DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Appreciate that man. And the bloat you speak of you can now handle yourself XD

I have a question that relates to the topic though.. How similar is algae eater to the tea? Close to the same thing or not at all?

VoidObject said:

Appreciate that man. And the bloat you speak of you can now handle yourself XD

I have a question that relates to the topic though.. How similar is algae eater to the tea? Close to the same thing or not at all?

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Are you talking about the chiefs algae eater? If so it differs from the tea because it aims to promote a sterile res, where as the tea simply attempts to replace harmful microbes with beneficial ones. The tea does a really effective job at preventing algae, but I have noticed that prolonged light will still produce algae eventually. I have had completely transparent veg tubs that stayed algae free for months, but after a while the algae does gain a foothold. Proper maintenance would dictate that you clean out the tubs well before this has a chance to happen, but no situation is ideal. Even with the tea I cover my buckets in the bud room. Roots evolved in darkness and I believe they prefer it.

Heisenberg said:

Are you talking about the chiefs algae eater?

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No I'm not.. something more like this: "Algae Eater"

There are better ones out there at petsmart and other pet places but just as an example it works.

VoidObject said:

No I'm not.. something more like this: "Algae Eater"

There are better ones out there at petsmart and other pet places but just as an example it works.

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The msds lists Ammonium Bifluoride, which is a sterilizing agent. So it is the opposite approach as the tea. It works well on algae, but has been confirmed many times to have no effect on root slime. I think bleach would be a better choice for sterilization, as it works on slime and algae, or if someone is uncomfortable using bleach, they could use a product like physan 20, which breaks down into nitrogen eventually.

Heisenberg,,, just wanted to say (once again) you were right about the tea causing excessive root hair growth in an aero setup which in my opinion is a good thing... But not only are my roots hairy,,, im noticing rapid growth from the roots as well as the canopy also... My leaves are healthier,,, greener,,, im getting shorter internodes... This shit has to be steroids for plants and im loving it!!! And at the rate that everythings going I'll be able to cut down my veg time before flowering... i recently did a test with 4 clones that had less than 1/2" roots(nowhere near the edges of the net cup) and in 4 days there was a million more roots per cup and they hung about 3"-6" out of the net cups... WTF!!! I cant express the impact of your knowledge you've shared has on my grow!!! THANKS!!!

nice change to the thread name its more fitting and discriptive

SHABOOGY1 said:

Heisenberg,,, just wanted to say (once again) you were right about the tea causing excessive root hair growth in an aero setup which in my opinion is a good thing... But not only are my roots hairy,,, im noticing rapid growth from the roots as well as the canopy also... My leaves are healthier,,, greener,,, im getting shorter internodes... This shit has to be steroids for plants and im loving it!!! And at the rate that everythings going I'll be able to cut down my veg time before flowering... i recently did a test with 4 clones that had less than 1/2" roots(nowhere near the edges of the net cup) and in 4 days there was a million more roots per cup and they hung about 3"-6" out of the net cups... WTF!!! I cant express the impact of your knowledge you've shared has on my grow!!! THANKS!!!

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Great! Glad your grow is doing better. Remember though not to confuse root branching or side roots with root hairs. Root hairs are microscopic and rarely seen with the naked eye. They number into the billions in a typical root ball. They tend to grow on new root areas while older areas lose the hairs and get used for air intake, transport and energy storage. If you are seeing explosive branching and lateral growth then all is well. A root structure that is producing too many hairs is often referred to as bearding, because the net pot will simply appear to have a small beard and nothing more. Thanks for the update and hope things continue to go well for you.

First, thank you Heisenberg for the awesome contribution. I normally don't post here but I will now spread the word by referring to "Heisenberg Tea". Oh, and thank you Mr. Bond for taking the time Heisenberg may lack in answering all the inquiries in detail.
I just read every word on every page of this thread, all 85 pages. It took me a week to complete but I recommend everyone to read the first 20 or so pages without skipping content. Most all of what is required is there unless you are not able to land specific ingredient(s).

