DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Gifted0ne

Member
pondzyme does the same thing the tea does but no brewing needed .
god what bad info that is lol. enzymes become a catalyst to slime when roots aren't inoculated. and its doesnt fight the problem it just eats away the roots that die which will continue to happen, doesnt seem like a great idea to me.
 

Malevolence

New Member
pondzyme is barley and 5 species of bacteria. The only 'zyme' is in the name unless barley has enzymes in it which I did not know. Regardless, it works well in my system and that is real life; not mere theory from someone who has never used it. With any product or solution you will always get someone that says it didn't work for them. For prevention, it is fine for most people. If I had a serious case of slime I would use something more diverse like the tea... but I have never been slimed so hard that I couldn't defeat it by changing/clean the res and washing/sterilizing the roots with tap water and a bucket of bleach water... then adding pondzyme and/or aquashield in some cases.

I prefer aquashield but since I moved to a 100 gallon system I don't want to pay the money. I have all the ingredients to bubble a bucket of tea right now, but I never do.
 

drgonzo65

New Member
Way back in this thread it said to add the tea into the nutes solution. Now we're saying that the tea is put into plain water first and then nutes are added 12 hours later. Am I then to assume that we need to pre-dilute our "A" and "B" in either plain RO water or populated rez water and then add that into the rez so we dont kill the bennys ?.

I made a batch of tea and Im going to add in my grodan 5.6 blocks into the tea and let the blocks soak for 24 or more hours to let the bennys colonize in the blocks and then put my clones into the blocks right at the 48 hour sweet spot then after that I'm going to put the blocked clones into the NFT troughs to veg. I made a second batch of tea to use for the NFT veg rez solution and for re-population.

I think at this point we need to re-summarize the ingredient's and how we properly make tea along with how to properly add in nutes for a fresh batch of new starts and what to do in the event that your adding the tea in an already infected root situation. The way things are now and what we have learned is very different from what was stated at the beginning of this thread. That way, We all agree on the proper way to do things so we can all be on the same page for future discussions.
 

Gifted0ne

Member
pondzyme is barley and 5 species of bacteria. The only 'zyme' is in the name unless barley has enzymes in it which I did not know. Regardless, it works well in my system and that is real life; not mere theory from someone who has never used it. With any product or solution you will always get someone that says it didn't work for them. For prevention, it is fine for most people. If I had a serious case of slime I would use something more diverse like the tea... but I have never been slimed so hard that I couldn't defeat it by changing/clean the res and washing/sterilizing the roots with tap water and a bucket of bleach water... then adding pondzyme and/or aquashield in some cases.

I prefer aquashield but since I moved to a 100 gallon system I don't want to pay the money. I have all the ingredients to bubble a bucket of tea right now, but I never do.
You've never had a serious case of slime or pythium before then. The products people use as a preventative would not doing anything for someone with root problems.. also preventatives wont always actually prevent slime or pythium so i prefer to use what treats it as a preventative instead. its cheaper too.
 

zzzzzzzzztop

New Member
I brew my tea using the mycogrow soluble from that fungi perfecti site, plain earthworm castings, and plain sugar and my tea always has lots of stuff floating in it that looks just like algae, although i notice there is no slimey-ness the tea. Is this good bacteria floating around in large masses or is this not supposed to show up.
 

chasmtz

Active Member
Giftedone- I dont think you know what you are talking about. Rapid start and silica are amazing. My growth is absolutely insane. My temps are fantastic. Just cause you cant get your temps lower doesn't mean that I have to be up near 80. Cant fathom why you would think rapid start and silica produce bad results. As soon as I introduced rapid start to my system, I had explosive root growth. Thanks for the reply "Giftedone" but down syndrome is not they type of gifted person I want to listen too.
 

Malevolence

New Member
You've never had a serious case of slime or pythium before then. The products people use as a preventative would not doing anything for someone with root problems.. also preventatives wont always actually prevent slime or pythium so i prefer to use what treats it as a preventative instead. its cheaper too.
The tea is not cheaper or if it is you are seriously talking fractions of a cent. Pondyme is $15 and treats a few thousand gallons of water. Factor in the electricty and time to bubble a bucket and you save nothing. I can't really address the first part since I have never let slime bloom for several days and get that bad while I sit there and do nothing about it... as a general rule of thumb I usually try not to give advice about shit I have never tried or have experience with.
 

