When should i move seedlings into the system?

trapmarley420 said:

Yea man looking good. Rockwool and hydroton rocks in rdwc is a pretty simple method as long as u use ph water . I will say careful in which company u get your rocks from. I went with a local hydro shop and man these hydroton rocks weren't as big as yours and left alot of residue in the buckets. Also do u have a water chiller? Are u using hydroguard or any beneficial bacteria? Careful not to get root rot bro it has plagued my life and still does but I'm beating it now......this is actually what I just harvested....candy kush autos from barneys

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shit, those are some nice looking buds! Yeah I actually installed a chiller for this run, now that the lights are stronger its not doing that much good lol struggling to keep things below 80.

But, I did make a bunch of microbe tea that has been working great so far. Rez smells earthy, but not rotten. I've also been inoculating the seedlings since germination with endo/ecto mycorrhizae also, hopefully this should provide a bit more persistent protection.

I got my hydroton online, it took like 4 washes to get the water to run clean, so might have been the same crappy stock.

Yesdog said:

shit, those are some nice looking buds! Yeah I actually installed a chiller for this run, now that the lights are stronger its not doing that much good lol struggling to keep things below 80.

But, I did make a bunch of microbe tea that has been working great so far. Rez smells earthy, but not rotten. I've also been inoculating the seedlings since germination with endo/ecto mycorrhizae also, hopefully this should provide a bit more persistent protection.

I got my hydroton online, it took like 4 washes to get the water to run clean, so might have been the same crappy stock.

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Thnx man it was my first go so it's been a learning experience for sure...yea temps around 80 are no good I try to keep it around 75 as hard as it is.

As far as the microbe tea ...that's interesting how did u make it?? I use hydroguard because it's the easiest I guess but it don't work as well as I thought it would. I'm battling a root rot plant now it's a fucking battle man smh. Here's some pics of what I'm currently dealing with because of root rot lemme know what u think. I'm gonna research that tea your talking about after work....

ah yikes, yea looks similar to what took over and killed my last grow. I was using just hydroguard at that time too, so decided to go the tea route to get the maximum strength and variety of the bennies.

Basically used the tea here: https://www.rollitup.org/t/dwc-root-slime-cure-aka-how-to-breed-beneficial-microbes.361430/

I bubbled it for 48hrs total, but I did take some tea at 24hrs, used it directly, and mixed some back in to the 48hr tea (keeps mycos alive). I'm also using the mycos directly on the plants since germination because it takes a while and a lot of effort for them to get established in DWC plants.

This is what I used for mine (there are plenty of alterations/modifications possible):

Tea:
* Floralicious plus
* Earth Juice - Rooter's Mycorrhizae
* HydroGuard
* Age Old EWC
* Earth Juice - Hi-Brix molasses

One of the biggest rot contributors seems to be adding anything organic to the rez directly. I think the floralicious plus is what screwed things for me last time. Even the small amount of dead root matter is usually what gives root rot a head start (plants might kill off roots under stress), then it can start actively destroying roots for new food. So with the tea, if you want to use any organic additives for the plants (in my case, humics and kelp via the flora+), it seems best to mix it in as part of the tea making process. That way if its going to benefit any microbes, it'll be the ones we selected intentionally, and they can get a head start breaking down the organics for use by your plants. Then when you add it to the rez and things start to 'liven up' a bit, any bad micros will be overrun and starved out by the billions of bennies. The good bennies will 'clean' the dead matter off of your roots, and basically destroy any food source that would have given a 'leg up' to the bad microbes.

The Mycorrhizae definitely seems to be the coolest. I read online that sometimes the fungus will 'kill' a seed before its germinated, saw that happen to 2 (the seeds turned into a white fungus), but the remaining ones will basically have this fungus living inside and outside of their root system. The tea itself isnt great at sustaining Mycorrhizae life, so inoculate the seedlings separately and rather often. I just mix some with some distilled water + a bit of tea, fridge overnight, and apply it directly to the top of the rockwool every so often. Mycorrhizae seems kinda easy to kill tho, so I only make one batch of the inoculant at a time.

Yesdog said:

ah yikes, yea looks similar to what took over and killed my last grow. I was using just hydroguard at that time too, so decided to go the tea route to get the maximum strength and variety of the bennies.

Basically used the tea here: https://www.rollitup.org/t/dwc-root-slime-cure-aka-how-to-breed-beneficial-microbes.361430/

I bubbled it for 48hrs total, but I did take some tea at 24hrs, used it directly, and mixed some back in to the 48hr tea (keeps mycos alive). I'm also using the mycos directly on the plants since germination because it takes a while and a lot of effort for them to get established in DWC plants.

