where pythium then takes over and the both of them drive up res temps to 87 degrees and make Ph levels swing like rag time jazz...finally attacking the roots of the plant and killing it. If this tea solves my never ending almost 4 year nightmare of a problem and I dont turn into the american version of Syd Barret...( there coming to take me away HA HAAA ) and the rhizotonic solves my cloning issues in my EZ cloner then you shall be heralded as a Saint.