RDWC Help! Bugs? Burn? Deficiency? Lots of pics, please help <3

redi jedi said:

Yes I would definitely go back to 300ppm or more. I cant give you any advice on the cal/mag...never used it. I know its usually needed with RO but a decent fertilizer should already have enough cal/mag IMO. Maybe because your mixing so weak, there's not enough.

That water level is good for when your roots havent reached the water yet. You have plenty of roots in the water so drop that level until the cube stays dry. The wet cube is causing the droop. Nute burn starts at the tips of the leaves.

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Thank you man. I'll drop that water level and get the extra nutes in tonight. Advice and peace of mind are priceless, you've given me both, much appreciation.

Brown Slime Algae...what a pain in the ass to get rid of it. First I tried peroxide and flushing in my recirculating setup to top feed to DWC. It came back in the form of brown pasty sludge. Then I tried Clorox bleach and flushing and recirculating. That seemed to do the trick. Then, I decided to add an UC to both my buckets and recycle the return pipes on the old setup. Guess what was coated to the insides of the return pipe. Dead algae sludge on the top and gods no what was living on the bottom. Mind you this was after flushing out almost black water by scrubbing the sides of the bucket. I sprayed down the sides of the net pots and the roots with H202 and ran bleach through the system one more time and cleaned out all the pipes in the return and delivery manifolds. There was STILL gunk in the water. I cleaned out the pipes with H202 and an electronic toothbrush. I ran bleach, like a handful of it through the system and Im pretty sure nothing could live through that. I thought I had thoroughly shook the muck stuck to the roots off but it was still there and the H202 spray down in the tub, roots and net pot. That seemed to be the root of it. The net pot turned a light brownnish red when i sprayed the H202 with it. In the mean time, I become an Heisenberg student and a believer in the tea. That's where i went wrong was doing the tea too early before they could multiply over a 48 hour period suckin up mollasses and carbs. I used the AN Root Tribe and Bud Candy, and i was using Roots Excellurator. Well, apparently, because it has anaerobic bacteria/microbes, H&G Excellerator doesn't like bubblers which is what the slime algae clings to in addition to your roots. My big beautiful teen was a fat nice hairy bush prior to flushing its net pot with hot tap water and shaking the slime paste off of the roots. The hot water really helped clean up the roots. They were still a little discolored but not as clumpy anymore. The net pot and bucket was wiped down and flushed a few times. Then I decide to put my babies into DWC buckets with bubblers and to not use Excellurator but instead create a gallon of highly concentrated tea using MycoGrow Soluble as its main bacteria base and feeding these bennies over the course of 48 hours. After the first 24 hours, my big teenager started shedding bad leaves that were shriveling up and turning yellow. I couldnt wait that long so after 24 hours of breeding microbes in the tea, I poured a cup of tea over my net pots starting at the stem and circle around it. Problem was that my new clones had green algae which maybe turning brown because I see that SHIT coating the bottom of each 3 inch netpot. Over the course of a few days, the pH would rise as high as 8.5 (due to drought conditions, you have no idea where they are feeding water from or what is in it). Alls it takes is a little algae and not using RO water or seacem to condition thhe chlorine and bad ammonia out of the root zone and enough light to start a brown slime algae epidemic. After 2 days of system rinsing and flushing out all that decaying matter as well as what was still active in the net pot, I had this idea that if I could saturate the roots in the netpot at this point in DWC, there would be a lot of bennies everywhere from the top to the bottom of the hydroton filled net pot, then the faster the bennies can outeat the cyanobacteria in competing for the same food source coming from the tea and the plants would hurt at first and be in shock and then move on and thrive and the cyano starves. So I did this to my teenager who has lost the majority of her fan leaves which appear to wilt one by one and then shrivel up yet she still has new foliage sprouting out of her branches...nah \I couldn't wait another 24 hours for the bennies to be multiplying in the billions. I poured half of my 24 hour tea into each net pot and saturated it so all the roots in the hydroton media would get fed something sweet. So i had a gallon of tea and poured out half of it amongst 2 - 3 gallon site reservoirs and a cup into and around into a 1 gallon site reservoir housing 6 net pots for thhe 5 new clones I picked up yesterday. The water has that slime stank to it but there appears to new foliage growing out despite the slime meaning the tea is working. I capped the tea and put that in the fridge and am brewing a new batch of tea because I don't want to chance another outbreak of slime. After half of a day, it appears that some of the leaves that were droopy came back to life. The tea works if you are having issues with slime but you have to really flush the hell out of your system and treat those roots with either H202 or Clorox and sterilize the system after each flush and then add your nutes to your next batch hof tea after 48 hours have passed and any seaweed extract and molasses with RO water. Any other additives might include B52 though you might be doubling up on your seaweed benny since it's in AN's B52 and I also add CalMagPlus because the SensiGrowA+B are missing this unless you are using SensiGrowCocoA+B which I am not which is what the CalMag+ is for. Bu that's why I got stuck with SensiGrowA+B CoCo and Big Bud Coco. Ill take out the CalMag+ when I go to flower, if I go to flower. Hopefully it works out. Good luck to you too!

