DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

neobes said:

Heisenberg,

I now have nothing but white, healthy roots in my DWC plants. I've tried everything at great expense over a period of years, and nothing has produced white roots like your tea. White roots and fast-growing, healthy plants. Thanks a million!!

I'm sure you've made more than one corporate juggernaut nutrient company(Advanced Nutrients anyone?) sad with your postings.

On a side note, any thoughts on using the sock full 'o dirt for more than 1 batch of tea?

You're the greatest!!!

neobes

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Glad to hear another success story. Thanks for sharing. I would use new dirt every time, but I am not a microbiologists. The way I understand it, the microbes in the EWC exist largely in spore and cyst form. Once you add it to the water the microlife acts as a kind of little play, with each actor waiting for his cue before making an entrance. That's why we let the play unfold for 48 hours. I would assume that if you wanted the best chance at diversity and at getting the proper organisms we need, you would use new dirt every time.

When I get set back up i'll try reusing the dirt a few times with some tomatoes, if the slime claims them so be it. In fact I guess it's about time to do some experimenting and see how effective each product is on it's own. That means I will have to purposely give myself slime at some point!

Heisenberg said:

That means I will have to purposely give myself slime at some point!

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What a horrible thought, but yeah, how else are ya gonna know?

Absolutely awesome info.

I don't have slime but I'm thinking this might be a great, natural way to improve my future dwc grows.

hey heise i know how much you love to hear about people overcoming their brown slime war, hopefully this will be another one of those stories.
i undoubtedly have the brown slime, it was as described all the previous posts. about 36 hours ago i did an entire cleanup and h202 treatment, but this afternoon the clear snot is back AGAIN! luckily i prepared by going to the local grow shop.
the guy working their is pretty cool and helped me to pick out a couple of things. he was somewhat unfamiliar with the tea i described and entirely unfamiliar with the brown slime i described. i did however buy a couple of things for the tea. they also didnt have any of the specific brands you mention in the recipe so i got what i think is close.

1. wiggle worm soil builder earthworm castings organic fertilizer 30lb $24.99 (all they had)
2. roots organics oregonism xl 1.8oz $11.99 (hopefully this is the right stuff)

i also got some micro pore airstones things. the guy at the grow shop swears by these things and they were like $5 so hopefully it will supplement my shitty air pumps.

well im going to go start brewing hopefully this will work. hope fully in 24 hours when i put half of this concoction in all will be headed back in the right direction.

Sounds like my first try at tea. My hydro store guys also seem unfamiliar with DWC. The slime is something that non-dwc growers rarely deal with. I bought a small bag of wiggle worm. The results were fine just not as quick or as drastic as when I use ancient forest.

I have heard of a few people using oregonism to successfully fight the slime, so you should be ok. It looks like it has the important disease fighting strains, hopefully Paenibacillus is in there too. Brown sugar is a fine source of food. Simple sugars actually encourage the tea to have less fungi (which is ok) more complex sugars will encourage more fungi.

I personally don't like the micro-pore diffusers. I find that by the end of the grow they have become clogged from salt buildup. You might not have that problem though. I don't see any advantage over cheap airstones, since the oxygenation comes from the bubbles increasing the surface area of the water and breaking surface tension. Additional oxygen is supplied from the bubbles making momentary contact with the roots, so obviously we want some sort of diffusion, but does it really make a difference if the bubbles are tiny? I don't feel it does. Anyhow $5 is cheap enough to experiment with, mine were like $20.

So good luck and keep us updated!

Hey Heisenburg, I think I'm nearly converted to bene-orgs after much reading, thanks for steering me that way. Seems like if they can work so well underwater in your DWC then my top feed perlite should love them. Now I'm just choosing a good micro mix to start with. Have you heard of Fungi Perfecti? I grew mushrooms before plants so I've dealt with them for years, and now they sell a "MycoGrow" http://www.fungi.com/mycogrow/index.html that looks very similar to Great White containing: Endomycorrhizal fung, Ectomycorrhizal fungi, Trichoderma, and Beneficial Bacteria. Do we want all four of these things? I see some mixes with just the fungi? Which bene product have you heard the best of?

I received my packet of the soluble mycogrow today. Getting ready to brew a batch with it tonight. The order was delivered super quick.

I discuss the product a few pages back, but to sum it up:

The soluble powder is exactly the same as great white minus the bio-stimulant package and plant vitamins. If your goal is to fight slime or break down organics, choose the more diverse soluble powder. If you simply want to enhance the roots and foster healthy growth, use the 'hydro' blend. Also, if you have a system with small intricate parts, go with the hydro product.

