DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

H

Hiker

Member
Hi Heisenberg,

I HAVE actually read through this entire thread. While I'm sure I forgot more than I remember, I did try to find answers to my questions by searching!

Recently, someone asked about a lack of foam during brewing. Is this OK? I don't have a way to measure the temps of my brewing tea, but the bucket sits in the flowering room. Daytime temps are ~78-80F, nighttime is 64-67F. I get no foam. I've made 3 batches so far. The last batch was this recipe:
2 gal RO water
2 handfuls EWC thrown right into the bucket(I filter at the end)
~4 tsp mollases
~4 tsp (20 mL) of Aquashield
1 tsp of Extreme Gardening Mykos (I saw you posted that this was not a good innoculant. I'll try to get a different on at the hydro store this week, but it may have to wait until the weekend. My hydro store is 2 hours away)

All of this is stirred up and put into the flowering room to brew. I put the bucket on a piece of insulation to keep it off the cold concrete floor.

I use GH Flora nutes in a CAP Ebb & Gro with 22 sites. My res temps were very low (mostly ~54F, but often lower, rarely higher) until recently. I've added a heater and now it's pretty stable at ~64F. My roots were doing great, but my reservoir had started to develop an odd smell. Granted, this is a brand new room, so I have no recent reference to compare the smell too, but I don't recall my res smelling that bad in the past. I added the tea, and it seemed to help. That weird smell was replaced with a mild 'earthy' smell. That was 3-4 weeks ago.

I've noticed my roots looking a little browner and they seemed to be clumping together more. They also don't seem to be growing much lately. I pulled a bucket last night on one of the worse plants. The roots are definitely not well. Some of them seem "mushy". They are not bright white, but it's my understanding the nutes and tea and affect the color. Even so, I can tell they are not healthy.

So I have 2 questions:
Is it a problem that I am not seeing foam when brewing?
Can you add too much tea to the reservoir?

Thanks in advance for the help. When I grew previously, I always ran a sterile res without any root issues. Your approach makes a lot of sense, and I want it too work. However, I am starting to wonder if I made a mistake adding another variable (the tea) to an already brand new grow op.
 
neosapien

neosapien

Well-Known Member
HTGsupply has a product called Stump Tea, that is apparently their own concoction of dry mix bennies and fungi. Does anyone have any experience with using it in a tea? I can't find the data sheet for it anywhere. Does it look diverse enough to replace the Aquashield and ZHO part of the tea?

IMG_20130207_155405.jpg
 
J

johncbd

Member
I have some MK plants from nirvanashop and i have them in 3gal DWC buckets i have had the slime floating around in the buckets since they were seedlings. The roots managed to grow a decent bit before they are fully taken over, the plants were showing signs of maturity like white pistils by the time they were a nasty brown. So i ordered everything that you said I needed off of amazon, I think that was my first mistake. Ive never ordered more than 1 item off of amazon and didn't think about how they would all ship from different places. So I first get my root powder, then the aquashield wich I find 1 year expired. Awesome I tell them that and they say their sending a new one. So I open the expired one and its green. I look on their website and it says it should be amber. So after waiting forever, watching my roots get worse, for the rest of the items I say screw it grab the root powder and throw half a scoop into a gallon of water, which i realized after that he makes 2 gallon batches and uses a half scoop, I get the expired aquashield and throw 15 ml into the gallon, then i get my earth juice catalyst which contains alot of mollasses but also oat bran, sea kelp, wheat malt, and yeast and add a 3 ml squirt not knowing what it will do. Then i throw 2 airstons that connect to a 3 watt pump and put a piece of plastic seran wrap ontop. Ive maded earth juice teas with this method alot and im pretty sure it lets all the microbes break down the nutrients. After a few hours i check it, no foam but the plastic seran wrap was all inflated up. Im thinking what the hell must be the microbs realeasing gases or something. After 24 hours I dump all the water in the buckets and use a very high pressure nozzle on my hose to remove all the slime from the bucket and airstone with hose. Then i spray the plants roots and hydroton with my hose on a less pressure more water setting. Fill the bucket just under the net pots and add 2 cups straight to the water then add a cup to the hydroton and little piece of rockwool it was started in, total 3 cups a bucket. It's been 2 days now and all sorts of new roots are bursting from the brown ones and the net pot and are growing incredibly fast. I have also gotten the pure molasses and my new shipment of aquashield made it but there was no date on it and when i opened it the seal poped off instantly since it was under alot of pressure and they might of known it since they taped the cap down, the liquid was a brown color so thats hopeful. Hopefully i will get the ancient forest today so I can start brewing a complete batch and destroy the slime.