By the way, nice hat trick with the UC setup. I can totally appreciate evolution on the fly with the panda wrap. It sucks that you are being hit by slime algae. My understanding is if you are in a state where there is a drought, our tap water is using other less clean sources of drinking water. Yes, the algae comes from our tap water. that's why ive got extra 5 gallon bottles, so that I can go to the store and fill em up at 1.75 a bottle. I flush with tap water and then I sterilize with RO water and then I use RO water to make my tea as well as to replenish my site reservoirs (given you are using RO mixed with a cup of tea per gallon (has to be 48 hours old for maximum utility). I'm hoping that my roots will become more white. I don't like brown stains all over my baby's roots.

Thanks for sharing your experience man. Things have been a roller coaster since I posted last. I got the ppm's up and dried the rockwool out. Plants looked better for a while, started getting the brown slime Algae which I always thought was just root rot, but I have since learned all about the wonderful world of cyanobacteria. I have no interest in running a live res, sterile has always been my goal so I tried the following.

I tried the conventional stuff, cleaned and scrubbed everything, frequent water changes, lots of DM Zone, H2O2, and some SM-90 here and there. I ended up soaking them one by one in a strong bath of H2O2 while periodically pulling them out to rinse the roots off with a sprayer in the sink. The roots were bad but not terrible, and this cleaned them up pretty well.

After the soak and rinse I soaked them for a few more hours in a slightly less aggressive H2O2 and SM-90 solution while I scrubbed the shit out of my system and ran a few cycles of sterilizing solution through it. I flushed and rinsed till there were no particles left in my filters, I even sprayed the pipes connecting the modules with high pressure water, zero particles of anything. I could not have cleaned the system more thoroughly. I then rinsed the roots off one more time and put them back in the system. Next day brown shit all around the inside of the buckets at the water line.

I did more research, ordered some Physan 20 and kept the system as clean as I could while waiting for my nuke to arrive.

Got the Physan, fucken BLASTED the system with it, repeated everything I did before with the H2O2 and shit, only this time I used the Physan aswell.

The Physan foamed like crazy, it was kinda neat to watch that shit work, its fucken brutal! Next day:


Flushed, scrubbed, sterilized, flushed, scrubbed, put plants back in system with 1ml/3 gallons of Physan as recommended, along with DMZ and a light nutrient mixture, let that run for 3 days as recommended.

Next day, or 2 days, I can't remember, I came down to check the buckets and this was in there:




Cleaned that up, did the whole Rigmarole again, scrubbed, soaked, sprayed off. I put some of the 3" net pots into 8" ones and filled in with hydroton, got some more lids for my buckets and made holes for the new net pots. I only did this for the 3 best looking plants as I was sure I was shocking the shit out of them with all the rinsing, and chems and whatnot.

Last night, after cleaning up again I started thinking I should just take clones off the best looking ones and start over after a complete system overhaul.

This is how they look today:


The ones on the left looked "ok" yesterday, but today:

And this shit is in all the buckets, along the waterline mostly, but up the sides of the buckets too from the foaming that occurs when Physan is initially added:


Shit is like fucken TAR, its absurd....
I don't know what I'm going to do, there are a few things I am considering:

1) Clean everything out and try to get as many of them looking "decent" as I can and take clones as soon as they perk up a little.

2) Move the 3 best looking ones into bubble buckets to try and nurse back to health while overhauling the system. From there either put full plants back in, or take clones.

3) Throw plants out, overhaul system, and start from seed again.

4) Set my grow room on fire and shoot myself in the fucking face.