Malevolence

New Member
I brew my tea using the mycogrow soluble from that fungi perfecti site, plain earthworm castings, and plain sugar and my tea always has lots of stuff floating in it that looks just like algae, although i notice there is no slimey-ness the tea. Is this good bacteria floating around in large masses or is this not supposed to show up.
The ewc will leave behind stuff that is why some people strain the tea with panty hose. It shouldn't be harmful though if you made the tea right.
 

Gifted0ne

Member
Giftedone- I dont think you know what you are talking about. Rapid start and silica are amazing. My growth is absolutely insane. My temps are fantastic. Just cause you cant get your temps lower doesn't mean that I have to be up near 80. Cant fathom why you would think rapid start and silica produce bad results. As soon as I introduced rapid start to my system, I had explosive root growth. Thanks for the reply "Giftedone" but down syndrome is not they type of gifted person I want to listen too.
I never said rapid start was a bad product moron, i said you do not use rapid start with the tea or any organics for that matter. I have rapid start and its an amazing product but it causes pythium in dwc for a lot of people and with microbe tea its a huge mess. silica is another good product but with proper plant health its not needed. rapid start is good for cloning other then that it's for people that cant grow perfectly healthy plants, just like silica it helps weaker plants. I used silica until i got healthy plants now my plants are stronger without it.

Roots thrive in 72-76 degree's read a fkin book, water in the 60's in not only too cold for the roots but its also not necessary in dwc.
 

hydrolyzed

Active Member
Can't we all just get along? :mrgreen:

I have found through all my research from various forums, grow shops and the only trusted form of knowledge, my own personal experience, that in this hobby, what works wonders for one, might be a horrible no-go for another. This is especially apparent when dealing with things like bacteria like we are where there are so many different types and sub types and certain strains that have resistance to certain things etc.

I've learned that first hand dealing with the slime...first it was the "pool shock" guys saying NOTHING worked before they tried pool shock then everything went away. Tried pool shock, even the horribly overpriced version (UC Roots), did nothing but make the slime angry. Then tried the "nuclear solution" (Physan 20). I read countless threads of people saying how it was the ONLY thing that worked after EVERYTHING ELSE failed. Tried it, and again, just made the slime mad and also the plants. Heard about how UV sterilizing your feed water would help along with a sterilizing agent like the above mentioned ones, and that's the ONLY THING that worked when EVERYTHING ELSE failed, "just get one and you'll be golden!"...tried that, made the slime less, but still there and still suffocating my plants.

Anyone see a pattern above? Almost every thread has it's fanboys for the method being talked about and all you read is "its the ONLY thing that worked when EVERYTHING else failed"....funny when you read the threads back to back since one is usually saying all the others failed, then click to next forum/method and that one is saying the one before failed and IT is the ONLY one that will work....and so on until you have exhausted all the methods! I hated getting all excited reading about how this is or that was the GOLDEN TICKET to combat the slime, but failure after failure I started learning to not get my hopes up so fast just based on internet green thumbs opinions and isolated experiences without empirical evidence.

I finally found a solution that had zero mentions of failure, the Erythromycin antibacteria treatment using fish health products. I tried it on some almost dead plants in a 100 gallon RDWC and yes, it killed all the slime within 4 days and tons of new roots are growing out. So, I killed the plants. Threw them out. Yes it killed my slime, but I'm producing a medical product here, I'm not going to give my patients medicine with unknown amounts of an ABX in it! I searched for days about whether Erythromycin is systemic and whether it was absorbed by the plants and stored in the foliage but couldn't find any hard evidence. So the mycin does work 100% but what's the point if you can't use it with the plants? I tried running it in an empty system that had bad slime, did the whole 5 day treatment, cleaned it out really good, rinsed well, and tried a new batch with just water, low nutes and chlorine, and the slime was back within a day, so the ABX treatment apparently only works when you use it constantly, with the plants in the system, from clone to harvest. Not something I would do.

So after all that frustration and months of head scratching I found this thread. I did my normal scoping out, comparing the number of "it didn't work" posts to the number of "it worked great" posts and it seems to be a pretty good ratio. A lot of the "it didn't work" posts also seemed to come from an error in either the ingredients, brewing, or use of the tea also. The posts about the tea being brewed perfectly and causing the slime to get worse to scare me though.


I'm going to give the tea a try tonight, been brewing a batch for 48 hours and I have a few noob questions.

