DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

sprechenz said:

Thanks Mr. bond
Also is sweet from botonicare ok to use instead of molasses?
I'll get the molasses but I already have sweet.

Oh, and I am using Pure blend pro hydro. line for my nutes currently. They are about 70% organics. Can I use these in conjuction with the tea and DWC or should I switch? I have been told by some that they have good results with PBP in dwc.

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Hey sprechenz,
I have used Sweet in the past as a replacement for the molasses. It is a carbo so the microbes can feed off of it. I'm not sure if there is any additional benefit to using molasses over Sweet. Far as I can tell, Sweet will give you some extra Sulfur & Magnesium, molasses will give you some extra Calcium and Magnesium. Most people like to use unsulfured molasses with their brews, so I'm not sure how the extra Sulfur in the Sweet would affect your system. Although I didn't have any issues with it when I used it. and yes, you can certainly use the tea in with your (mostly) organic nutrients. If they really are mostly organic, then the tea should help things along quite nicely. You'll need to make sure you continue with the maintenance doses after the initial inoculation, to keep the ecosystem thriving so to speak. As for using PBP, I haven't used it myself but I've head its good stuff.

Cheers and good luck
mr.bond

k0ijn said:

Alright so I can piece it together myself.
The problem I have is that I'm not sure how to get this stuff in Denmark (or Europe for that matter).
I know I can get trichoderma and molasses however I have no idea how to get glomus, bacillus nor Ancient Forest.

Do you any companies that make these? As it's very tough to find the single substances here.

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Rather than focus on the single substances, look for combo products that feature multiple beneficials. I'm not sure what brands you have available to you, but I'm willing to bet you'll be able to find something. Are you able to get Botanicare or General Hydroponics products?

cheers
mr.bond

I hope you guys don't mind me posting some pics of what I consider successful use of the tea for non-cannabis use.

Got some habanero plants online to experiment in DWC. Didn't really know much about what I ordered since it was vague, but ended up getting a 95 day old plant rootbound in a 2" pot. Transplanted into DWC. I used the Myco/EWC Tea from day 2, since it wasn't ready day 1. The plants were in bad shape when they arrived.

After a few days of root growth (the darker roots are ones that were in soil wrapped around the pots):


About 13 days after transplant:


And as for the dead/dark tips I mentioned earlier, I figured out what's going on and it's so obvious now. See the acrylic divider between the plants? I added it in some vein attempt at keeping the plants separate, which I can see won't be possible for long at this rate. I've been rotating the plants every few hours so all the leaves get some time in the brightest light, and sometimes the air-roots get smashed and bent against the acrylic and rubbed around as I lift up the lid of the res .. doh! Anybody think it's an issue? Should I cease rotating the netpots and just leave em be?



The red arrows point to roots that were already there in the 2" soil pots, wrapped around a few times. In spite of using the Tea, and me not being too aggressive rinsing soil out, they've actually brightened in color lately.I don't see any slime but there is the light feeling of a film on the res that I clean during changes, and the airstones as well.

Under the water there are several branching roots. They almost appear to have a clear film around them, but they are clearly growing. Is that just the appearance of the fine hairs in murky water, or maybe some kind of beneficial bacteria/fungi on the roots that are submerged?

The plants after about 5 days in hydro. One already had a pepper that blew up and ripened in only days, maybe stress accelerated this?



After another 4 days things have started darkening up and tons of new growth. And that pepper was delicious!



I am hoping to be able to eat another one next week

Overall pretty happy with the tea. Thanks for the great thread Heisenberg and everyone else who has responded.

Air pruning is what I suspected when I read your post, but I chose to wait for your pics. This happens to me sometimes when I move the plants around and some roots get caught on the sides of the tubs. I wouldn't worry too much about it. The roots look great and will easily compensate for the pruning by learning where to grow. You can take out the divider because it will not hurt the roots to grow together. If you plan on separating them you will want to do so before they become too entangled. Mine sometimes grow together for quite a while and resist separation. I am not gentle when I rip them apart, although I do not cause any excessive damage. I clean the broken root bits off as much as I can, and the root ball responds with new explosive growth. Thanks for posting the pics, good luck on the peppers.

sprechenz said:

Ok,

Started my tea. Used the same recipe as Heisenberg but replaced molasses with 30 ml sweet raw by botinacare. Gonna start sterilizing my system with a 5 ml/gal bleach solution mixed with the current nutes about 5 hours before the tea is at 48 hours.
Then I'll change out the water and mix in 3 gal of the tea for 80 gal of H20.
Gonna let this run for 12 hours then add in the following
Botonicare PBP grow at 15 ml/gal
Botonicare cal/mag at 5 ml/gal
Botonicare Liquid Karma at 10ml/gal
Botonicare sweet at 5 ml/gal
Aquashield at 5ml/gal
Silica blast at 2ml/gal

What do you all think?