I do have a question: has anybody used Orca by Plant Success to brew tea? I am thinking of adding AF, MycoGrow soluble, and Orca. I am thinking this would be a good mix. What do you think? Thanks!

nrgpill said:

First, thank you Heisenberg for the awesome contribution. I normally don't post here but I will now spread the word by referring to "Heisenberg Tea". Oh, and thank you Mr. Bond for taking the time Heisenberg may lack in answering all the inquiries in detail.
I just read every word on every page of this thread, all 85 pages. It took me a week to complete but I recommend everyone to read the first 20 or so pages without skipping content. Most all of what is required is there unless you are not able to land specific ingredient(s).

I do have a question: has anybody used Orca by Plant Success to brew tea? I am thinking of adding AF, MycoGrow soluble, and Orca. I am thinking this would be a good mix. What do you think? Thanks!

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Hi ngrpill,

Thanks for your kind words and for reading through. As for your question relating to the Orca product, you could use it, but I'd say it's use in the tea might be a bit redundant if you were going to make it as you said (Ancient Forest, MycoGrow soluble, Orca). Additionally, the use of Orca in the tea might even be detrimental to its performance for disease-fighting purposes. The Ancient Forest provides vast diversity of beneficial bacteria strains, numbering well over 30,000, and the MycoGrow provides dozens of strains of mycorrhizae fungi, trichoderma, and more beneficial bacteria. In comparison, the Orca product provides just 4 strains of mycorrhizae and 11 strains of beneficial bacteria. Since diversity is key to fighting the slime, the AF is certainly a superior choice and is also much cheaper. If you weren't suffering from the slime, and just wanted an all-liquid tea used for maintenance and protection, you might have luck brewing just the Orca product into a tea. If you already have it, use it up, why not... and brewing it into a tea will make it more potent. If you need to buy ingredients, there are more diverse alternatives for less, for example, you could do a combo of Aquashield & Mycogrow Soluble and likely achieve the same results or better, and spend a bit less.

Cheers mate hope this helps!
mr.bond

Wow, awsome thread. I read the first half 40+ pages! What do you think of this, I have a single site rdwc system and I'm using fox farms microbe brew and also using fox farms big bloom which contains ewc and npk. Should I also be using a sweetener to feed my microbes? I add these ingredients with every res change, is that enough or too much? if I also added your brew would it be overkill? Thanks in advance for sharing all of your knowledge.

mr.bond said:

Hi ngrpill,

Thanks for your kind words and for reading through. As for your question relating to the Orca product, you could use it, but I'd say it's use in the tea might be a bit redundant if you were going to make it as you said (Ancient Forest, MycoGrow soluble, Orca). Additionally, the use of Orca in the tea might even be detrimental to its performance for disease-fighting purposes. The Ancient Forest provides vast diversity of beneficial bacteria strains, numbering well over 30,000, and the MycoGrow provides dozens of strains of mycorrhizae fungi, trichoderma, and more beneficial bacteria. In comparison, the Orca product provides just 4 strains of mycorrhizae and 11 strains of beneficial bacteria. Since diversity is key to fighting the slime, the AF is certainly a superior choice and is also much cheaper. If you weren't suffering from the slime, and just wanted an all-liquid tea used for maintenance and protection, you might have luck brewing just the Orca product into a tea. If you already have it, use it up, why not... and brewing it into a tea will make it more potent. If you need to buy ingredients, there are more diverse alternatives for less, for example, you could do a combo of Aquashield & Mycogrow Soluble and likely achieve the same results or better, and spend a bit less.

Cheers mate hope this helps!
mr.bond

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Thank you again Mr.Bond! I think the combination of AF and MycoGrow will be the most prudent choice for me. First, the price makes it a no-brainer on either of those. Also, AF is locally available to me so that is a plus. The tea will be used for preventative measure on my first rdwc grow and I am so glad I found this thread while still in planning stage.

Hey Doc I have been using the tea for my first grow and the plants loved it. I am on day 50 of flower and started my flush yesterday with just plain water. I have some Earth Juice Hi Brix that I was using to make the tea. Will it be ok to use this in the system during the flush?