I saw this mentioned before but nobody elaborated. It was said that the amounts needed are NOT linear as you go up in batch size. Meaning, since the simplified recipe says you need 1/8th cup of AF, 1tsp of Mycogrow, and 0.5 Tbls molasses for each gallon, you do NOT want to use whatever gallons your making x those numbers. I understand the concept since your causing whatever you add to multiply, but what are the amounts then, for bigger batches?

I currently have 3 120 gallon systems that are slimed, so using the 1 cup per gallon rate, I need 7.5 gallons per system for the initial dose...a lot more than the 2 gallons HB makes in the tutorial. Also, the measurements being thrown around seem to be shot from the hip at best "about a handful" of AF....."about a half scoop of this" etc. The method I used was in that newer "EWC TEA Simplified" thread that is supposed to be a condensed version of this. It called for only an 1/8th cup of AF per gallon, much less than original 1/2-1 cup that HB said he uses, and much less molasses too, compared to the original 1/2 TABLEspoon per gallon.

I just went with the simplified directions for the trial run, 8 gallons of UV sterilized RO water, 1 cup of AF total, 8 Tsp Mycogrow Soluble, and 4 Tbsp molasses. Dumped into a 18 gallon tote with 2 12" air stones and a 80w pump with a heater set to 72F. (water was low 50s to start, waited till it got to 70 to add ingredients.

All seems fine, good foam, good smell, but my question is, do I really need that much Mycogrow per gallon with bigger batches? Gets pretty darn expensive. I know I'll only be making the big batches a few times since I'll stop using the "fix a problem" rates and go down to the 1 cup per 10 gallons amount, but I'm still going to be making batches of 20 gallons at a time for awhile....maybe use half the amounts? 3/4? Shooting in the dark here :)

Also not sure if this was asked, probably was, but what is stopping us from just mixing up a new batch of water/molasses, and just inculating it with a few cups of 2-3 day old tea to start the new batch?

Also, I read in the more recent posts that bigger systems require less tea, is that even for the "fix a problem" rates? I have the 120 gallon systems and also a 250 gallon large system, all RDWC, so if I could be using less that would be nice!
 

Meanyaf

Active Member
Hey hydrolyzed I just wanna say I had 6 plants with terrible root rot I believe due to the slime smothered roots I had almost no roots on 2 of the plants just like few large stubs in water some in pots I had started using aquashield and hygrozyme with some results then I ran this tea ten days ago now have incredible amount of roots and there all incredibly white you would not believe I had root problems ever I did nurse them a lot more then most I used turkey baster inoculated net pots every few hours I also changed mix a bit due to no myco I used ancient forest humus mix ,EwC ,great white , aquashield with and grandmas molasses brewed 48 added next day I had worse slime as the aquau seemed to have been working but after tea it got worse but I stayed course trusting heisenberg was the man and after like 36 hours I started seeing incredible root growth thru slime and out of pots then slowly slime was disappearing now gone perfect white roots don't be scared this works.


Oh and p.s. I did tea wrong I added tea with nutes but very weak and it still worked but I believe that it probably woulda worked faster and I might not had worse slime that first 24 if I had run tea first 12 hours no nutes then feed

heisenberg tea saved my baby's I was ready to cry no lie thanks everyone merry Xmas
 

zzzzzzzzztop

New Member
The ewc will leave behind stuff that is why some people strain the tea with panty hose. It shouldn't be harmful though if you made the tea right.
I did put my castings into a sock before putting them in the bucket, would that still occur? Kinda freaking me out because it looks so much like the brown slime "algae" that appears in a serious slime case. About to sterilize and innoculate and start over with my new tea and this is worrying me.
 

zzzzzzzzztop

New Member
Mine is same I believe floaters is bacteria or waste I have in res and buckets don't worry this works
ahh alright good thank you i have another question

, when you are innoculating your new fresh res with tea for 12 hours before adding nutes (with an airstone and everything), are you supposed to have the plant in the fresh res/tea mixture for those 12 hours and then add nutes? Or do you leave the plant out for those 12 hours of innoculating?



