Interesting battle with the slime

Hey gang, thought I would throw this out there and see what the experienced people thought. If your thinking "yeah dude, put h2o2 in there...then your not the one I'm looking for. LOL

So I put my rooted clones in 8" net pots...disinfected with phy20. And put them in my one large dwc rooter. Lah tee dah, taking a long time to root so I top fed some beni tea. I never got rid of the tap chloramine so they probably didn't last long. About a week later a couple 6-7" roots came up. And then...the dreaded thin mucus appeared.

I knew h2o2 and zone would not work an I have killed plants in the past with two much phy20 so I figured I would try to kill everything in the Rez with chlorine bleach. Now this is where it gets interesting. I added 1ppm of chlorine. (was like 4ml bleach for 40 gallons). I came back 1 hour later to hopefully see all the dead brown slime but NO!

In one hour it exploded!!! Like everywhere!!! On the pumps airstones net pots hoses. Everything was completely covered in brownish slime!!

Damn son! I added another dose of bleach.. Didn't help. Ugghh.

So I decided to complete the super fun task of taking everything out, spraying the shit out of them, dunking the pots in physian20, and bleaching the hell out of the pumps, stones (boiled them), hoses and res. Such a great way to spend a friday night!!

Added fresh DM nutes. PbP calmag to 350 and 4 gallons of ewc tea. (40 gallon res).

Took a look this evening.. Heavy mucus on roots. And I mean like 1/4 thick. Doesn't smell, not really dark colored except for ewc tea bits.

Just wondering what that alike could be? Should I clean and refill the res with plain water?

Other facts: 40 gallon res, 18ppm tap water with chloramines, aquanova aquarium water conditioner used to rid chloramine, res temps around 70, absolutely NO light leaks, covered net pots, the works.

Thoughts?

Aquanova aquarium conditioner? What the hell is that used for? You added four gallons of tea? Sounds bit excessive...

i understand the tea method and i am a big proponent for beneficials, but my grow takes enough time every day/week and adding on brewing enough tea to dose 200gal of nute mix just doesnt even sound beneficial. i use pond zyme with barley from pondcare in my dwc and aero units with great success. a one pound jar cost $15 and treats thousands of gallons. my plants have never had such nice healthy roots.

superstoner1 said:

i understand the tea method and i am a big proponent for beneficials, but my grow takes enough time every day/week and adding on brewing enough tea to dose 200gal of nute mix just doesnt even sound beneficial. i use pond zyme with barley from pondcare in my dwc and aero units with great success. a one pound jar cost $15 and treats thousands of gallons. my plants have never had such nice healthy roots.

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Did you have any slime before running pondzyme?

the only time i ever had a problem with slime was when i thought i needed an aquarium heater for my cloner. dont ever do that, it was the only time i ever lost a clone and almost lost a few strains. i had an old friend that has grown for years and also has a huge pond in his yard and he told me about the pondzyme so i went and got it. worked great, saved my plants and my ass. i used it that one time and stored it, and a few months later i started using greatwhite. very good but very expensive. i found my pondzyme one day and read up on it and decided to try it. never have i had such healthy roots and plants. my res 's are much more stable and it is so easy and cheap.

Thanks man will have to pick it up and give it a try. I am about to fight a heavy fungus gnat infestation in my UC with some microbe-lift and I think the ponzyme will do a good job of clean up the dead roots. How often do you apply the pondzyme and does it doing anything to your PH?

does not affect ph.
in 50gal i do half a scoop to start. res and a quarter scoop every 4_5 days. it comes with scoop. it is a small amount.

BigBuddahCheese said:

Aquanova aquarium conditioner? What the hell is that used for? You added four gallons of tea? Sounds bit excessive...

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http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2752420&f=PAD/psNotAvailInUS/No

Like I stated, it is used to get the chloramine out of the water. It breaks the chlorine and ammonia bond and also disolves the amonia. I use vitamin tablets for the big res (two tablets treat 100 gallons) but for the smaller res, I use the aquarium conditioner. Chlorine is deadly to fish and beneficial bacteria. Much cheaper and easier than using several carbon filters in a row.

The pondzyme sounds interesting. So you just use that instead of making tea?

Just as an update, the slime diminished a little bit but it was still clinging to the bottom of the net pots. I did the whole rinse thing again and added 3.5 gallons of tea to plain dechlorinated water.

3.5 gallons is just a little over the recommended amount for treating a problem which is 1 cup/ gallon. 40 gallon res = 40 cups which equals 2.5 gallons (16 cups in a gallon).

You can add any and all the miracle concoctions you like but they will not rid your slime . Bacterial slime is what it is regardless of color and odor and its a devastating no matter in the end ..

Its as simple as monitoring your water temps and keeping them below 78 with a few degrees lower being better even though it may add a day or two to the time factor of rooting ..

If you find the dreaded slime in your cloner , the only logical choice is to remove all infected stem and disinfection is necessary with the entire unit and re-cut clones .. I had to do this once and from there on out I have always made sure the water temps are controlled by all means .. Some use frozen water bottles , but I prefer a NFT timer with a 1 minute on and 4 minute off setting .. Fans help as well when controlling cloner temps .. The fans also increase humidity too if need by by aiding the evaporation that comes naturally from cloners ..

Slime in DWC is almost always the end of the grow but some growers I know swear by diluted ammonia lol .. As stated above I have cut plants due to this and rerooted them in order to finish the grow

ProfessorPotSnob said:

You can add any and all the miracle concoctions you like but they will not rid your slime . Bacterial slime is what it is regardless of color and odor and its a devastating no matter in the end ..

