The correct way to make an actively aerated compost tea AACT

First off, all the credit goes to Tim Wilson (aka Microbe Man) and all his hard work he's done for all of us.
http://microbeorganics.com/
Secondly, I like to thank RIU member st0wandgrow for turning me onto this amazing site.
Read the great link before continuing...take your time. Now read again you stoner

I was personally brewing compost teas wrong for too long, and basically watering dead microbes
Until I read the above link...like 10 times. Now the most common problems are not enough air (in my case), bad math, and the urge to tweak. Trust me when I say this...follow MM's recipe to a "Tea"!!!

First you need some materials and ingredients:
1) Container, air stones, proper air pump, or buy/make a brewer
2) Microbe infused type of compost, humus, EWC, outdoor soil. Variety will provide a diversity of fungi and bacteria in your 'boomin brew'.
3) Kelp, alfalfa, fish hydrolysate(YUM), unsulfured molasses, clean water (no chlorine or chloramine). You can throw in a little molasses and bubble water for a day ahead of time.

The hard part for most is well...not doing it like Microbe Man says!!! He's the guy looking into an expensive microscope and putting in countless hours of research...not us!!!

Disclaimer: This method is for a living populated microbe tea only! This isn't to be combined with 'nutes' or enzyme teas! Goal is to give life to soil.

Here's some mathematical conversions for proper aeration per MM:
You need at least .05 CFM/gal or ideally .08 CFM/gal or greater. Most air pumps are specified in LPM (liters per minute).
So for one gallon you need at least 1.42 LPM or the optimum 2.3 (rounded) LPM
ie If you were to brew 5 gal you would need at least 7.1 LPM...preferably 11.5 or more.

Here's a link to some quality affordable air pumps http://www.hydroponics.net/c/413
and here's a flow conversion link http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/flow-units-converter-d_405.html

Recipe ingredients

We'll call (# of gal) G

1) EWC, compost, humus, soil, etc. @ 2.38% (G x .0023)
2) unsulfered pure black strap molasses (find bulk at feed stores) @ 0.5% (G x .005)
3) kelp @ 0.25% or less (reason in MM's link) G x .0025
4) fish hydrolysate @ 0.063% (G x .00063)

ie 5 gal brew would be:
1) 2 cups compost
2) 1/2 cup BSM
3) 3 T kelp
4) 12mL fish hydrolysate

link for volume conversions http://www.onlineconversion.com/volume.htm

Any questions you have may most likely be answered here http://microbeorganics.com/ Yes that's the same link I told you to read twice
Have fun and please just do what MM says to do...it's all laid out for us already.

Nice. I have to spread more rep around still dammit. I'll go random repping and get back to ya

Mad Hamish said:

Nice. I have to spread more rep around still dammit. I'll go random repping and get back to ya

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I do the same thing. I like to leave random rep messages like...you just mind f'd me so hard.

Nice Red! A Cliffs notes version. Thank you for taking the time to condense all of that info for us!

Apparently I still can't rep you.....

RedCarpetMatches said:

I do the same thing. I like to leave random rep messages like...you just mind f'd me so hard.

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I feel so used.... here i thought i was getting genuine rep...and we really had something....GO TO HELL!

Chronikool said:

I feel so used.... here i thought i was getting genuine rep...and we really had something....GO TO HELL!

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I only rep'd you so I could rep your friend! Once I rep'd you so good, you ran and told all your friends how good that rep'n was. Now they all want to rep me too!!!

Just dumped something very similar on my plants.
I have to admit, it smelled better at 36 hours than it did last time I made it at 48 hours. I upped my bubble strength.
The ppm of the last batch was around 650, which seems perfect.
I used this, stolen from gandalf (among others)


1 tbsp of mollasses
20 drops of G.O. Camg+ (I used pond water from my tap. I do not add camag, is that a mistake?)
1 tbsp of dry all purpose ferttilizer NPK close to 5-5-5-. I use this.....http://www.coastofmaine.com/fertiliz...ter_kelp.shtml
1 tbsp of kelp meal
1 tbsp of high N all purpose peruvian guano
1 tspn of liquid fish fert with some N in it
1/4 cup Big Bloom by FF (I do not have any bottled nutes, I left this out)

Bubble 24 hours then add:

1/2 - cup of fresh compost or ewcs. I alternate.

