DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Hey all,

So about two years ago I encountered the "slime" in my UC12xl 12 site. I used the tea a few times with pretty good results. My results with the tea were not 100% but this could have easily have been some user error. For the last two years I moved around between soil and ebb and flow. 3 months ago I came back to my UC. I started out using chlorinated water to try and hold the slime at bay. As everyone here probably knows, this was a fail. I then, at the suggestion of Daniel from CCh20, tried just 2 cups of EWC disolved in 4 gallons of H20 for a few minutes, then strained, and added to the system at 1 cup per gallon of nutrient water every 7 days. This seemed to be the magical cure. The slime went away and hasn't come back for 3 months. Fantastic white roots started to form and the plants started to grow like they should in a RDWC system. I was overjoyed. Until, the plants started to show signs of nutrient deficiencies and lack of vigor and growth. The strange thing was that they would do this in cycles. One week they would look great and grow vigorously and the next they would just sit still. Finally 3 of the biggest plants out of 24 just wilted and died in about a three day period. Their roots look sick but not full of the slime like I had before. They look more like they just have a little Pyth. the other 21 plants are just standing still. They are barely using any water at all and barely showing any signs of growth. They are 3 weeks into bloom. I started brewing the Heisenburg tea 24 hours ago and am about to start on this again.

I am also about to start rhizotonic in my ex cloner. I've had cuttings in it for 2 weeks and they have about half the amount of root size that I would expect after this amount of time. Short 1/4 inch to 1 inch roots with barely any branching or fish boning. The ez cloner temps were at 82 for the first week and since hav lowered them to 77.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Its looking like were going to have to take RO water and boil it and then add it to a sterilized EZ Clone cloner and let it cool to room temp before adding in clones. Do exactly what Heisenberg says and add in 10ml of rhizotonic per gallon to the cloner and at the first signs of white roots add in 2 cups of tea filtered through a white t-shirt or similar material. Im thinking paint strainers or cheese cloth. This bug is highly adaptive and can survive extremely harsh conditions. It knows how to protect itself anytime an anti fungal is added in to kill or reduce its numbers by creating some sort of block in the base of the stem and then it retreats into the fan leaves and causes dark purple stems where it hides until it either kills the fan leaves or the anti fungal is removed where it then goes back down the main stem ...through the roots and back into your res to re-populate itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EBEV81gIBY

Aquarium bacteria seems to work well...

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Does anyone know why the tea starts to smell bad after a week or so? I know this means the tea isnt good anymore but im just wondering whats happening biologicaly if yal know what i mean

I have a question for all you.

I have currently contracted root rot. I am about to lose this crop. I will start over and fix this with the tea.

I have an Under current RDWC system. Holds about 120 gallons of H2o with the water touching the bottom of the net pots.

There are 12 plants in the system each one in a 12 gallon pot. Each one has an airstone under it. There is also an air diffuser in the control bucket.

The control bucket also has a waterfall effect as the pump returns water to it.

The air pumps provided with the system are as follows.

Alita al80 which is a 85 watt pump that runs the 12 air stones

Alita 15a which is a 26 watt pump that runs the controller diffuser.

This is only 111 watts of pump for 120+ gallons of water. I have read that you want at least 1 watt per gallon. Because I am in Colorado and running the tea in the water could this low amount of watts per gallon be giving me my root rot problem?

thanks for the post. have been struggling with cloning and looking for a new process. I believe I have everything needed also. also enjoyed the brown slime fix.

Hey sprechenz... you should be able to save the crop but they will have to grow new roots. First thing first is to make sure you aren't killing the bennies. If you are using tap water, you really need to detoxify it... I know a lot of people don't and have no issues, but the chloramines and heavy metals will kill your bennies or at least make them much less effective. I use API tap water conditioner from petco or petsmart. It's cheap and 15ml once at res change should condition your whole 120 gallon system. If you are using R/O or something then this isn't the problem..

I have brewed the tea a few times; I have all the stuff to bubble up a bucket right now if I felt like it, but like you I have had mixed results with it... probably from using too much of this or not enough of that; who knows? I just use Aquashield and Pond-Zyme now. Since you are already bubbling some you might as well use it.

Here is my process when I get slimed or root rot. Pull the plants out and put them somewhere safe and drain the res, clean with hot mild bleach water. Run plain tap water over the roots in the bathtub or something and use your fingers to get as much brown shit as possible out. A lot of the roots are probably dead and will pull off at this stage, don't be afraid to man handle them a bit, but you know... be kinda gentle too. They are going to have to grow new roots so don't sweat it too much. It's a pretty simple process just rinse them out best you can. If you want to be extra cautious, set up a 5 gallon bucket of mild bleach water... I use 'a splash' of bleach... and dunk the root ball a few times. You want to make sure most of the pathogens and shit are dead.

