I finally got root rot

ttystikk · Apr 25, 2015

blackforest said:
Most root rot is caused by pythium which can't live in an oxygenated environment from what I understand. h2o2 to sterilize would be my bet. Do you not use any beneficial's or sterilizing regiment on a regular basis? You are almost guaranteed to get pythium if you are not using a sterilizing agent or using beneficial bacteria to out compete the pythium food source.

Um, I never use that stuff. Any of it.

weedenhanced · Apr 25, 2015

churchhaze said:
I bet you're thinking it's because I wasn't using the right teas, or sterilizing agents, right? Or maybe my water was too warm?

Huh... think again. I had half an air pump fail, and just noticed it. 1 DWC tote in veg has been bubbleless for an unknown amount of time. I took it apart, and it was like a magnetic bellows. The plungers on the bellows on the broken side were not pumping air correctly despite the mechanics being fine. I was able to manually pump the plungers on the working side with my fingers on the nozzles, and when you let go of the nozzles, you hear a pfft. not on the broken side.

It was an Ecoair4 in case anybody's wondering.

Root rot comes from dead tissue. Dead tissue rots. Roots without oxygen will become dead tissue. Root rot does not come from lack of teas, and you can't sterilize dead roots. They're dead.

Unlucky church man hope all comes good but knowing u .u will have no trouble dominating it

Heisenberg · Apr 25, 2015

churchhaze said:
And no offense to Heisenberg, I'm sure he's a great grower and a very smart person... but if he was getting root slime constantly, why would you all think he's jesus for fixing it? A lot of people never have root rot issues to begin with. Some people think that's luck, but i'm convinced that the people who don't get root rot avoid it simply by know what they're doing.

People tend to change multiple variables at once... but the bottom line is that new DWC growers are inexperienced and end up killing their plants by doing it wrong. They notice the roots are rotting and infected... so they blame their own failure on "root rot". The next attempt, they do everything they can to avoid this "root rot". This includes teas, sterilizing chemicals, chillers, as well as actually learning to grow weed hydroponically and getting the essentials. Instead of attributing success to the basics (nitrate salts, calcium, oxygen), they attribute it to the BS (teas, organics, sterilization, chillers, and add 'silica' to the BS list... ugh). At least chillers have some merit to the idea because it allows the water to hold more oxygen, but your plants aren't going to die if they go above 75 degrees.

Why would I take offense? I specifically say that correcting res conditions is the key and that no amount of tea will overcome bad methodology. I also point out that slime doesn't equal root rot. Actual rot kicks in when the roots are strangled and suffocated by the biofilm, leaving them dead.

Take care of improper res conditions FIRST. Even the tea will not save you from disease if you do not have enough oxygen or proper temperatures.

n a very short time it can cover the entire root base and become thicker and sometimes turns yellow. Eventually it strangles the roots which causes pythium to set in, and at that point turns brown and finally has an odor.

Also, much later in the thread I point out that, in my experience, using sterilizers like zone or h2o2 to "nuke" the slime first will increase the recovery time.

ttystikk · Apr 25, 2015

churchhaze said:
The most common ways I see people 'doing it [dwc] wrong':

1) Using organics (including teas and molasses)
2) Using urea based synthetics like Jack's classic or miracle grow
3) Listening to advice to keep EC under 1.0. Not only will this cause deficiency, it makes your reservoir overly hypotonic. Being in an overly hypotonic solution may cause the root tissue to become mushy. Think about what happens to your skin when you keep it in a fresh water pool for a few hours.
4) Not enough oxygen..

the essentials:
1) A proper balanced hydroponic formula based on calcium nitrate and potassium nitrate to source N rather than urea. EC should be between 1.0-1.4 at all times.
2) water
3) oxygen

bullshit:
silica, teas, anything with a rhino on it.

Amen. I'm in RDWC so I chill my water to the mid sixties, that's the secret to maximum oxygen saturation.

I occasionally use a silica additive when I spray my plants, it raises leaf surface pH and makes it less hospitable for powdery mildew. It also works as a spreader/sticker for foliar feeding stuff like kelp. It doesn't belong in the nutrient water.

churchhaze · Apr 25, 2015

weedenhanced said:
Unlucky church man hope all comes good but knowing u .u will have no trouble dominating it

It was a plant I was about to start flowering, although now I wonder if it failed toward the end of my last crop. With the new pump, it started coming back to life, although it makes me look like a defoliation advocate.

churchhaze · Apr 25, 2015

Heisenberg said:
Why would I take offense? I specifically say that correcting res conditions is the key and that no amount of tea will overcome bad methodology. I also point out that slime doesn't equal root rot. Actual rot kicks in when the roots are strangled and suffocated by the biofilm, leaving them dead.

Also, much later in the thread I point out that, in my experience, using sterilizers like zone or h2o2 to "nuke" the slime first will increase the recovery time.

Even when I have green cyanobacteria covering my roots, I can usually just wash it off with water and fix the light leak and that's the end of that. I'm very suspicious of this particularly vicious strain of cyanobacteria that somehow has never made it to where I live yet. It's like the loch ness monster to me so far. I can only assume most people get root rot AND "the slime" at the same time and correlate the two.