Bubble 24 more hours. (I bubble it 12 more hours after adding the EWC or compost to stick with the 36 hour deal.)

RedCarpetMatches said:

I only rep'd you so I could rep your friend! Once I rep'd you so good, you ran and told all your friends how good that rep'n was. Now they all want to rep me too!!!

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lol ~OMG {quoted for excellence}

Trousers said:

Just dumped something very similar on my plants.
I have to admit, it smelled better at 36 hours than it did last time I made it at 48 hours. I upped my bubble strength.
The ppm of the last batch was around 650, which seems perfect.
I used this, stolen from gandalf (among others)


1 tbsp of mollasses
20 drops of G.O. Camg+ (I used pond water from my tap. I do not add camag, is that a mistake?)
1 tbsp of dry all purpose ferttilizer NPK close to 5-5-5-. I use this.....http://www.coastofmaine.com/fertiliz...ter_kelp.shtml
1 tbsp of kelp meal
1 tbsp of high N all purpose peruvian guano
1 tspn of liquid fish fert with some N in it
1/4 cup Big Bloom by FF (I do not have any bottled nutes, I left this out)

Bubble 24 hours then add:

1/2 - cup of fresh compost or ewcs. I alternate.

Bubble 24 more hours. (I bubble it 12 more hours after adding the EWC or compost to stick with the 36 hour deal.)

Click to expand...

Thank you Trousers for not trolling or belittling me It's hard to go against anything Gandalf the Great does...just look at his bud porn. The recipe looks more like a nute or a multipurpose tea. This was taking from MMs site:

In case I have not been clear enough above, our goal in making ACT is to extract, multiply and grow mostly aerobic microorganisms in as large a diversity as possible and inclusive of three basic groups; bacteria/archaea, protozoa [flagellates & naked amoebae] and fungi. (Some [vermi]compost will contain rotifers which are extracted into ACT. These cycle nutrients in similar fashion to protozoa and are a bonus if present.)
Making ACT is not about putting in ingredients which directly benefit the plants. The foodstocks used are strictly to feed or benefit the microorganisms which in turn benefit the plants.

I am currently keeping my teas separate due to the fact that MM has already done the experimenting and testing for us.

I love this recipe and use it on a regular basis. There is so much growth in the tea by 36 hours it is a goop that builds up on the surfaces in the brewer.

One thing to keep in mind is that a tiny bit of tea goes a long way so for indoor grows you can brew just a liter or two. That eliminates the need for expensive air pumps and makes certain you are fully aerated.

Microbeman's recipe micro sized:
1 liter well water
25ml fresh EWC
5ml organic blackstrap
2.5ml kelp meal
2/3 ml fish hydrolysate

According to microbeman this is enough for 570 sq ft. I have been recycling the same soil for years so I only brew once every few months. Thanks OP and thanks microbeman!

I like it simple & just do the 2c compost 1/2c BSM to 5 gal H20

but these days I am think'n about using kelp & fish hydrolysate {which I've never bought} but I did use kelp 1x before ~mainly, it's the LOS guys talk'n about bubbling the kelp & fish hydrolysate 24hrs before adding the compost/BSM

here's a vid of my brewer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA2KeTcoWGs

xmobotx said:

I like it simple & just do the 2c compost 1/2c BSM to 5 gal H20

but these days I am think'n about using kelp & fish hydrolysate {which I've never bought} but I did use kelp 1x before ~mainly, it's the LOS guys talk'n about bubbling the kelp & fish hydrolysate 24hrs before adding the compost/BSM

here's a vid of my brewer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA2KeTcoWGs

Click to expand...

That's one bad ass brewer! And I thought my air stones were kewl. Looks like just some pcs of PVC and a good pump...cheap and simple.