Its as simple as monitoring your water temps and keeping them below 78 with a few degrees lower being better even though it may add a day or two to the time factor of rooting ..

If you find the dreaded slime in your cloner , the only logical choice is to remove all infected stem and disinfection is necessary with the entire unit and re-cut clones .. I had to do this once and from there on out I have always made sure the water temps are controlled by all means .. Some use frozen water bottles , but I prefer a NFT timer with a 1 minute on and 4 minute off setting .. Fans help as well when controlling cloner temps .. The fans also increase humidity too if need by by aiding the evaporation that comes naturally from cloners ..

Slime in DWC is almost always the end of the grow but some growers I know swear by diluted ammonia lol .. As stated above I have cut plants due to this and rerooted them in order to finish the grow

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Well that advice runs counter to everything else I have read about beneficial bacteria getting rid of slime problems. I got slimmed in my UC system with water that was 66 degrees so the whole theory about cold water keeping everything at bay, while grounded in theory...I mean warm water is baaaad, is not the end all be all in terms of root care.

Never had such luck with beneficial microbes or the such including enzymes .. I think it is alot more diverse than we understand at this point .. Our Base water has alot to due often as well I was told by a Botanist friend ..

None the less hope its not a crop kill for you as it has always been for me and my grow buddies , dont get me wrong I have seen some plants survive this but at harvest they did not pull there weight in any way ..Again best of Karma , Ill follow and see how it works

I appreciate the kind words. It is odd, some timees I get it, other times I don't. I had it once fairly bad and the EWC cleared it up. The last run I just used the EWC start to finish and had no issues. Pulled some of the best quality weed yet on the last round. .81 grams/watt was the total. probably higher but I never weigh popcorn buds or shit like that..hash it

I'll post some pics when I get a little more motivated.

The slime I had was definitely not due to water temp. I had my chiller as low as 65F and it didn't help. Heis tea was the cure. FWIW legal, I notice that if I put too much molasses into the tea it doesn't seem to help as much as just 1 water bottle cap full. I brew 3 1/2 gallon of tea each time. I give enough molasses to have the benes starving after two days and than into my rez. I believe in this way they are hungry and ready to eat some slime.

Hmmm that may be the ticket. I don't really measure my molasis . Just kind of pour some in. I think I'll cut back a bit as any leftover molasis is going to be like crack to the slime. I also order some of that pond enzyme so I'll put some of that in there as well. Honestly, starting to root plants in the net pita is the least favorite thing. I'm used to super fast growth in the flower room with co2 and all the bells and whistles. We will see, I'm sure they will bounce back it was just crazy how when I added the bleach it went fucking nuts!! I've never seen slime so bad.

Yeah I never heard of bleach causing a mass outbreak in slime.

ProfessorPotSnob said:

You can add any and all the miracle concoctions you like but they will not rid your slime . Bacterial slime is what it is regardless of color and odor and its a devastating no matter in the end ..

Its as simple as monitoring your water temps and keeping them below 78 with a few degrees lower being better even though it may add a day or two to the time factor of rooting ..

If you find the dreaded slime in your cloner , the only logical choice is to remove all infected stem and disinfection is necessary with the entire unit and re-cut clones .. I had to do this once and from there on out I have always made sure the water temps are controlled by all means .. Some use frozen water bottles , but I prefer a NFT timer with a 1 minute on and 4 minute off setting .. Fans help as well when controlling cloner temps .. The fans also increase humidity too if need by by aiding the evaporation that comes naturally from cloners ..

Slime in DWC is almost always the end of the grow but some growers I know swear by diluted ammonia lol .. As stated above I have cut plants due to this and rerooted them in order to finish the grow

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out of the 50+ cuttings i had i my cloner the time i had slime i lost one. just washed them off and added pondzyme.

Glad to hear you have had luck with the zymes , 99 % of the time pythium slime is discovered the damage has already been done to the stem tissues and roots ..

Not to argue but I believe most times not its more productive to eliminate the damage entirely unless its caught very early on and cured .. Guess in the end there are more fails with slime than there are victories and again the variable of how early its detected comes into play ...

The bleach killed what little good bacteria I had in there. (some tea and some WTF is it called now? The botanicare bacillus chicken manure). If I had a chlorine tester I could have probably added more chlorine as it was likely broken down very fast from all the bacteria in the res. my understanding is that chlorine acts like h2o2 where it looses an atom )or ion in this case and becomes inactive when it interacts with bacteria. It's actually pretty fucking gruesome when you think about it. Atoms in the cellular wall are replaced with chlorine atoms and the cells of the bacteria are deformed and cease to function. So it's kind if the equivalent of literally melting to death. Which is the problem with chlorine. It's super reactive and will also react with plant roots causing death. I heard concentrations above 3 ppm will cause serious injury. So if you have 999,997 parts water and 3 of chlorine your going to kill your plants. Ok. I'm geeking out but I like knowing how stuff works

For pest and mold control i use Tempo SC it stuff the use in grain elevator when storing week depending on how you mix it one spray last 6 month. it a residual spray. spray it on the ground and wall and when something comes in to contact it attacks it nervous system and then dead bugs. im not for sure if you have to have a license or not i just grab some and started using it. i am surprised how many critters make there way to a grow room. but all around killer stuff if this will help