This is what I used for mine (there are plenty of alterations/modifications possible):

Tea:
* Floralicious plus
* Earth Juice - Rooter's Mycorrhizae
* HydroGuard
* Age Old EWC
* Earth Juice - Hi-Brix molasses

One of the biggest rot contributors seems to be adding anything organic to the rez directly. I think the floralicious plus is what screwed things for me last time. Even the small amount of dead root matter is usually what gives root rot a head start (plants might kill off roots under stress), then it can start actively destroying roots for new food. So with the tea, if you want to use any organic additives for the plants (in my case, humics and kelp via the flora+), it seems best to mix it in as part of the tea making process. That way if its going to benefit any microbes, it'll be the ones we selected intentionally, and they can get a head start breaking down the organics for use by your plants. Then when you add it to the rez and things start to 'liven up' a bit, any bad micros will be overrun and starved out by the billions of bennies. The good bennies will 'clean' the dead matter off of your roots, and basically destroy any food source that would have given a 'leg up' to the bad microbes.

The Mycorrhizae definitely seems to be the coolest. I read online that sometimes the fungus will 'kill' a seed before its germinated, saw that happen to 2 (the seeds turned into a white fungus), but the remaining ones will basically have this fungus living inside and outside of their root system. The tea itself isnt great at sustaining Mycorrhizae life, so inoculate the seedlings separately and rather often. I just mix some with some distilled water + a bit of tea, fridge overnight, and apply it directly to the top of the rockwool every so often. Mycorrhizae seems kinda easy to kill tho, so I only make one batch of the inoculant at a time.

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Lol holy shit that was some detailed reading. Ok so I need to find out where to get these specific ingredients and if they will get here in time. I'm on time constraints do the fact I'm moving soon so these plants gotta go by Sept 30 anyway. It's ok there unknown bag seeds from local nug. I still want to get what I can out of em though. Think if I order the tea today and it gets here by next week it'll be worth it?? Or just keep hydroguard it and flushing regularly? I've been giving the roots hydrogen peroxide baths but it's not working . So i switched bucket location and will flush again tonight.

If you're in a rush, I'd try to hit up the local hydro (maybe gardening) store and get:

* some kind of plant/gardening molasses - its food to wake/breed the micros
* EWC is the most important ingredient, you can do the tea with just EWC (earth worm casting), molasses, and air stones if you need to. The EWC will have most of the good biology thats found in dirt.
* Any additional sources of beneficial microbes, bacteria or fungi. This is where you have lots of wiggle room - more variety is better, but its not needed. Hydroguard seems to be a popular choice here, but anything will work. You're basically just taking whatever microbe products you have, and making them super potent and concentrated via breeding. The variety helps you deal with different types of pathogens- if your hydroguard isnt working for this type of pathogen, chances are the pathogen is already great at dealign with them.

I honestly wouldnt worry about the Mycorrhizae for the emergency tea- its fussy to deal with, takse several weeks to establish itself, and often dies in the tea anyways. Getting a super concentrated bacteria soup should get you the furthest

Yesdog said:

If you're in a rush, I'd try to hit up the local hydro (maybe gardening) store and get:

* some kind of plant/gardening molasses - its food to wake/breed the micros
* EWC is the most important ingredient, you can do the tea with just EWC (earth worm casting), molasses, and air stones if you need to. The EWC will have most of the good biology thats found in dirt.
* Any additional sources of beneficial microbes, bacteria or fungi. This is where you have lots of wiggle room - more variety is better, but its not needed. Hydroguard seems to be a popular choice here, but anything will work. You're basically just taking whatever microbe products you have, and making them super potent and concentrated via breeding. The variety helps you deal with different types of pathogens- if your hydroguard isnt working for this type of pathogen, chances are the pathogen is already great at dealign with them.

I honestly wouldnt worry about the Mycorrhizae for the emergency tea- its fussy to deal with, takse several weeks to establish itself, and often dies in the tea anyways. Getting a super concentrated bacteria soup should get you the furthest

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Ok just hit local hydro store on break and they have ewc but no molasses . Any ideas on something else to supplement it? And then as far as actually making this bacteria soup how do it do it like actually making tea tea like boiling water maybe I sound stupid lol let me know thnx alot btw I've learned alot today

You can use brown sugar, or just regular sugar as a last resort (mayyyybe honey, but that could have other microbes).

As far as process, he details it pretty well in the first post in the thread (https://www.rollitup.org/t/dwc-root-slime-cure-aka-how-to-breed-beneficial-microbes.361430/)

But basically, you want to use non-chlorinated water (if its tap water with chlorine, but not chloramine, you can bubble it out overnight with airstones), put the ewc in a sock or something to keep it from floating around and add that to the water, add your sugar source, hydroguard, whatever other soluble bennies you have. Then bubble that all together for 24-48 hours with airstones. After its done, keep it in the fridge, add about a cup a day to the rez until things look better. Then after it looks beyter, jsut add a cup every few days

Yesdog said:

You can use brown sugar, or just regular sugar as a last resort (mayyyybe honey, but that could have other microbes).