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Hey sprech,

Your plan sounds good.

After you drain the bleach solution, you might consider flushing the whole system with fresh water, then draining again, prior to refilling with nutes. Having any bleach in the system would be bad for the tea. Also, you might consider leaving the Aquashield out of your mix, at least for now until your system is inoculated. You are getting tons of biological diversity from the tea brew, particularly the Ancient Forest, so by adding a 'concentrate' of Aquashield you might be displacing those particular bacteria over all the rest, reducing the slime-fighting abilities of the tea.

If your slime infection is really bad, you might also want to leave out the Sweet and Liquid Karma initially. You want the good bennies from the tea to overpower the bad stuff (slime), but by adding those products in, you are essentially giving the slime a food source, which could then explode and overrun the freshly added tea. You could add them back into the mix once the slime has subsided and you are seeing new root growth. If the slime you have now is only mild, then you can probably get away with it, especially after that 12 hour waiting period.

After a few maintenance doses of the tea, when the slime has subsided and your system is more normalized, you might be able to use just the Aquashield & ZHO as a constant beneficial to keep the system slime-free, as opposed to brewing up the tea often. Test it and see how it works for you. Or you could brew a tea of just those two and not have to worry about the dirt occasionally left behind by the Ancient Forest. If brewed into a tea it would be much more powerful than just adding them into the system.

Hope this helps.

cheers,
mr.bond

I use PBP at it seems to be working ok. A little phos deiciency in a coulple plants so I added some PBP bloom for coco.

I agree though about the liquid karma and aquashield.

Hi I use nettle tea as both a foliar spray and a mite controller. I have used in both indoors and out. can this be safely added to a dwc bucket? The ratio for steeped nettle tea is the same as for your tea 1 cup tea to 10 cups of water. Nettle tea grows beautiful gardens of any kind and is the only foliar spray I use. Any thoughts you have would be great since I want to grow as close to nature as I can.

leo9 said:

Hi I use nettle tea as both a foliar spray and a mite controller. I have used in both indoors and out. can this be safely added to a dwc bucket? The ratio for steeped nettle tea is the same as for your tea 1 cup tea to 10 cups of water. Nettle tea grows beautiful gardens of any kind and is the only foliar spray I use. Any thoughts you have would be great since I want to grow as close to nature as I can.

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Hi Leo,

I haven't heard of this nettle tea. is there more you can tell us about it? just curious. thanks!

cheers
mr.bond

I actually grow nettles organically in my back yard but here in washington you can find them in any forest. At any rate you take a large amount of nettles, roots and all, and chop them as small as you can get them, put them in a giant pot and cover them with boiling water. At this point you can either keep them on low on the stove for about an hour or just let it sit a couple days. I stew them and let them sit about 3 days then strain and use them 1 cup to 10 cups of water. I keep a gallon refridgerated at all times lol. I used it on my veggie garden with a hose attachment and a couple drops of organic soap. Kills the worms that eat your crops also spider mites and aphids. Makes excellent plant food! I grew tomatoes that were as tall as I am and I am 5ft 10. In my opinion there is nothing better as a plant food and can be applied to the soil or as a foliar spray. I have considered making a compost tea with the nettle tea as the liquid. Be careful, nettle tea applied full strength will kill plants in your garden though it does leave the soil wonderful for planting other things. I may have to experiment with nettles and some bat guano tea though and see how that turns out.

Can someone a take look at the pics I have posted on Photobucket and tell me what you think? I'm guessing this is the dreaded slime? I have already added a gallon of tea late this afternoon. I have a 6 site DWC in 3.5 gallon buckets with a 7th 3.5 gal bucket as the reservoir. About 15 gallons total.

http://s1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb393/HydroDawg/Snapbucket/

HydroDawg421 said:

Can someone a take look at the pics I have posted on Photobucket and tell me what you think? I'm guessing this is the dreaded slime? I have already added a gallon of tea late this afternoon. I have a 6 site DWC in 3.5 gallon buckets with a 7th 3.5 gal bucket as the reservoir. About 15 gallons total.

http://s1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb393/HydroDawg/Snapbucket/

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you have a password on your photobucket album...

cheers

mr.bond said:

you have a password on your photobucket album...

cheers

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Sorry. It is now public

HydroDawg421 said:

Can someone a take look at the pics I have posted on Photobucket and tell me what you think? I'm guessing this is the dreaded slime? I have already added a gallon of tea late this afternoon. I have a 6 site DWC in 3.5 gallon buckets with a 7th 3.5 gal bucket as the reservoir. About 15 gallons total.

http://s1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb393/HydroDawg/Snapbucket/

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Yeap thats the lovable slime... just loves to hang around. You should hopefully be seeing some progress from your tea addition by now. Let us know how it goes...

cheers
mr.bond

Seeing as we are now on page 104 of this thread, can someone post the "revised" recipe? I believe that we got rid of the Aquashield right?