I'll post the results of my tea made with this product in a few days.

Im a little concered that i may have added too much.. I added 3 gallons microb-tea to about 45gallons in the rez... I did the same before I flushed about a week ago,,, I have been adding about 2 cups every other day.. My roots are growing good, but they smell like fresh dirt and they have a little brown on them.. it doesn't look like the algae I had before ..But the plants are growing great!. heres a pic.. Thx..

Those roots look very unhappy, but there does appear to be some nice white shoots coming out, and I don't see any signs of recent slime. Looks like things are on track to me.

3 gallons to 45 is about right, but you could back off a bit. I would say you could get away with 2 gallons for the initial inoculation. The smell of earth or soil or even moss is a good sign, and the discoloration on the roots is probably from the tea not being totally filtered. As long as the new shoots continue to grow and don't develop mucus, i'd say your fine.

Heisenberg said:

I received my packet of the soluble mycogrow today. Getting ready to brew a batch with it tonight. The order was delivered super quick.

I discuss the product a few pages back, but to sum it up:

The soluble powder is exactly the same as great white minus the bio-stimulant package and plant vitamins. If your goal is to fight slime or break down organics, choose the more diverse soluble powder. If you simply want to enhance the roots and foster healthy growth, use the 'hydro' blend. Also, if you have a system with small intricate parts, go with the hydro product.

I'll post the results of my tea made with this product in a few days.

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Just went back and read where that was discussed. Mycogrow-soluble it is then. My last question would be what does the Mycogrow need for food to be at it's best? Is the nutrient solution enough to keep all those micro-orgs thriving or should one add some more organic nutrients? Or even something more specific?

Ok, just read your original post, so just some molasses in a well aerated bucket to brew it up, but nothing in the actual system rez then? Just want to make sure I do this as best as I possibly can.

Thanks for sharing your experience with this Heisenberg! I'm looking forward to giving this a go.

Correct. If you add organic material of any kind to the res, there is a chance the slime will feed on it before the bennies and outgrow them. Your plants will send carbon down to the roots to feed the rhizoplane which will keep plenty of microbes alive, and we replace them every few days anyway.


I just started a brew with the mycogrow product. I used only a tiny amount and it instantly turned the water black. I also noticed a fecal type odor coming from the powder. This is a very fine powder and I don't like seeing spores go air born. (believe it or not I am actually a bit of a germ freak) I will def be using a face mask from now on. I have never used great white, can anyone tell me if it happens when using it as well?

Great thread i think i will give this a try. I have a question about storage do you keep it in an air tight container or something that can get oxygen in it. Maybe it doesn't matter but i was just curious.
Thanks

I keep mine in a 2.5 gallon water dispenser, the kind the water already comes in. It has a spout built in which is nice. I cut a hole in the top about the size of my fist, so it's not sealed. Once the microbes go into the fridge it isn't necessary to aerate the water, but if you have a sealed container you can simply shake it to add oxygen.

Heisenberg said:

If used in the tea, I suppose enzymes would help break down the molasses quicker, but that really isn't necessary. In fact we want things to unfold on their own in the tea, which is why we let it brew 48 hours. Some microbes wake up in the presents of food, other wake up in the presents of other microbes (cos they are food).

The tea goes bad because after a while it looses it's oxygen and becomes anaerobic. Beneficial microbes tend to be aerobic and die off without oxygen, while pathogenic microbes thrive in an anaerobic environment.

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so does that mean if you kept oxygenating the tea it would last longer?

Heisenberg said:

enzymes are basically the stuff that bacteria makes that breaks down organic material, like dead roots. Adding something like hygrozyme is like adding the good stuff from the bacteria without adding the microbes themselves. I know this sounds like a great idea, but in a DWC enzyme products can be a huge trigger of the slime. If you are already infected and you add an enzyme, the slime will feed and explode out of control in less than a day.

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I had slime, so I dumped my 20gal dwc res and cleaned everything with H2o2. In addition to my nutes...I added Aqua Shield, Sub Culture B & M, and Hygrozyme.

My question: If I somehow missed some of that slime with the H202, will it come back since I added the other stuff?

Heisenberg said:

Correct. If you add organic material of any kind to the res, there is a chance the slime will feed on it before the bennies and outgrow them. Your plants will send carbon down to the roots to feed the rhizoplane which will keep plenty of microbes alive, and we replace them every few days anyway.