As far as process, he details it pretty well in the first post in the thread (https://www.rollitup.org/t/dwc-root-slime-cure-aka-how-to-breed-beneficial-microbes.361430/)

But basically, you want to use non-chlorinated water (if its tap water with chlorine, but not chloramine, you can bubble it out overnight with airstones), put the ewc in a sock or something to keep it from floating around and add that to the water, add your sugar source, hydroguard, whatever other soluble bennies you have. Then bubble that all together for 24-48 hours with airstones. After its done, keep it in the fridge, add about a cup a day to the rez until things look better. Then after it looks beyter, jsut add a cup every few days

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Just got a chance to read his thread and yea had to bookmark that one. Thanks for that info I needed it. Ok so gonna get the ewc and mix it with brown sugar and make the tea and see what happens.

trapmarley420 said:

Just got a chance to read his thread and yea had to bookmark that one. Thanks for that info I needed it. Ok so gonna get the ewc and mix it with brown sugar and make the tea and see what happens.

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it sounds much more daunting than it is, really you're just bubbling some sugar with some microbes and making more lol (the bubbling is just to kill of anaerobic microbes, so keeping only ones that like oxygen)

Yesdog said:

it sounds much more daunting than it is, really you're just bubbling some sugar with some microbes and making more lol (the bubbling is just to kill of anaerobic microbes, so keeping only ones that like oxygen)

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Lol yea that's a very simple way of putting things. I didn't know that's why u need to put the airstones in there but another lesson learned. How much sugar we talking though??

I did about a tablespoon of molasses for 2 gals of tea, after doing more reading realized that might be too much, can probably get away with a teaspoon or two. If you use too much, the biggest risk is there might be some sugar left over that starts feeding the bad stuff in your res once you add it. So you dont want to overdo it. The nice thing about the molasses is you can sorta smell when most of its been used up.

I've seen lots of different input on 'how much' of each thing to use, but what I've been doing is just using half the recommended amounts listed for each thing (molasses is generally a tablespoon per gallon if used as a fertilizer). Same with the innolculants, hydroguard and stuff. and the EWC you can just sorta ballpark. There's really no disadvantage to using too many microbe sources for the tea, just starts to get kinda expensive. Gotta remember these things can breed seevverraal times a day, so you max out your population pretty quick.

Yesdog said:

I did about a tablespoon of molasses for 2 gals of tea, after doing more reading realized that might be too much, can probably get away with a teaspoon or two. If you use too much, the biggest risk is there might be some sugar left over that starts feeding the bad stuff in your res once you add it. So you dont want to overdo it. The nice thing about the molasses is you can sorta smell when most of its been used up.

I've seen lots of different input on 'how much' of each thing to use, but what I've been doing is just using half the recommended amounts listed for each thing (molasses is generally a tablespoon per gallon if used as a fertilizer). Same with the innolculants, hydroguard and stuff. and the EWC you can just sorta ballpark. There's really no disadvantage to using too many microbe sources for the tea, just starts to get kinda expensive. Gotta remember these things can breed seevverraal times a day, so you max out your population pretty quick.

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Yea see I remember first scrolling through riu and seeing hydro growers talk about bennys and teas and bacteria and I was just like wtf smh no way to advanced to understand. Then I actually set up the system grew the plants and here I am like ohhhhh that is startin to make sense a bit. So in a way the tea is just helping specific organisms thrive in the water being used. Instead of killing the bad ones with alchohol or whatever this help certain ones thrive so they kill or eat the bad ones...am I close to right as far as the logic behind the science??

yea same here, didnt think much about it until the other stuff started to take over my rez.

but yea, you pretty much got it. the 'tea' is almost like a brand new healthy mini-ecosystem that you fill with just the microbes you want. Something will always 'live' in your rez, so the tea gives you a fresh start that lets you fill it with the microbes you want. Once the tea is 'done', you put it in the fridge to suspend the active and robust ecosystem in that state.

Now, once you add it to your rez, the main way it 'fights' off other diseases is by simply starving them out. It's a numbers game in the end really, but there's always some kind of organic material leaching into your rez, so you want to outnumber them with the ones from your tea. Plant's roots can dump sugars into the water under stress, or start to kill off roots. If you have more good microbes than bad microbes in your rez at the time, they'll get to the dead plant matter first before the bad stuff does. Also the beneficial microbes do so in a way that doesnt hurt the plant (or in the case of beneficial fungas, they actually encase your roots and protect them further!). Stuff like root rot will eat the dead plant roots, grow in numbers, then start attacking healthy roots. The beneficial microbes just eats what there, and die off if there's no food. So that's why you want to add tea every few days- if they did their job, there should be basically no organic matter in the tank, and things should start to starve off and die.