What do you guys think about this for chlorine/chloramine http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Prime.html I've had this left over from my aquarium days, and it never hurt my bacteria culture.

thats a cool ghetto vortexer..

hyroot said:

thats a cool ghetto vortexer..

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What do you mean "ghetto"? Why's your tea gotta be black?!

SupraSPL said:

I love this recipe and use it on a regular basis. There is so much growth in the tea by 36 hours it is like a goop that builds up on the surfaces in the brewer.

One thing to keep in mind is that a tiny bit of tea goes a long way so for indoor grows you can brew just a liter or two. That eliminates the need for expensive air pumps and it makes certain you are fully aerated. I normally brew:

1 liter well water
25ml fresh EWC
5ml organic blackstrap
2.5ml kelp meal
2/3 ml fish hydrolysate

According to microbeman this is enough for 570 sq ft. I have been recycling the same soil for years so I only brew once every few months. Thanks OP and thanks microbeman!

Click to expand...

That's a great point. I always err on the side of caution with this as well. I typically only brew 3 gallons tops at a time and dilute the act as needed. I'll take a couple gallons of properly aerated tea over 5 gallons of anaerobic swamp water any day

xmobotx said:

I like it simple & just do the 2c compost 1/2c BSM to 5 gal H20

but these days I am think'n about using kelp & fish hydrolysate {which I've never bought} but I did use kelp 1x before ~mainly, it's the LOS guys talk'n about bubbling the kelp & fish hydrolysate 24hrs before adding the compost/BSM

here's a vid of my brewer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA2KeTcoWGs

Click to expand...

Nice brewer you could inoculate a big garden with that bad boy. If you need ingredients check out kelp4less. I have ordered from them a few times because they have free shipping and found a working coupon code 10% off GREENTHUMB.

RedCarpetMatches said:

What do you mean "ghetto"? Why's your tea gotta be black?!

Click to expand...

the PVC is just resting in the bucket. Its not mounted in any way. I should of said "lazy vortexer"

SupraSPL said:

Nice brewer you could inoculate a big garden with that bad boy. If you need ingredients check out kelp4less. I have ordered from them a few times because they have free shipping and found a working coupon code 10% off GREENTHUMB.

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Damn...didn't know about the coupon code. That's where I get my fish hydrolysate. That gal will last me 100 years.

So with this recipe do you dilute to feed to plants? I brew in a 32 gal res, usually only 20 gals of aerated water, could I still use the recipe without doing it in a 5 gal bucket? Teas make a mess and I don't know about you guya but I dont have a kitchen sink to clean up in my grow lol hell thats a good future investment though.


How do you guys keep your good air stones clean, I scrub mine down every two days but my last tea just look liked it shat all over them and it wont come off easy, almost think it's like a hurd of oxy hungry beasties.

Red I didnt know they allowed gays to make threads, damn whats next a Islamic president. Lol jk. Nice thread, how about some nute teas or waya to adreas deficiencies? That would be very helpful in the organic section.

May11th said:

So with this recipe do you dilute to feed to plants? I brew in a 32 gal res, usually only 20 gals of aerated water, could I still use the recipe without doing it in a 5 gal bucket? Teas make a mess and I don't know about you guya but I dont have a kitchen sink to clean up in my grow lol hell thats a good future investment though.


How do you guys keep your good air stones clean, I scrub mine down every two days but my last tea just look liked it shat all over them and it wont come off easy, almost think it's like a hurd of oxy hungry beasties.

Red I didnt know they allowed gays to make threads, damn whats next a Islamic president. Lol jk. Nice thread, how about some nute teas or waya to adreas deficiencies? That would be very helpful in the organic section.

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Hey boo...I'm so happy to see yoo. Read the damn link lazy ass. As far as cleaning goes, I use one part hydrogen peroxide to two parts water. I know vinegar cleans everything, but I haven't needed it. I'd like to start a thread (or read one) about updated nute teas. I like the kelp, alfalfa, aloe tea for veg. My babies lookin cute as daddy.