I just started a brew with the mycogrow product. I used only a tiny amount and it instantly turned the water black. I also noticed a fecal type odor coming from the powder. This is a very fine powder and I don't like seeing spores go air born. (believe it or not I am actually a bit of a germ freak) I will def be using a face mask from now on. I have never used great white, can anyone tell me if it happens when using it as well?

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Funny you mention that, I just spoke with a friend who used to use great white and recently switched to mycogrow, and he said both are exactly the same super-fine powder that goes airborne very easily. He wondered if the spores would grow in his lungs. For protecting myself from perlite dust I picked up a 3M 6391 which is true HEPA and beats the hell out of those disposable dust masks, much tighter seal, got it for about $20 on amazon. Perfect for spores also I'd think.

Tahmi.Guhnn said:

so does that mean if you kept oxygenating the tea it would last longer?

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It seems it will last a little longer. Take the EWC out after 2 days, and you would need to add more molasses every so often. I don't know how tea brewed longer will effect the slime. The types of microbes that are present in the water at 48 hours might not be the same that are there at 72, ect. When we cool the water in the fridge we put the microbe activity on pause.

smithmds said:

I had slime, so I dumped my 20gal dwc res and cleaned everything with H2o2. In addition to my nutes...I added Aqua Shield, Sub Culture B & M, and Hygrozyme.

My question: If I somehow missed some of that slime with the H202, will it come back since I added the other stuff?

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Not if you brew the tea outside the res before adding it. If the microbes are already active they should overcome the slime in that situation. If you leave a little slime and then add bennies directly to the res, it takes them a few days to become active, and that is enough time for the slime to get well established.

poindexterous said:

Funny you mention that, I just spoke with a friend who used to use great white and recently switched to mycogrow, and he said both are exactly the same super-fine powder that goes airborne very easily. He wondered if the spores would grow in his lungs. For protecting myself from perlite dust I picked up a 3M 6391 which is true HEPA and beats the hell out of those disposable dust masks, much tighter seal, got it for about $20 on amazon. Perfect for spores also I'd think.

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Most of the microbes in the mix are ones that we encounter in life anyway. Our immune systems should already be well equipped to fight them, or even benefit from them. But fungi spores growing in the lungs is a very serious problem if it occurs, so a mask is prudent. However the spores have to go somewhere, and I have 4 cats and a roommate. Bugs me to think about it, but it is probably a groundless fear. As far as I am aware no one has ever become ill from using these products.

Heisenberg said:

I don't see any advantage over cheap airstones, since the oxygenation comes from the bubbles increasing the surface area of the water and breaking surface tension. Additional oxygen is supplied from the bubbles making momentary contact with the roots, so obviously we want some sort of diffusion, but does it really make a difference if the bubbles are tiny? I don't feel it does.

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In terms of DWC, I think that micro-pore diffusing airstones could make a difference for the roots and micro-organisms. Bubbles will either burst, stick, or be absorbed by the roots in which they come into contact with, but ones that miss the roots will continue upwards and micro-organisms in the reservoir will slowly chomp away at the bubbles. The number of bubbles increases the "mobility" of the bubbles and I would think would allow them to penetrate larger volumes of the reservoir.

I'm by no means a microbiology guy, but I am an engineer, and I'm just applying some general logic to the scenario. Mathematically, the increase in quantity of the bubbles is proportional to the decrease in surface area, so it seems to make sense. The only real gain would be the mobility of the bubbles. Although, I can't necessarily say that the extra cleaning involved would be worth it. I would bet they clog easily, which I think somebody even mentioned earlier..

Anyway, took me about an hour or so to read through the whole thread after you pointed it out to me, Heisenberg. All I have lying around right now is soil a friend cooked up composted with tons of goodies (claims he composted with EWC, too), some subculture B/M, and something called StressZyme+ (for my aquarium, from PetSmart). I don't have any molasses lying around, so will cane sugar, honey, or maple syrup work? I also have liquid karma, which I thought might be a nice food source for the bennies while they're brewing.

Thoughts? Thanks again, Heisenberg. This all looks promising.

hello Heisenberg, i was wondering if you knew anything about the active bacteria cultures in organic non-fat yogurt?


Yogurt instead of milk?

the yogurt im talking about is REAL organic yogurt.. not the gelatin and artificial flavor kind.
ingredients-
organic skim milk
organic skim milk powder
active bacteria cultures-
Lactobacillus acidophilis, bifidobacteria, Lactobacillus paracasei

dosage-
im thinking i would use it the same as milk, 1 tbsp/gallon for root watering and keeping compost damp.

thanks!