How would you go about solving a bearding issue? it seems i likely have this problem the plants in my setup that are doing well seem to have a strong ball of roots as opposed to the many others that have a beard/net like shape. Im not sure how much of the algae that grows on the clear tubes of my setup or the sediment like stuff that sits in my res and the bottom of my bars is hurting. but either way my plants look starved and the whiteness of the roots has turned yellow.

If i remove the yellow/brown roots with a slight (and i really do me slight) tug. the plant still grows nice healthy white ones. but the foliage doesn't seem to be getting fed properly. im getting droopy red stems on my leaves and this is after the new air pump. My next solution is to get a timer to do 15/15 on/off intervals. & replace the broken humidifier (RH typically 30%)

Recently to reduce the overall particles ive been filtering though a carbon filter mesh b4 adding to res. (its actually the filter that covers the pump in tube)

fallin, are you using aeroponics"? I guess I don't understand what the tier would be for? The air pump? Certainly a bad idea there. If your getting red stems..lots of red stems, there is definately some micro nutrient uptake problem. Typically those are PH based or your solution is really out of whack and one nutriient is preventing the uptake of another. I wold recommend a foliar feeding until you zero in on the root uptake issue.

either my ph nor the way im mixing the nutrients have changed (5.8 ph and 600-700tds with R/o water). I added a Significantly stronger air pump in hopes to see recovery and while some plants have started to recover others have not.

The plants grew much bigger before obtaining root rot issues the last time. This time through, Im using the tea and the stronger air pump. Im not sure if its my constant checking (once every 2-3days) of the roots. Or maybe to much tea that caused the problem this time around but my roots are not big strong and white anymore. which makes me think its lack of oxygen at the root level. or lack of Humidity in the air(due to the death of my humidifier)

In other news I FINALLY received my MMJ card for my state only took 6 months to process

lol you must be in oregon. anywho. dry humidity wouldn't do it so rule that out. you have lots of o2 so that shouldn't be a problem (but won't neccessariy fix something that is busted)

post a picture

do you have to PH the bennie tea brew?

Add it to your res then do a ph check to see if it needed

ferreal said:

do you have to PH the bennie tea brew?

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No, in fact, don't. Just pH your system like normal, then add the tea. So water, nutes, pH, then tea. If you have to adjust pH later, dilute your pH adjuster with water so you aren't pouring straight downer into the rez. Technically the tea has a pH of around 7, but you are adding very little in comparison and it really shouldn't elevate your pH hardly at all. I have double-checked this and the effect was negligible. Cheers and good luck.

mr.bond

First off, thanks to Heisenberg and everyone else for this excellent thread! I'm brand new to hydroponics, and I've been plagued with problems since the first time I filled my DWC rez. I stumbled on this thread last week and read the entire thing over the course of a few days.

After reading this thread I decided to scrap my entire project, clean my rez, and start over using Heisenberg's tea to supplement my rez. I started out with clones that barely had root tips popping through the bottom of the rockwool, and in about 6 days, I had nice long white hairy healthy looking roots.

Unfortunately, my power went out for about 48 hrs this weekend. I knew the roots couldn't survive without the air pumps running, and with my limited knowledge and limited resources, the best thing I could come up with was to get the roots out of the water and manually mist them every few hours to keep them from drying out. When the power came back on, the roots still looked pretty healthy, though a few of them had started to shrivel up a little. I checked the vitals on the rez and everything seemed to be in check so I added a cup of Heisenberg tea and put the plants back in. When I woke up this morning, there was a little bit of clear gunk starting to build up on the roots =/ As the day has gone on, it's gotten worse pretty quickly and started to tint brown in some places. Not sure if it's the brown slime or root rot or what, but I need some advice as how to proceed. Would a rez change with some fresh tea and some cleaning/trimming of the infected roots be enough to keep going? Or since this grow is only a little over a week old, am I better off just scrapping and starting over again?