Water Sharing

ShirkGoldbrick

Active Member
You know who you are. You may have innoculated, you may have not, you may have been slimed or had root rot in the past but beat it with bacteria. You're the kind of person who leaves a cloner running for months and doesn't even change out the water. Why don't you share that water?

Reason being is, whether you're adding bennies or not, there's going to be some bacteria in your water after a time. I have a cloner I innoculated - got slime and innoculated some more - beat it. I've left it running for over a month and a half now and I can throw plants in it and they grow still. I was thinking of taking a gallon of its water and using it to innoculate my 40 gallon tank.

People with aquariums do it all the time - take a new fish tank and add some water from an established one to get a good microflora going. Except what I'm talking about is the reservoirs that have beat the bad stuff - pythium, brown slime algae, iron bacteria, fusarium wilt.. The bacteria in your water are producing antibiotics that keep the nasties away.

Sure you can continually brew teas, but you're not sure what you're getting. This way if you keep temps down, light proof, and aerated then the res should never have any issues. The root exudiates from the plants should continue to feed the microflora. It would be awesome if you could ship the water to other growers - but keeping it cold, aerated, and dark sounds unfeasible unless they're a drive away.
 

ShirkGoldbrick

Active Member
Wouldn't work. The bacteria would die when you froze it. More research shows that putting an aquarium filter in an established tank and then letting it run for a few weeks and quickly putting it in a fresh tank would (one that has a biological filter - no UV).

This is because the bacteria don't really "live" in the water, they try to grab onto something. Not sure how long they'd live in transit though.
 

WeedFreak78

Well-Known Member
If you know you have a good microbiology going that's promoting good bacteria/etc..keep it going. Start a 5-10 gal tote that just has water and air as a reserve of cultured solution. Every time you start a new system throw a cup or two in it and top the cultured reserve back up. seems like a good idea to me, as long as you can control the culture..
 
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