In the ZHO root powder on the scooper there is a large scoop and on the other side theres a tiny one, which do you use? I used the large one
 
Heisenberg

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
Hiker said:
Hi Heisenberg,

I HAVE actually read through this entire thread. While I'm sure I forgot more than I remember, I did try to find answers to my questions by searching!

Recently, someone asked about a lack of foam during brewing. Is this OK? I don't have a way to measure the temps of my brewing tea, but the bucket sits in the flowering room. Daytime temps are ~78-80F, nighttime is 64-67F. I get no foam. I've made 3 batches so far. The last batch was this recipe:
2 gal RO water
2 handfuls EWC thrown right into the bucket(I filter at the end)
~4 tsp mollases
~4 tsp (20 mL) of Aquashield
1 tsp of Extreme Gardening Mykos (I saw you posted that this was not a good innoculant. I'll try to get a different on at the hydro store this week, but it may have to wait until the weekend. My hydro store is 2 hours away)

All of this is stirred up and put into the flowering room to brew. I put the bucket on a piece of insulation to keep it off the cold concrete floor.

I use GH Flora nutes in a CAP Ebb & Gro with 22 sites. My res temps were very low (mostly ~54F, but often lower, rarely higher) until recently. I've added a heater and now it's pretty stable at ~64F. My roots were doing great, but my reservoir had started to develop an odd smell. Granted, this is a brand new room, so I have no recent reference to compare the smell too, but I don't recall my res smelling that bad in the past. I added the tea, and it seemed to help. That weird smell was replaced with a mild 'earthy' smell. That was 3-4 weeks ago.

I've noticed my roots looking a little browner and they seemed to be clumping together more. They also don't seem to be growing much lately. I pulled a bucket last night on one of the worse plants. The roots are definitely not well. Some of them seem "mushy". They are not bright white, but it's my understanding the nutes and tea and affect the color. Even so, I can tell they are not healthy.

So I have 2 questions:
Is it a problem that I am not seeing foam when brewing?
Can you add too much tea to the reservoir?

Thanks in advance for the help. When I grew previously, I always ran a sterile res without any root issues. Your approach makes a lot of sense, and I want it too work. However, I am starting to wonder if I made a mistake adding another variable (the tea) to an already brand new grow op.
Click to expand...
You can't really add too much tea, but you wont get any better results adding more than 1 cup per gallon. Better to add smaller amounts more often than big amounts all at once. You can make a good tea without seeing any foam. Foam is an indication that proteins are entering the water, most likely from the EWC. Smell is the best indication of microbe activity. There should be a non-offensive earthy smell after about 30 hours. Slime does not cause an odor or mushy roots, but pythium does. Pythium is almost always an indication of under oxygenation/poor water circulation. Adding tea will help temporarily but if you do not fix the problem things can get worse. Even though max DO levels are relatively easy to reach, you still want lots of bubbles making contact with the roots.

Once roots go mushy you pretty much have to wait for new shoots to pop out. If pythium gets too far advanced the plant can die no matter what you do.

neosapien said:
HTGsupply has a product called Stump Tea, that is apparently their own concoction of dry mix bennies and fungi. Does anyone have any experience with using it in a tea? I can't find the data sheet for it anywhere. Does it look diverse enough to replace the Aquashield and ZHO part of the tea?