I started sterilizing my plant root base in h2o2 solution AND at the same time,i innoculated my 2 gallons of fresh RO reservoir water with 2.5 cups of the tea, and airstone aerating it. Was I supposed to put the roots in soon as I innoculated my fresh res? And will anything bad happen if I was but didnt as stated above?
 

chasmtz

Active Member
After adding fresh brewed tea to my RDWC system, I noticed an improvement in the root zone. Brown build up is still there but it seems like the roots are whiter overall. I am also seeing furry new roots
 

Meanyaf

Active Member
Well I did it wrong I added tea with nutes and it worked but I believe that adding tea first with no nutes this gives slime nothing to eat that's my 2 cents . I also wanna say that when I first added tea I had worse slime first 24 hour period then 36 hours I had new root hairs coming thru slime then slowly the slime disappeared now I have no slime at all and roots are now reaching bottom of bucket perfectly clean in a matter of 6 days . I also wanna comment on hygrozyme before I started with this tea I had started using Hygrozyme with Aquashield and it was cleaning up the slime but nothing like the tea I now use only tea from my understanding that bacteria in the slime turns into an enzyme as it ends it's cycle and dies so I don't use it anymore more 2 cents laugh out loud
 

sprechenz

Member
Can't we all just get along? :mrgreen:

I have found through all my research from various forums, grow shops and the only trusted form of knowledge, my own personal experience, that in this hobby, what works wonders for one, might be a horrible no-go for another. This is especially apparent when dealing with things like bacteria like we are where there are so many different types and sub types and certain strains that have resistance to certain things etc.

I've learned that first hand dealing with the slime...first it was the "pool shock" guys saying NOTHING worked before they tried pool shock then everything went away. Tried pool shock, even the horribly overpriced version (UC Roots), did nothing but make the slime angry. Then tried the "nuclear solution" (Physan 20). I read countless threads of people saying how it was the ONLY thing that worked after EVERYTHING ELSE failed. Tried it, and again, just made the slime mad and also the plants. Heard about how UV sterilizing your feed water would help along with a sterilizing agent like the above mentioned ones, and that's the ONLY THING that worked when EVERYTHING ELSE failed, "just get one and you'll be golden!"...tried that, made the slime less, but still there and still suffocating my plants.

Anyone see a pattern above? Almost every thread has it's fanboys for the method being talked about and all you read is "its the ONLY thing that worked when EVERYTHING else failed"....funny when you read the threads back to back since one is usually saying all the others failed, then click to next forum/method and that one is saying the one before failed and IT is the ONLY one that will work....and so on until you have exhausted all the methods! I hated getting all excited reading about how this is or that was the GOLDEN TICKET to combat the slime, but failure after failure I started learning to not get my hopes up so fast just based on internet green thumbs opinions and isolated experiences without empirical evidence.

I finally found a solution that had zero mentions of failure, the Erythromycin antibacteria treatment using fish health products. I tried it on some almost dead plants in a 100 gallon RDWC and yes, it killed all the slime within 4 days and tons of new roots are growing out. So, I killed the plants. Threw them out. Yes it killed my slime, but I'm producing a medical product here, I'm not going to give my patients medicine with unknown amounts of an ABX in it! I searched for days about whether Erythromycin is systemic and whether it was absorbed by the plants and stored in the foliage but couldn't find any hard evidence. So the mycin does work 100% but what's the point if you can't use it with the plants? I tried running it in an empty system that had bad slime, did the whole 5 day treatment, cleaned it out really good, rinsed well, and tried a new batch with just water, low nutes and chlorine, and the slime was back within a day, so the ABX treatment apparently only works when you use it constantly, with the plants in the system, from clone to harvest. Not something I would do.

So after all that frustration and months of head scratching I found this thread. I did my normal scoping out, comparing the number of "it didn't work" posts to the number of "it worked great" posts and it seems to be a pretty good ratio. A lot of the "it didn't work" posts also seemed to come from an error in either the ingredients, brewing, or use of the tea also. The posts about the tea being brewed perfectly and causing the slime to get worse to scare me though.


I'm going to give the tea a try tonight, been brewing a batch for 48 hours and I have a few noob questions.

I saw this mentioned before but nobody elaborated. It was said that the amounts needed are NOT linear as you go up in batch size. Meaning, since the simplified recipe says you need 1/8th cup of AF, 1tsp of Mycogrow, and 0.5 Tbls molasses for each gallon, you do NOT want to use whatever gallons your making x those numbers. I understand the concept since your causing whatever you add to multiply, but what are the amounts then, for bigger batches?

I currently have 3 120 gallon systems that are slimed, so using the 1 cup per gallon rate, I need 7.5 gallons per system for the initial dose...a lot more than the 2 gallons HB makes in the tutorial. Also, the measurements being thrown around seem to be shot from the hip at best "about a handful" of AF....."about a half scoop of this" etc. The method I used was in that newer "EWC TEA Simplified" thread that is supposed to be a condensed version of this. It called for only an 1/8th cup of AF per gallon, much less than original 1/2-1 cup that HB said he uses, and much less molasses too, compared to the original 1/2 TABLEspoon per gallon.