System overhaul would include a very very thorough sterilization involving multiple chems, system tweaks that would allow me to react more quickly if problems arise, adding UV to my RO, and I am seriously looking into Ozone for constant air and surface sterilization, as well as periodic water/bucket treatments by running the O3 through my bubblers if things start looking anything less than perfect.

Any ideas/advice from people experienced with any of these methods would be appreciated.

I believe I am aware of all of the complications associated with running UV and Ozone, and am prepared to compensate for them. I have also done a lot of research on the Physan, and while I feel like the treatments are part of the reason the plants are wilting and dying, I have not found any reputable research or literature to support this.

Also, I am currently using AN Sensi nutes. I really want to dump them but I have a gallon of each and I just can't spend any more money on nutes after dropping $200 for just the A/B Grow and Bloom.

I have no idea if the AN nutes have anything to do with any of my problems, and while I'm guessing they do NOT, I think I might want to run the Ionic or Current Culture lines. The only reason I feel that was is because Ionic and CC say they are designed specifically for RDWC. I have no idea if that is a reasonable thing to consider or not. All my instincts say high end nutes are high end nutes, and in the grand scheme switching would make very little difference.

I would appreciate input about Nutrients for RDWC based on experience and empirical data. I have no interest in Anecdotal thoughts/advice when it comes to nutrients and the like.

I mean no disrespect but I am a very science oriented grower. This is the only way I am able to approach, and make progress, in my grows. Its the only way I can make sense of the processes required to be successful at growing. (think ADHD, OCD, and the like ).

Thanks for reading, Brothers and Sisters,

Peace!

Dam dude...thats drug abuse right there.

If your using RO and still need to add a sterilizer, you might need to change filters/membranes in your RO rig.

If thats not the case, changing nutes wont solve the problem. I suggest you research bleach or pool shock...pitch the zone, sm-90, physan in the bush. I know DM zone is just a pre mixed solution of chlorine and water...not sure about the other two but most likely the same idea.

I just got done sealing up my UCRDWC 2 bucket top drip halo and am waiting for the marine sealant to dry and cure before I test it for any remaining leaks I didn't apply sealant to. Think ill move my biggest gorilla glue in 3" net pot over to a 6". I'm a little reluctant to put the rest of the clones (theres 4 left, the smallest white died because it wasn't fully rooted, well it wasn't even rooted and the other 2 whites barely have some roots sprouting out). The 3 gorilla glues are different sizes but the reality is that they are getting bigger a lot quicker than the ones I have in the 5 gallon DWC buckets. The runt of the pair in the buckets is now catching up. The one that was losing its leaves is now looking a little thinned out but with some foliage. I dunno, do y'all think it's safe to put 4 clones in 3" net pots into a 5 gallon UCRDWC system if there is only one plant in a 6" net pot in the other 5 gallon bucket? Im going to have to dip each net pot in a Clorox RO water tub for a 5-10 minute soak, and then flush out the cleaning solution to rid the clones of any CB that may have developed after I inoculated the plants with the tea. I think that the 4 plants are going to compete for resources with the 1 plant being by itself so I may as well keep them separate in DWC and rather than move them to UCRDWC. Would welcome any comments. Thanks!

redi jedi said:

Dam dude...thats drug abuse right there.

If your using RO and still need to add a sterilizer, you might need to change filters/membranes in your RO rig.

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Cyanobacteria goes through RO Membranes, adding an inline UV will remove it from the water, but I think its going to end up in my buckets no matter what. If its in my tap water, its in/on everything.

My plants are done for I think, so I said fuck it and went and got some bene's, gonna make a tea and do that just so I can say I tried everything. If it works I'll let you guys know, if not, I'm going Ozone/UV. I will spend some time setting everything up and start from seed again, probably just veg 1 or 2 then take clones and load the UC.

TheMadHatter87 said:

Cyanobacteria goes through RO Membranes, adding an inline UV will remove it from the water, but I think its going to end up in my buckets no matter what. If its in my tap water, its in/on everything.

My plants are done for I think, so I said fuck it and went and got some bene's, gonna make a tea and do that just so I can say I tried everything. If it works I'll let you guys know, if not, I'm going Ozone/UV. I will spend some time setting everything up and start from seed again, probably just veg 1 or 2 then take clones and load the UC.

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I didn't know that...makes using RO pointless IMO.

I run sterile using tap water and pool shock (calcium hypochlorite) you can also use bleach,

https://www.rollitup.org/t/how-to-operate-a-sterile-hydroponic-system.849475/