View attachment 2515295
Click to expand...
Yep looks like some good stuff. Will replace both the ZHO and Aquashield.

johncbd said:
I have some MK plants from nirvanashop and i have them in 3gal DWC buckets i have had the slime floating around in the buckets since they were seedlings. The roots managed to grow a decent bit before they are fully taken over, the plants were showing signs of maturity like white pistils by the time they were a nasty brown. So i ordered everything that you said I needed off of amazon, I think that was my first mistake. Ive never ordered more than 1 item off of amazon and didn't think about how they would all ship from different places. So I first get my root powder, then the aquashield wich I find 1 year expired. Awesome I tell them that and they say their sending a new one. So I open the expired one and its green. I look on their website and it says it should be amber. So after waiting forever, watching my roots get worse, for the rest of the items I say screw it grab the root powder and throw half a scoop into a gallon of water, which i realized after that he makes 2 gallon batches and uses a half scoop, I get the expired aquashield and throw 15 ml into the gallon, then i get my earth juice catalyst which contains alot of mollasses but also oat bran, sea kelp, wheat malt, and yeast and add a 3 ml squirt not knowing what it will do. Then i throw 2 airstons that connect to a 3 watt pump and put a piece of plastic seran wrap ontop. Ive maded earth juice teas with this method alot and im pretty sure it lets all the microbes break down the nutrients. After a few hours i check it, no foam but the plastic seran wrap was all inflated up. Im thinking what the hell must be the microbs realeasing gases or something. After 24 hours I dump all the water in the buckets and use a very high pressure nozzle on my hose to remove all the slime from the bucket and airstone with hose. Then i spray the plants roots and hydroton with my hose on a less pressure more water setting. Fill the bucket just under the net pots and add 2 cups straight to the water then add a cup to the hydroton and little piece of rockwool it was started in, total 3 cups a bucket. It's been 2 days now and all sorts of new roots are bursting from the brown ones and the net pot and are growing incredibly fast. I have also gotten the pure molasses and my new shipment of aquashield made it but there was no date on it and when i opened it the seal poped off instantly since it was under alot of pressure and they might of known it since they taped the cap down, the liquid was a brown color so thats hopeful. Hopefully i will get the ancient forest today so I can start brewing a complete batch and destroy the slime.

In the ZHO root powder on the scooper there is a large scoop and on the other side theres a tiny one, which do you use? I used the large one
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing, glad to hear things are turning around for you. The large scoop is the one I use. Good luck with your next batch.
 
neosapien

neosapien

Well-Known Member
Thanks for replying Heisenberg. Never hurts to get a second opinion. Atleast from you. :-D

I also wanted to add that the Stump Tea is $14.95 for 4oz at HTG. I know it's more expensive than the Mycogrow but if you're like me and like to walk into a place and look at something before you buy it, it's not too overly expensive. Every Tuesdays they have "Free Tea Tuesdays" where if you bring in an empty gallon jug they'll fill it with their brewed tea for free. Not trying to plug them but in theory if you have a smaller reservoir you could just piggy back off their batch every week and not pay a dime. :-P
 
Heisenberg

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
neosapien said:
Thanks for replying Heisenberg. Never hurts to get a second opinion. Atleast from you. :-D

I also wanted to add that the Stump Tea is $14.95 for 4oz at HTG. I know it's more expensive than the Mycogrow but if you're like me and like to walk into a place and look at something before you buy it, it's not too overly expensive. Every Tuesdays they have "Free Tea Tuesdays" where if you bring in an empty gallon jug they'll fill it with their brewed tea for free. Not trying to plug them but in theory if you have a smaller reservoir you could just piggy back off their batch every week and not pay a dime. :-P
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip. That's a smart promotional technique for a grow store.
 
H

Hiker

Member
My grow store started selling brewed tea too, but I think it's slightly different than this recipe. They have this big machine that is constantly brewing many gallons of tea.
 
N

NightOwlBono

Well-Known Member
Thanks Heisenberg
I have only tried this on my houseplants and some veggies I'm growing.
but my huwaian baby woodrose's shot up 3-5inches each overnight after only one watering.