I just went with the simplified directions for the trial run, 8 gallons of UV sterilized RO water, 1 cup of AF total, 8 Tsp Mycogrow Soluble, and 4 Tbsp molasses. Dumped into a 18 gallon tote with 2 12" air stones and a 80w pump with a heater set to 72F. (water was low 50s to start, waited till it got to 70 to add ingredients.

All seems fine, good foam, good smell, but my question is, do I really need that much Mycogrow per gallon with bigger batches? Gets pretty darn expensive. I know I'll only be making the big batches a few times since I'll stop using the "fix a problem" rates and go down to the 1 cup per 10 gallons amount, but I'm still going to be making batches of 20 gallons at a time for awhile....maybe use half the amounts? 3/4? Shooting in the dark here :)

Also not sure if this was asked, probably was, but what is stopping us from just mixing up a new batch of water/molasses, and just inculating it with a few cups of 2-3 day old tea to start the new batch?

Also, I read in the more recent posts that bigger systems require less tea, is that even for the "fix a problem" rates? I have the 120 gallon systems and also a 250 gallon large system, all RDWC, so if I could be using less that would be nice!


Wonderfully said. This has been my observation about posters of the years as well. I was told by Heisenberg about two years ago that I could lower my dosage rate, even for initial "fix rates" to something like 2-4 cups per gallon. But do not take my advice on this someone with more experience should chime in and make that statement.

I do know that the reason you can't just add old tea to water and molases is that the microbes don't continue to live and reproduce. They die off rather quickly and adding more food would just feed the slime. This is why we continually have to add tea every three days. Need a fresh batch of microbes.

I feel your pain in this. I currently just switched to purchasing a 1600 gallon tank, and have municipal water delivered to my location. I am hoping that this will alleviate my problem. It wasn't that the tea didn't work for me, it is just that I don't want to take the risk of it not working, and I don't like the idea of continually having to brew tea and make sure that it is good. To many "might happens" for me. I am not sure that the municipal water thing will work though and then I will be back with the tea.

Please keep me/us informed on your battle, I am always interested in what others are doing and what is working.
 

sprechenz

Member
Hydrolyzed,

If you don't get your question answered just ask again. There are some very knowledgeable people on this forum and they will eventually reply.
 

sprechenz

Member
Can't we all just get along? :mrgreen:

I finally found a solution that had zero mentions of failure, the Erythromycin antibacteria treatment using fish health products. I tried it on some almost dead plants in a 100 gallon RDWC and yes, it killed all the slime within 4 days and tons of new roots are growing out. So, I killed the plants. Threw them out. Yes it killed my slime, but I'm producing a medical product here, I'm not going to give my patients medicine with unknown amounts of an ABX in it! I searched for days about whether Erythromycin is systemic and whether it was absorbed by the plants and stored in the foliage but couldn't find any hard evidence. So the mycin does work 100% but what's the point if you can't use it with the plants? I tried running it in an empty system that had bad slime, did the whole 5 day treatment, cleaned it out really good, rinsed well, and tried a new batch with just water, low nutes and chlorine, and the slime was back within a day, so the ABX treatment apparently only works when you use it constantly, with the plants in the system, from clone to harvest. Not something I would do.
Very curious, how much was it to use the Erythromycin? How did you use it? Did you find any evidence that it was not systemic? Could use it with a grow and have the plant matter tested!
 

zzzzzzzzztop

New Member
Okay so I innoculated my new fresh res and I started sterilizing my slimed plant at the same time. So the plant sterilized in H2o2 solution for 4 hours, then was put into the pure RO water + fresh tea innoculating bucket for 8 hours.

Today I wake up to add nutes to my fresh innoculated res and notice the dark after-slime that heisenberg talks about, so I guess and hope I am on my way to recovery ! :joint::weed::joint: its only been 12 hours since the plants been in the fresh tea'd res and the after slime has already appeared so I hope that is a good sign that im doing something right. This cyanobacteria slime shit is probably the most stress inducing hydroponic problem that exists... I have thrown money on all sorts of things and products to try and solve why my pH just kept climbing and climbing and why my plants grow and drink so slowly.



Now I wait, and hopefully within 24hours I will see some new roots!
 
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