DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

That's actually pretty solid advice. That means I do have some play room to deviate from AN's course a bit on things.

I was hoping to run this by someone that might know, but I'm thinking that with the changes to the nutes below (they are all from a chart on AN's website. I'd link it, but I'm not sure of the linking rules yet) I will successfully accommodate my new must-have tea into things. I'm assuming just ditch all microbe products, but I wanted to be certain.

(green = keeping, red = ditching, orange = undecided)

Veg Cycle:
Sensi Grow A + B
B-52 (though I'm nervous about this one after reading through 140 pages now)
Voodoo Juice (taking this out because I think the tea will do the same thing, but better)
Carbo Load (adding in place of voodoo juice, same amount as voodoo juice so my PPM's stay the same)

Bloom Cycle:
Connoiseur A + B
Voodoo Juice (ditching in lieu of the tea)
Big Bud
B-52 (same issue as above)
Overdrive
Piranha (ditching in lieu of the tea)
Bud Candy
Final Phase (ditching this because a week of water works just as well I think, never planned on using it actually)
Tarantula (ditching in lieu of the tea)
Sensizym (ditching in lieu of the tea)
Nirvana (ditching in lieu of the tea)
Bud Ignitor
Rhino Skin
Bud Factor X

I'm pretty sure that this is going to be okay, but I couldn't find specific info on AN's line of nutes and their relationship with this tea and wanted to be certain.

I'm also still wondering if using the carbo load in my veg tank will be a bad idea in terms of feeding the bad slime.

After reading through this thread as much as I have, I'm oddly confident that I'll never have a problem with slime again and my first batch of HeisenTea isn't even done brewing yet! Thanks for all your hard work around this, Sir Heister (and everyone else who has helped him in this thread, there's a lot of you guys)!

EDIT: Looking at that list, this tea replaces a very large portion of that whole line, lol. Sorry, that just struck me as marvelous.

Well, the trigger has been pulled. Reached my tea's 48th brewing hour at 10 AM this morning and changed out all the tanks with fresh distilled water, added tea, let sit for 10 minutes, and added nutes according to the chart above and AN's PH perfect chart.

The tea didn't start developing that famous froth until about 36 hours in. The earthy smell was faint, but present. But, like Heis said, if it doesn't stink it's probably fine. Here's to the road to recovery!

Day 2, and the roots that were beautiful white after the 3% h2o2 sterilize are now brown. However, I see some massive roots shooting out of the net pot. Big beautiful white ones. The older roots just keep looking worse and worse though. And they are getting a brown buildup on them. After reading through now 176 pages, I know this is fairly common. So, I'm not too panicked about it.

I do have one question for anyone though:

Would it be too much of a shock for me to just cut off all the bad roots since there's very obviously new and rampant root growth? The babies are only 5 weeks old at this point.

Does this tea work with roots excel? Also is there anyone using this tea that also uses heavy 16 nutrients. I'm running the Titan controls Oceanus 1 ebb and grow which is a bucket ebb and flow system. Wondering if anyone can tell me what bloom additives work best with the tea.

GreenDyl said:

Does this tea work with roots excel? Also is there anyone using this tea that also uses heavy 16 nutrients. I'm running the Titan controls Oceanus 1 ebb and grow which is a bucket ebb and flow system. Wondering if anyone can tell me what bloom additives work best with the tea.

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I do believe I've read earlier in the thread about roots excel not being good if you are trying to heal a sick tank, but if you have slime under control and everything is fine you can use a bit. I could be wrong, but I believe that's what I remember seeing.

As for bloom nutes, just look at the list I posted above. Nobody has said anything bad about it, and so far (week 1) my bloom plants are loving it (doing a 12/12 from seedling experiment with three plants). They are AN nutes, and some have even cautioned against using AN nutes period, but that's what I have and it appears to be going alright so far. Just trying to help tho, I'm not master grower yet. Hope you find your solution.

From my experience, dutch master zone is a great product for keeping your root zone clean. I've tried everything and in my opinion DWC really needs a chiller and some zone to thrive. I haven't tried bennies since installing my chiller and would curious what results would be with a constant res temp of 65.

Hitek said:

From my experience, dutch master zone is a great product for keeping your root zone clean. I've tried everything and in my opinion DWC really needs a chiller and some zone to thrive. I haven't tried bennies since installing my chiller and would curious what results would be with a constant res temp of 65.