Original recipe:
2 gallons of water
2 scoops of Zho powder
20-30 ml aquashield
2 handfuls of earth worm castings
2 tbls molasses

legallyflying said:

Seeing as we are now on page 104 of this thread, can someone post the "revised" recipe? I believe that we got rid of the Aquashield right?

Original recipe:
2 gallons of water
2 scoops of Zho powder
20-30 ml aquashield
2 handfuls of earth worm castings
2 tbls molasses

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this is my tea formula
2 scoops of ancient forest
1 tsp of myco madness
2 tsp of molasiss
4 gal water

seems to work good but maybe its not strong enough?

For disease prevention & beneficials:
-Mycogrow Soluble
-Molasses

For fighting slime:
-Mycogrow Soluble
-Ancient Forest EWC
-Molasses

Forgive me father for I have sinned!
I was in another veggie gardening forum talking about the bennies and fungi. A guy who is an "infectious disease physician" made a post that scared me a bit. Nothing specific or scientific or relating to any specific problem, he just basically said after what he does all day, the thought of playing with this stuff makes him shudder.


So that made me a little worried, after all I am eating these peppers fresh, which is a bit more up close and personal than you guys are most likely considering (smoked, or ingested has to be heated at some point).

So 2 days ago I did a res change, and due to my sudden paranoia, I used H202 and no bennies. The next morning the roots looked like shit! not brown or anything, but I swear they are half as thick and fluffy looking.

It's now been almost 2 full days and I have seen ZERO new root growth, they still look really spindly. However the plants themselves look just fine and have continued growing and shooting new flowers.


I think I over reacted, and learned that killing a huge population of bennies off with h202 is not a good thing. I still have tea in the fridge that will be 9 or 10 days old today. Would you guys recommend waiting a few days and brewing some fresh tea for this situation?

Also, was I being paranoid for no reason, is there anything to worry about when ingesting plants grown off this stuff? The myco worries me more than the EWC... could a tea be OK without myco?

Ok,
So answer me this. I disinfected my system. high levels of bleach. Cleaned and rinsed. Brewed tea for 48 hours. Put new ro h20 in system. 80 gallons. Put 2 gallons of brewed tea in system. Let run for 24 hours.

Put in new clones. Added Nutes. DM gold. Grow a+b+silica at recommended ratio from dutch masters chart. .9ec. 12 hours later I have a mild bad smell emanating from veg room and the Uc buckets. Not terrible but a noticeable smell. Have drippers running full time for taht 12 hours. Clones were small, with small roots when put in system. No roots comming out buckets, only an inch big when I put them in.

Is this bad? What the hell should I do?

farkface said:

Forgive me father for I have sinned!
I was in another veggie gardening forum talking about the bennies and fungi. A guy who is an "infectious disease physician" made a post that scared me a bit. Nothing specific or scientific or relating to any specific problem, he just basically said after what he does all day, the thought of playing with this stuff makes him shudder.


So that made me a little worried, after all I am eating these peppers fresh, which is a bit more up close and personal than you guys are most likely considering (smoked, or ingested has to be heated at some point).

So 2 days ago I did a res change, and due to my sudden paranoia, I used H202 and no bennies. The next morning the roots looked like shit! not brown or anything, but I swear they are half as thick and fluffy looking.

It's now been almost 2 full days and I have seen ZERO new root growth, they still look really spindly. However the plants themselves look just fine and have continued growing and shooting new flowers.


I think I over reacted, and learned that killing a huge population of bennies off with h202 is not a good thing. I still have tea in the fridge that will be 9 or 10 days old today. Would you guys recommend waiting a few days and brewing some fresh tea for this situation?

Also, was I being paranoid for no reason, is there anything to worry about when ingesting plants grown off this stuff? The myco worries me more than the EWC... could a tea be OK without myco?

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Pick up a handful of dirt and you will be exposed to the same types of microbes you get from the tea. These microbes are ubiquitous, omnipresent, and you'll never get away from them. They are present in every soil grow and garden. None of them are pathogenic. Your immune system has been handling them since it was born. The only time you should worry is if you have NO immune system, at which point I doubt you are farming. Myco's themselves only germinate when they make contact with root material. If they enter your system they will remain dormant. Once I spilled fresh tea on my cat and he immediately began licking it off. He was just fine. The only area of caution is if you are using an ultra fine inoculant in which case you should avoid breathing any powder, which is true of any fine material whether it carries germs or not.