Next all you have to do is re-fill the res and don't forget to use the tap water conditioner before you mix up nutes and add bennies. For bennies, you can use the tea, but I would normally use straight pond-zyme at this point. It's $15 for a 1 pound tub a petco or petsmart and treats thousands of gallons of water, you're talking toss in a half scoop once a week and that's all the bennies you need to fuck with.

After you clean the res, wash the roots, and mix up a new res with new bennies, it's going to take a good week to get a new rootball going and your plants are going to get worse; you can mitigate this a little with foliar feeding the nutes but don't get too fancy.

I will probably get shit, but no one else was helping you and this is how I have successfully treated root rot multiple times and I have never lost a plant.

http://www.petco.com/product/2706/API-PondCare-Pond-Zyme-with-Barley.aspx

wow ive been off this thread for a while lol.. i will reply to this now... but im guessing that your plants have pulled through and you solved your problem sorry ive been very busy with my own grow.. explosive growth is very hard to control in a closet grow... i gridded out everything again so there are two levels of crisscrossed rods that i can tie onto.. whew this shit is nuts.. ill be harvesting in about 3 or 4 days! weeeeeeeee! lol.. SO!.. update me with everything man! give me the goods.. the action.. the knowledge! looks like some more poor souls have come crawling to the forum as well.. ha.. sorry gus but it's simple.. read Heisenberg's posts and you will be fine.. and mine! if you want... they are pretty accurate. they are all in the past 10 pages i believe..

give me some pics of the plants my man! haha i want to see some bud growth.. and i want some root shots.. you should have big root balls by now!

I agree with malevolence , did the same/similar. ... simply wash gunk off in bucket of H202 and h20 , clean , scrub bucket(dwc), make fresh nutes(sans source of slime) add aquarium bacteria= nice white spider web roots...
Teas seem a bit excessive. .
Pm me if you wish to know the product I use...

insufficient posts to pm Scroga for the info on product used.....anyone know the product name who can reply to this thread post?

hey I got a question I recently transplanted from cocoa into recirculating deep water culture. I flushed the roots very well and got out 98 percent of the cocoa. There are a couple pieces and a few pieces of Coco fibre that are still in the roots. I noticed in my control reservoir little tidbits offloading roots I assume the ones out were damaged during the transplant. I don't have anyancient forest orpure EWC but what I do have is pure strains in powder form of Trichoderma. It's my understanding that track a derma are a biocontrol and also decompose decaying matter, such as those rot bits. so when I rinsed off the roots I didn't use any peroxide for SM 90 or anything else like that. The plant came from Fox Farm ocean forest soil and had been fed compost tea made with ewc. I'm using advanced nutrients pH perfect sensi grow and connoisseur. can I get away with just adding the Trichoderma or do I have to add the OP'S actual recipe to the dwc res. I don't have any root slime or algae or any issues yet. just more of a precautionary

Thanks for the reply Malevolence,

The plants were 3 weeks into bloom, and the RR was just to bad, plants were way to hurt. Had to ditch them.

I use RO water and then DI it so my water is 0 on a ppm meter.

Still seem to be having a problem though, damn it.

I followed Heisenbergs suggestion with the cloner. Clones have roots and I have tea in the cloner, but the roots just don't seem to be doing well. I have used an ez cloner many times and used to have massive roots, all the way into the water after 2+ weeks. Now I have had these clones in the cloner for 4 weeks and they just arent as big as they should be, and the plnats look sick on the top as well. Damn this water issue!!!!!

Just wanted to check.

This is how I brew the tea.

5 gal of water
30 ml of Aquashield
2 handfulls of Ancient forest
2 small scoops of Great white
2 tablespoons of Unsulfered molases
Brew for 46 hours ad 2 small scoops of ZHO
brew 2 more hours.
Add at a ratio of 1 cup per gallon if fighting slime. Or 1 cup per ten gallons for preventative.

Add every 2 to three days.

Just try the aquashield by itself.

Hey everyone I just brewed some of this tea, and I did not sterilize all of my tea-brewing-tools like my bucket, airstone, etc before using them to brew. The equipment did not have visible slime anywhere but I understand that the cyanobacteria is virtually everywhere and impossible to eradicate.




After I brewed, I noticed the airstone had the same brown slime algae on it after it was done brewing, the tea looks normal and there is no slime that I can feel in the bucket, but the airstone had brown slime on it.