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Again, just based off what I read, the bennies favor mid to upper 70's, 80 degrees being the limit on heat. I think the lower temps work fine as long as slime isn't present. Something about the good bennies not being able to thrive as well in a cooler environment, despite DO levels. And I believe the slime can hit, survive, and thrive in a cooler environment than the bennies can.

I think you may have it backwards, bennies survive at cooler temps and bads form at higher temps, from my experience this has been the case as well, correct me again if i'm wrong, any sources for this information?

Indeed. A definitive answer may be necessary. Reading through 200 pages may have a tendency to get one backwards.

Ickyness said:

Indeed. A definitive answer may be necessary. Reading through 200 pages may have a tendency to get one backwards.

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The best temp for bennies is 70-75, zone is a good product but not really something in my budget considering I change 4 55 gallon rezes every week. Also zone doesn't work for shit against the slime. Icky, I ran the exact same line you are using now and it worked really good. The only problem for me was the slime hit me about 2nd week of flower and I didn't find a cure till about week five. Needless to say my roots were fucked, although the bud still turned out dank.

Hitek said:

I think you may have it backwards, bennies survive at cooler temps and bads form at higher temps, from my experience this has been the case as well, correct me again if i'm wrong, any sources for this information?

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The brown slime algae doesn't care about Rez temps. The reason a perfect Rez temp is around 68 is because anything under 72 exponentially retards bacterial reproduction. Anything below 65 IMO is going to slow plants down. My Rez got to 49F one time and my plants turned super purple and stopped growing.

I'll push my water temps up to around 68 tonight. Brown slime algae needs light though right? as long as things are light tight then things should be good on that?

No it doesn't need light or oxygen.

Alright, update time!

The new root growth on my babies is phenomenal! went down to 75% strength on the nutes, and I feel like I could have gone full strength and everything would have been fine. So far, this tea is amazing stuff man.

Malevolence said:

No it doesn't need light or oxygen.

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Well, best to know the enemy. It is genus Pythium. It was thought to be a fungi until very recently.

And this is somewhat correct what you say, but the details are different.

Oxygen is a poison to Pythium. So, increased O2 is our tool.

Pythium is indifferent to light, but algae isn't. Algae eat the O2 out of the water, however. So, the water must be dark.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=s0100-54052006000400001&script=sci_arttext

It is likely that other environmental stressors or stress conditions, such as low intensity light and low concentration of dissolved oxygen in the nutrient solution also predispose plants to Pythium root rot. Chérif et al. (14) found that Pythium F colonized roots of hydroponically-grown tomatoes more extensively when concentration of dissolved oxygen was moderate (5.8-7.0%) or low (0.8-1.5%), than at high levels (11-14%)

We know that low temp and High O2 is good. Also, stress factors contribute like not enough light or banging the air temp, over feeding, etc.

And it looks like one plant can attack the next, which we know, but the way it does it by softening up the others with a chemical byproduct. So quick isolation is possible.

This finding suggested that phenolics escaping from diseased roots might predispose downstream healthy plants to attack by Pythium. Collectively, the studies demonstrated that high temperature and phenolic compounds predisposed the plants to root rot.

In our experience, roots of hydroponic peppers and chrysanthemums can be extensively colonized by P. aphanidermatum or P. dissotocum but remain almost symptomless at 16 to 18ºC, yet develop severe symptoms within minutes or hours when the temperature is raised to 24-28ºC (N. Owen-Going, W. Liu & J.C. Sutton, unpublished). Temperature also differentially affects other stages of Pythium infection cycles such as the production, dispersal and germination of zoospores, oospore germination, and infection processes (61). The progress curves of root browning represent integrated effects, both direct and indirect, of temperature on the pathogens and their interactions with the roots.

And here is why we brew tea.


Hydroponic systems are often extraordinarily conducive to root rot epidemics in part because the root zones lack communities of microbes that can effectively antagonize pathogenic species of Pythium associated with the roots, rooting media, and nutrient solution. In contrast to microbial communities in natural soils, microbial diversity and density in hydroponic systems are frequently low.

Doer said:

Well, best to know the enemy. It is genus Pythium. It was thought to be a fungi until very recently.

And this is somewhat correct what you say, but the details are different.

Oxygen is a poison to Pythium. So, increased O2 is our tool.