Heisenberg · Apr 25, 2015

churchhaze said:
Even when I have green cyanobacteria covering my roots, I can usually just wash it off with water and that's the end of that. I'm very suspicious of this particularly vicious strain that somehow has never made it to where I live yet. It's like the loch ness monster to me so far. I can only assume most people get root rot AND "the slime" at the same time and correlate the two.

As long as you are not implying that because you haven't personally experienced it, it can be experienced. Obviously the idea that something has to make it to "where you live" to be real is ridiculous. You seem to be echoing what I have said. That slime/rot doesn't affect healthy plants and is most often the result of improper additives or growing conditions, that tea/sterilizers are not a necessity, and that root rot is incidental, not the main culprit.

Your example of a cut on the skin is apt. Pathogens need a pathway before they can infect. However, once an infection sets in simply sealing the cut is not good enough. It takes an immune response from your body to fight the infection, and that can often be helped by antibiotics. The tea helps to cure and prevent, but it doesn't mean you will be slimed without it, or that any slime seen is a result of not having tea. It is a result of not having proper conditions. I say all this in my thread.

The slime itself is the cut. Slime is a biofilm, not an infection, but it can weaken the roots and provide a pathway for infection.

churchhaze · Apr 25, 2015

Heisenberg said:
Why would I take offense? I specifically say that correcting res conditions is the key and that no amount of tea will overcome bad methodology..

Well, first of all, your sticky thread is based around the concept of making a tea, that's named after you. In your first post, you said something pretty important, which a lot of your readers don't seem to grasp. With your more recent reply, it sounds like you also have a hard time grasping what you wrote. Here it is.

"It WILL eventually spread to other DWC tubs, although it almost never gains a foothold on older well developed healthy plants/roots."

This is the part that a lot of your readers seem to completely overlook. I also get this "slime", and it appears magically out of nowhere. It exists everywhere and appears seemingly from nothing. The thing you point out, but don't seem to want to acknowledge yourself is that this bacteria is for the most part benign.

A lot of people with "root rot" here are looking to cure their plants, and the problem is rarely that there's bad bacteria sliming their roots. The problem is almost always poor methodology, and people trying to fix it using your "trick". Part of the problem with your trick straight off the bat is that it violates one of my main rules of no putting organics in the reservoir. That's poor methodology in order to cure a non-existent problem.. which leads to unhealthy roots.

Heisenberg · Apr 25, 2015

churchhaze said:
Well, first of all, your sticky thread is based around the concept of making a tea, that's named after you. In your first post, you said something pretty important, which a lot of your readers don't seem to grasp. With your more recent reply, it sounds like you also have a hard time grasping what you wrote. Here it is.

"It WILL eventually spread to other DWC tubs, although it almost never gains a foothold on older well developed healthy plants/roots."

This is the part that a lot of your readers seem to completely overlook. I also get this "slime", and it appears magically out of nowhere. It exists everywhere and appears seemingly from nothing. The thing you point out, but don't seem to want to acknowledge yourself is that this bacteria is for the most part benign.

A lot of people with "root rot" here are looking to cure their plants, and the problem is rarely that there's bad bacteria sliming their roots. The problem is almost always poor methodology, and people trying to fix it using your "trick". Part of the problem with your trick straight off the bat is that it violates one of my main rules of no putting organics in the reservoir. That's poor methodology in order to cure a non-existent problem.. which leads to unhealthy roots.

As you see from my last reply, I agree completely that slime it'self is in most cases not a pathogen, but it creates conditions among the roots which invite them. And we all know that pathogens like pythium are ubiquitous without heavy sterilization. I actually haven't disagreed with anything you have said so far in the thread.

The point of balancing the food you give the microbes and brewing the tea for 48 hours is so any organic material has time to be broken down. By the time it goes into the res there should be virtually nothing left to decompose. I also caution against adding organic anything to the res. That is often what leads to the biofilm to begin with.

ttystikk · Apr 25, 2015

I have inoculated with beneficial bacteria in the past. It didn't do much to make any discernable difference in my system. Mine is RDWC, with little place for any colonies of beneficials to establish themselves.

I agree with what you both are saying, and I can add that once a system is running within the correct parameters, its resistance to disease is impressive; I have intentionally added a five gallon bucket full of root rot to my system and absolutely nothing happened.

weedenhanced · Apr 26, 2015

churchhaze said:
It was a plant I was about to start flowering, although now I wonder if it failed toward the end of my last crop. With the new pump, it started coming back to life, although it makes me look like a defoliation advocate.

I just tryed a bit defoilation and Iam quietly impressed

3 days after I think I'll get some nice colas here the lower bud was nearly not even there now it's ur pin 80% of the leaf has regrown

Aussiedwc · Apr 28, 2015

I've got a 20lpm air pump and another 10 w air pump hooked up to my single 5 gal bucket and was still having root rot issues with room temps being around 23' Celsius I've managed to stop this by insulating the bucket in mylar coated insulation and using ice water bottles every morning and night the temp fluxuates between 17 and 20 was wondering how I can keep res chilled when a big root mass form? I'm also using a small computer fan blowing inside res for some evaporative cooling

I finally got root rot

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