Is this tea good to use still? Or do I need to rebrew it using sterilized equipment? Anyone ever have this happen? I would think there would be an abundance of beneficial bacteria in there still, more so than the cyanobacteria but I dont know what will happen if I give it to my plant.

zzzzzzzzztop said:

Hey everyone I just brewed some of this tea, and I did not sterilize all of my tea-brewing-tools like my bucket, airstone, etc before using them to brew. The equipment did not have visible slime anywhere but I understand that the cyanobacteria is virtually everywhere and impossible to eradicate.




After I brewed, I noticed the airstone had the same brown slime algae on it after it was done brewing, the tea looks normal and there is no slime that I can feel in the bucket, but the airstone had brown slime on it.

Is this tea good to use still? Or do I need to rebrew it using sterilized equipment? Anyone ever have this happen? I would think there would be an abundance of beneficial bacteria in there still, more so than the cyanobacteria but I dont know what will happen if I give it to my plant.

Click to expand...

The "slime" you saw on the stone was most likely a collection of microbes. They need something to cling and perch to. The airstone being a 02 source(they love 02) and a perch, since they are being knocked out of the AF into suspension. I am currently doing this in brew bucket and resivore but, It is said that if you put a small piece of sponge or a chip of coco coir, that the fungi and bacteria now have a perch or something to cling to. Don't worry about it. The only thing I can say is follow OP's recipie, don't deviate from it unless you ask about the deviant on here first. Im sure any variation of tea will work if you don't follow the recipie, but then you come back asking "what went wrong?" were gonna tell you that you should have stuck with the OP's advise. I really would like to sit here and type away, however I will advise you to read and re-read the thread. Page 1- 50 should give you plenty of questions answered and examples. But most importantly you will find a shit load of people following the OP's advise and success stories.

I brew my own beer and I use sanitizer call "star san" to clean all my tea buckets an hoses and 400micron bags and I use 35% H202 to clean my stones. Now you can just as easily use H202 to clean everything. And I only use Micro pore air stones made by DEEP WATER INNOVATONS. and have 20L/min @3psi GH Dual Diaphram hydroponic air pump. More bubbles produced= higher surface tension= higher dissolved oxygen levels, and most importantly it creates a turbulence and moves the water.
good luck-

tikitoker said:

hey I got a question I recently transplanted from cocoa into recirculating deep water culture. I flushed the roots very well and got out 98 percent of the cocoa. There are a couple pieces and a few pieces of Coco fibre that are still in the roots. I noticed in my control reservoir little tidbits offloading roots I assume the ones out were damaged during the transplant. I don't have anyancient forest orpure EWC but what I do have is pure strains in powder form of Trichoderma. It's my understanding that track a derma are a biocontrol and also decompose decaying matter, such as those rot bits. so when I rinsed off the roots I didn't use any peroxide for SM 90 or anything else like that. The plant came from Fox Farm ocean forest soil and had been fed compost tea made with ewc. I'm using advanced nutrients pH perfect sensi grow and connoisseur. can I get away with just adding the Trichoderma or do I have to add the OP'S actual recipe to the dwc res. I don't have any root slime or algae or any issues yet. just more of a precautionary

Click to expand...

48 hours later, still Zero SLIME, roots are white and some nutrient stained but looking good. New roots are popping up everywhere now. I cant wait until I put in some tea, should really see some explosive growth then!

I followed the recipe 100%.

I gave the tea to my plant yesterday after letting it the entire root base soak and bubble for 4 hours in an ~7.5ml/gal 35% H2O2 solution.

Today I wake up and find my plant is drooping quite badly. I am guessing that this could just be a side effect of the H2O2 sterilization stress? Anyone ever have this happen? I probably should have used less H2O2.


edit: i see heisenberg also says that the slime is you see on the stone after brewing is good slime, do the bennies love oxygen like the cyanobacteria does?

is there an easy to scan summary of this thread's best facts? i will love you long time if you give me one

zzzzzzzzztop said:

I followed the recipe 100%.

I gave the tea to my plant yesterday after letting it the entire root base soak and bubble for 4 hours in an ~7.5ml/gal 35% H2O2 solution.

Today I wake up and find my plant is drooping quite badly. I am guessing that this could just be a side effect of the H2O2 sterilization stress? Anyone ever have this happen? I probably should have used less H2O2.


edit: i see heisenberg also says that the slime is you see on the stone after brewing is good slime, do the bennies love oxygen like the cyanobacteria does?

is there an easy to scan summary of this thread's best facts? i will love you long time if you give me one

Click to expand...

Did u soak for 4 hrs without O2??

Downinit said:

Did u soak for 4 hrs without O2??

Click to expand...

no, it had an airstone