Pythium is indifferent to light, but algae isn't. Algae eat the O2 out of the water, however. So, the water must be dark.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=s0100-54052006000400001&script=sci_arttext

It is likely that other environmental stressors or stress conditions, such as low intensity light and low concentration of dissolved oxygen in the nutrient solution also predispose plants to Pythium root rot. Chérif et al. (14) found that Pythium F colonized roots of hydroponically-grown tomatoes more extensively when concentration of dissolved oxygen was moderate (5.8-7.0%) or low (0.8-1.5%), than at high levels (11-14%)

We know that low temp and High O2 is good. Also, stress factors contribute like not enough light or banging the air temp, over feeding, etc.

And it looks like one plant can attack the next, which we know, but the way it does it by softening up the others with a chemical byproduct. So quick isolation is possible.

This finding suggested that phenolics escaping from diseased roots might predispose downstream healthy plants to attack by Pythium. Collectively, the studies demonstrated that high temperature and phenolic compounds predisposed the plants to root rot.

In our experience, roots of hydroponic peppers and chrysanthemums can be extensively colonized by P. aphanidermatum or P. dissotocum but remain almost symptomless at 16 to 18ºC, yet develop severe symptoms within minutes or hours when the temperature is raised to 24-28ºC (N. Owen-Going, W. Liu & J.C. Sutton, unpublished). Temperature also differentially affects other stages of Pythium infection cycles such as the production, dispersal and germination of zoospores, oospore germination, and infection processes (61). The progress curves of root browning represent integrated effects, both direct and indirect, of temperature on the pathogens and their interactions with the roots.

And here is why we brew tea.


Hydroponic systems are often extraordinarily conducive to root rot epidemics in part because the root zones lack communities of microbes that can effectively antagonize pathogenic species of Pythium associated with the roots, rooting media, and nutrient solution. In contrast to microbial communities in natural soils, microbial diversity and density in hydroponic systems are frequently low.

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Were talking about algae here mostly, not root rot. If you have the algae it is my understanding that the algae slimes up the roots and then that's when the rot sets in because no oxygen can get to the roots. The bennies in the tea take the place where the slime would go on the roots and have a symbiotic relationship with the plants where the bennies defend the roots in return for food from the roots. Idk just how I think it works. All I know is that the tea works real well

No, we are not taking about green algae at all in this thread, except that it steals the O2 we are trying to introduce to combat the Pythium.

There is nothing harmful about algae, but that, as I understand it. And that is easy to solve.

No light in the pond.

Hey guys, I have read through this entire thread trying to battle my pyth problem and I think it has been working but I'm having a few issues maybe you guys (or the great heisenberg) could help out with.

I am currently running a recirculating DWC with 48 5-gal buckets as plant sites. Had a bad case of pythium which turned all my roots into snot, I scrapped that crap and started fresh with new clones. Starting using the tea on the first page and had phenomenal results, roots started growing instantly, plants starting pointing up and looking super healthy. This went on for 3 weeks of veg, plants are now 1 foot tall and bushy (see pics). Now however the plants started to look less healthy and the roots stopped being hairy and thick like noodles and started looking more dark and thin. The decline in root healthy happened after a reservoir change. Nothing different in this res, just A and B base nutes, brewed tea, and CalMag. No snot on the roots yet but I'm see some foam around the roots and a bit of staining. Plants are still growing for now, roots are not growing though, which concerns me.

My tea recipe is as follows:
Per 5 gallons of RO water-
30ml molasses
1tsp mycrogrow
150ml aquashield
1tbsp ZHO
500ml Ancient forest

I have been adding at the recommended rate of 1 cup/gal and I have also been inoculating every week with every res change. The tea smells nice and fresh and has some snotty chunks floating in it, which I assume is fungus. I filter it through a mesh before pouring into my res. I have attached pics of the roots and plants. Thanks for any replies! I really do need some help asap though

wow! 48 buckets. I have 6 down from 12 and they still leak a bit. How did you connect them? I used Uniseals. OK, till the bucket gets shoved out line doing maintenance.

The pics.....I can't tell need regular light and flash for true color. I have found with buckets, circulation in the bucket means uneven feeding for the larger root masses. I've put divert vanes at the input side in each bucket to cause a swirl in the water.

Hope it works out. I just lost the chiller motherboard. Under warranty, but at least a week for the part. Res was 81 this AM before ice.

All Hail, Res Tea!

A couple of other things I have dialed in for root heath.

- Rhyzotonic, foliar spray adds the auxins to promote roots
- Excelurator, all of veg and 1/2 of bloom (low dose)

I start harden clones on just that, and I add a little r-tonic to the pond for the first two weeks.

I have it all in a spreadsheet now. Highly recommended.