I can't wait to try this and some differnt recipes on my girls this summer.
+rep given for original post
 
L

LoIQ2

Well-Known Member
Ureeka! I got new white roots that are fastly growing and thriving thanks to the tea and "Dr" Heisenberg. No more pythium. Best perscription for my DWC. THANKS a million!
 
R

Rondelia

Active Member
Hey guyz this is my firt post here and I want to say a big thanks to Heisenberg for his tea!
I had a grow runnin with 3 Black Sugar (Female Seeds) and 1 OG Kush(Reserva Privada) and in the first month they got the slime.
They were cured using this recipe with these products (they yielded bad but thats due to a lot of factors)
http://www.micosat.nl/publicaties.html <- this and a regular EWC .
Now i have white slime (NOT brown ) Know anything that will help ? I added 750ml of tea today( 40l rez ) to see what will happen .
Any explanation behind the white slime (its on airstones) ? Excuse my english, youre the Man!

This is my curent grow 2 AK47(Serious Seeds) and 1 og kush clone in the small one(this clone has brown slime and is currently treated with tea)
DSC04855 (Large).jpg
and these are the roots and OG Kush after the harvest (i wonder what that dark brown thing is in roots.... )
DSC04846 (Large).jpgDSC04847 (Large).jpgDSC04871 (Large).jpg
 
E

EvasiveGrower

Member
Knowledge is power, and I have all of you to thank. I appreciate the time everyone takes to get this stuff solved.

My question:
  • What do you guys think about making the EWC tea without the aquashield? I've ordered it and its on its way, went to the hydro store, the guy had aquashield but it expired in 2011! Great business...anyways, I'm making a batch now with Great White, Earth Worm Castings, ZHO, and Molasses. Thoughts?​


 
gratefulgardner

gratefulgardner

Member
Thank you Heisenberg for everything. I have read most of your forum still working on it. I currently am making your tea with success but I have encountered some slime in my DWC and am wondering at what rate I should add it to my currently sterile 200 gallon system. Is my math correct and it would call for 12 gallons of tea and then a cup every 3 days? What about when I do res changes?
 
neosapien

neosapien

Well-Known Member
Success. Figured I'd pop in and report. I've got (3) 5gal buckets going. One of the buckets was definitely getting the slime, for the first time ever might I add. 3 days after putting the tea in the one bucket, new white super-healthy fuzzy roots were starting to pop out everywhere. Now a week+ and the tea'd roots look better than the healthy control roots. I added it to the other buckets several days ago and now they're bangin'. I gave some to my bonsais and houseplants as well. I got a minifridge that I wasn't using so this tea will definitely be a main stay in my repertoire from here on out. Thanks to everyone involved.
 
E

EvasiveGrower

Member
neosapien said:
Success. Figured I'd pop in and report. I've got (3) 5gal buckets going. One of the buckets was definitely getting the slime, for the first time ever might I add. 3 days after putting the tea in the one bucket, new white super-healthy fuzzy roots were starting to pop out everywhere. Now a week+ and the tea'd roots look better than the healthy control roots. I added it to the other buckets several days ago and now they're bangin'. I gave some to my bonsais and houseplants as well. I got a minifridge that I wasn't using so this tea will definitely be a main stay in my repertoire from here on out. Thanks to everyone involved.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the report! So glad to be trying this tomorrow when my tea is done brewing. he says room temp by the way, I'm around 70 degrees right now, they seem to be doing great.
 
Rahz

Rahz

Well-Known Member
he says room temp by the way
Click to expand...
The OP states 75F, which seems ideal for supporting the beneficial bacteria... but considering lower temps support higher levels of DO I was wondering if the tea would work just as well at lower temps. 65?

I have a chiller and will need it whether I'm running at 65 or 75. I'd like to run closer to 65, but I'm curious if there are drawbacks to that temp when using the tea.
 
grnhrvstr

grnhrvstr

Well-Known Member
Rahz said:
The OP states 75F, which seems ideal for supporting the beneficial bacteria... but considering lower temps support higher levels of DO I was wondering if the tea would work just as well at lower temps. 65?