I've seen my rez eat straight through 1/4" hemp twine before (dumb mistake on my part). It just straight up ate it (over like 3 days).

Yesdog said:

yea same here, didnt think much about it until the other stuff started to take over my rez.

but yea, you pretty much got it. the 'tea' is almost like a brand new healthy mini-ecosystem that you fill with just the microbes you want. Something will always 'live' in your rez, so the tea gives you a fresh start that lets you fill it with the microbes you want. Once the tea is 'done', you put it in the fridge to suspend the active and robust ecosystem in that state.

Now, once you add it to your rez, the main way it 'fights' off other diseases is by simply starving them out. It's a numbers game in the end really, but there's always some kind of organic material leaching into your rez, so you want to outnumber them with the ones from your tea. Plant's roots can dump sugars into the water under stress, or start to kill off roots. If you have more good microbes than bad microbes in your rez at the time, they'll get to the dead plant matter first before the bad stuff does. Also the beneficial microbes do so in a way that doesnt hurt the plant (or in the case of beneficial fungas, they actually encase your roots and protect them further!). Stuff like root rot will eat the dead plant roots, grow in numbers, then start attacking healthy roots. The beneficial microbes just eats what there, and die off if there's no food. So that's why you want to add tea every few days- if they did their job, there should be basically no organic matter in the tank, and things should start to starve off and die.

I've seen my rez eat straight through 1/4" hemp twine before (dumb mistake on my part). It just straight up ate it (over like 3 days).

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So I just took the 3 plants with root rot and put em through the sink rinse. Washed the roots and pulled out handfuls of brown guck and dead root I guess. Smh ugh disgusting I'm mad at my self for not getting the water chiller but oh well next time.....

Anyway so I'm here making the tea. I took 2 scoops of ewc 1 spoon of sugar put it in tap water because that's all I have currently and I out the airstone in the air....gonna let it sit till Saturday and then see what happens ...I gave them another peroxide dip in the sink just to be safe and I'm waiting on more hydroguard to come in the mail so till then the struggle is real. I'm just happy my autoflower candy kush didn't get effected by all this amazing really. Lol

Hmmm, did you bubble the tapwater first to get rid of the chlorine? if not, id maybe replace the EWC after 24 hrs incase the chlorine killed off too much stuff

Yesdog said:

Hmmm, did you bubble the tapwater first to get rid of the chlorine? if not, id maybe replace the EWC after 24 hrs incase the chlorine killed off too much stuff

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Oh shit gonna do that when I get home thnx.

day 9, we have touch down!!! Any ideas on whats causing the yellowing at the leaf edge? N def?

I also noticed a weird rez smell 2 days ago, yesterday I decided to inoculate again with tea, plus same straight up great white. It must have done the trick, cause day 8 the roots were above water, day 9 they're touching and the rez smells like.... well, great white.

Yesdog said:

day 9, we have touch down!!! Any ideas on whats causing the yellowing at the leaf edge? N def?

I also noticed a weird rez smell 2 days ago, yesterday I decided to inoculate again with tea, plus same straight up great white. It must have done the trick, cause day 8 the roots were above water, day 9 they're touching and the rez smells like.... well, great white.

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Looking good man. It could be a nute def. Or it could be a ph fluctuation. I noticed whenever the ph jumped in my system I noticed it on the plants leaves. What do u keep your ph at usually ?

trapmarley420 said:

Looking good man. It could be a nute def. Or it could be a ph fluctuation. I noticed whenever the ph jumped in my system I noticed it on the plants leaves. What do u keep your ph at usually ?

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my ph trends between 5.6 and 6.0 usually, i did notice there was lots of new root growth, somebody mentioned that it might be pulling nutes from the leaves for that. I'll see how it goes in a day or 2, i might bump up the nute strength.

Yesdog said:

my ph trends between 5.6 and 6.0 usually, i did notice there was lots of new root growth, somebody mentioned that it might be pulling nutes from the leaves for that. I'll see how it goes in a day or 2, i might bump up the nute strength.

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Yea that might be a good idea watch the ppm though I never let it get past 400 in veg don't want nute burn....btw about to harvest my autos the root rot looks like it could be spreading to them so I'm cutting em now as part of my stagnated harvest. This second batch could have already been cut down but as a newb I'm trynna experiment every way I can so heres some pics before I cut her down and put the tea into the rez for my unknowns to hopefully recover from....