I have a chiller and will need it whether I'm running at 65 or 75. I'd like to run closer to 65, but I'm curious if there are drawbacks to that temp when using the tea.
Click to expand...
What I got out of it is that temps below the recommended 75 (how much idk) retard the microbes.What this means I am not sure,a shitload of window licking bacteria that rides the short bus?It handled the slime at 66-68 but I caught mine in the first weeks that I put my clone in so attacked it early and now I just add it weekly to avoid any issues.Ive even gone as far to pick up some great white and subculture m & b for extra bennies that I toss in from time to time.
 
tyler.durden

tyler.durden

Well-Known Member
Hey, Heis! Hope all is well. I have recently had the fight of my life with a huge thrip infestation, I won but just barely. One main weapon was using BTI bacteria (in the form of Gnatrol, expensive shit!) in my medium (I do a ebb & flow sog in perlite and rockwool cubes). This obliterated the thrip larvae in addition to spinosad spraying of the plants. The infestation got so bad because I couldn't see these little fuckers, they are super tiny and move very quickly. To me, they are much worse than mites. Anyway, I was about to brew some tea to aid in transplanting the latest batch of clones, and I thought that maybe I'd toss in some gnatrol to add some BTI to the brew. Then I thought that there's so many different types of bacteria competing in the brew, what's the chances of any BTI actually multiplying significantly in all that competition? What are your thoughts about this working? If mixing it into the tea won't work, do you think I could successfully brew a BTI only tea to stretch my supply of gnatrol further? Please advise me tea guru ;)

P.S. Your thread now has 666 likes...
 
Heisenberg

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
gratefulgardner said:
Thank you Heisenberg for everything. I have read most of your forum still working on it. I currently am making your tea with success but I have encountered some slime in my DWC and am wondering at what rate I should add it to my currently sterile 200 gallon system. Is my math correct and it would call for 12 gallons of tea and then a cup every 3 days? What about when I do res changes?
Click to expand...
After the initial dose add 1 cup per 10 gallons, preferably pouring it through each plants netcup. Do the same after res change.

tyler.durden said:
Hey, Heis! Hope all is well. I have recently had the fight of my life with a huge thrip infestation, I won but just barely. One main weapon was using BTI bacteria (in the form of Gnatrol, expensive shit!) in my medium (I do a ebb & flow sog in perlite and rockwool cubes). This obliterated the thrip larvae in addition to spinosad spraying of the plants. The infestation got so bad because I couldn't see these little fuckers, they are super tiny and move very quickly. To me, they are much worse than mites. Anyway, I was about to brew some tea to aid in transplanting the latest batch of clones, and I thought that maybe I'd toss in some gnatrol to add some BTI to the brew. Then I thought that there's so many different types of bacteria competing in the brew, what's the chances of any BTI actually multiplying significantly in all that competition? What are your thoughts about this working? If mixing it into the tea won't work, do you think I could successfully brew a BTI only tea to stretch my supply of gnatrol further? Please advise me tea guru ;)

P.S. Your thread now has 666 likes...
Click to expand...
If you use any of the higher quality microbe mixes chances are you already have a mild dose of BT and/or BTI in your tea. (BTI is more specific and aggressive) For a boost you can add the gnatrol to the tea 1 hour from finish just as we do with mycos. You can also add BTI pretty cheaply with mosquito dunks. (throw them in from the start of brew) It only takes a little chunk to give the tea a boost, or you can add a chunk directly to the res. Dunks act as housing and will continue to release BTI for several weeks, so they can be left in a res over the course of a number of water changes. The dunk material is also attractive to larvae as food which increases the chance of infection.

If you wanted to make a drench for soil just soak a couple of dunks for 24 hours. You can let the dunks dry and use them again.

BT is anaerobic so it does not multiply in the tea. It will remain in spore form until it enters the gut of a host. After the host dies it eventually becomes a fruiting body and will release BT itself. So the best way to multiply BT is to infect larvae!
 
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