HELP!! Algae or root rot...lots of pics (posted in plant problems also)

lilmrschronic

Active Member
Hey all, I have 3 Ak47 and 3 og kush clones (they were 7 days old when I got them) that I've had for about ten days. I run dwc and use FF grow big and my biggest problem was my plants were growing the first seven days in a see through light green res and lid, exposing my roots to HPS 400w light 24/7, I'm sure thats why I'm having this dark green algae looking stuff on my roots but I need to get rid of it! We made a new res 3 days ago (black and dark grey) but the roots look worse than they did before! They were light brown before we switched to the new res. Someone told me use h202 and I did an hour ago, but I've been reading about SM-90 and am thinking this will help. I'm thinking in the morning I will get some of this sm90, clean my res really good and rinse off the roots and net pots also (the hydroton in the pots are yucky too) and put new water in. I don't want to shock these babies too much, but I will do anything to fix this! Help!!! Any advice is appreciated =)
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Badbackguy

Well-Known Member
I’d clean out that res as best as you can a.s.a.p.. There are 2 products that I would highly recommend.. They would be instead of that hydrogen peroxide…
1: Hygrozyme... It cleans the medium and helps prevent disease. Used throughout the entire grow—except during flushing.

2 Roots Excelurator.. Yes its expensive, but I ve seen that stuff bring plants back to great health in record time, starting with the root system… Pricey, you bet ya, but it does wonders to make a plants root system thrive. Used only in veg

Now lets talk for a moment about your res conditions. Are you cooling it (res temps)? Do you have any airstones in that water? How often do you flush? If you have light leaks in your tote the just wrap it with mylar and metal tape, like the sides and the top…
 

nothingtodeclare

Active Member
i would try to clean them roots best you can by giving them a h2o2 bath in a seperate container,scrub clean the container there in an then use product like pythoff or dutchmaster zone if you go with dead res type an add h2o2 every day at expressed dosage or you could try as bad back guy said run some sort of enzyme product like sensizyme,cannazyme or hygrozyme expensive but suppossed to work really good,if your gonna use any zyme's i would not run h2o2 in conjuction with it i would do just one at a time,if it were me i would probably use h2o2 for a week adding daily at reccomended dose an then after a week if most of crap is off your roots i would then dump out all water an then start using zyme's to breakdown old dead root mass an start converting it in to food for new root growth,i learned the hard way an was hit by the slime since running DM ZONE in my res i have brilliant white pearly roots in abundance,try to keep you res under 72 degree's make sure its light proof and water has plenty of dissolved oxygen by adding airstones,or you could look for a thread by hiensberg its caloled how to brew your own beneficial bacteria i think basicly you get some ewc some zho powder an aquashield brew the tea in a bucket an put in your res an the good bene's fight it out with bad,then overcome thee bad by having large population of good bene's in your res you could chuck a sponge in there for them to live on,this is jus my 2 pennies if i am wrong please stand to correct me
 

lilmrschronic

Active Member
Thanks for the advice everyone!! My water stays relatively cool at around 68 degrees so I think I'm good there. Using 2 5 inch airstones and a pretty good pump, not sure of how much oxygen its putting out but we have LOTS of bubbles so thats good lol Anyway after talking with a buddy that works at my local grow shop, she recommended Hygrozyne and we cleaned and disinfected everything and I also gently cleaned the algae off the roots with my hands under cool water, very gently! Used some of that hygrozyne and after 2 hours my roots are already sparkling white again and my plants look better already! Hopefully this works and keeps the algae away, and now I know in the future to never make a see through system again so I can watch the progress, what a dumb idea but hey its a learning experience. Thanks again for all the helpful advice everyone!! =)
 

lilmrschronic

Active Member
Well after all that work, whatever this crap is, its deciding to come back =( Now that I look at under a different light, it's more of a brown algae which I'm sure isn't good. We've went ahead and cleaned everything again and treated it again, hopefully it doesn't come back, but if it does come back, does anyone know if this will really effect the outcome of the buds? Part of me wants to just get rid of them and start fresh but we spent $90 on those clones and would like to at least get something! But not if smoking the buds would make us sick or anything lol
 

lilmrschronic

Active Member
Thinking about using physan 20, heard its the only thing that will help, but I read a couple horror stories about it killing a bunch of plants and they only used a tiny bit and ran it through their systems for an hour. I am really paranoid about that but were getting pretty desperate. Any experience with physan 20? Thanks!! =)
 

lilmrschronic

Active Member
Between 66-69 degrees, it stays pretty cool my tent is right next to a window and I'm in michigan. Cleaned the hydroton thoroughly before using it. Never had any problems at all with my last 3 grows. The only thing that we changed this time was making a new tub, like I said a see through light green one so we could watch progress and the roots got a ton of light for almost a week, but from what I've read this brown algae is a pretty nasty bad dude and I just learned the hygrozyne probably wasn't good for it oops
 

haole420

Active Member
tried brewing bennie tea for 2 days, but when i added it to my buckets, they were overrun with a different kind of pathogen. i think i had some organic material left over from the compost tea that i brewed in the same 5gal water jug a few days before. the slime started out as a clear/white mucus-like substance, then that gunk slowly turned to a brown color, not quite as bad as your pics. it probably also doesn't help that i'm not running chillers and the buckets sit inches away from a vertical tube. that mylar/bubble-wrap insulation helped bring the bucket temps down.

anyway, i filled a 5 gallon bucket with 10% bleach solution and warm tap water and soaked the infected baskets/roots while i scrubbed and bleached down the buckets, airstones, and air tubing. rinsed the basket with a hand-held shower head for about 5 minutes, agitating the lid/basket (filled with hydroton) to not only rinse out the bleach water, but to loosen and remove as much of the slime/algae that the bleach killed. refilled the sterilized buckets with fresh nutes, double dose of H2O2, and hygrozyme.

btw, hygrozyme is an ENZYME. enzymes are made up of an amino group and a vitamin group to form a single molecule that facilitates certain chemical reactions that would not happen spontaneously. enzymes are not bacteria or fungus. think of the enzymes in your saliva, for example, that help digest carbohydrates. it's an organic catalyst, not a living thing. from what i understand, the particular enzymes in hygrozyme are similar to the same enzymes produced by beneficials commonly used in soil. the enzymes are what actually do the work on a molecular level of converting organic matter into nutrients that roots can absorb.

so i don't see how H2O2 can "kill" enzymes since they aren't alive to begin with. enzymes are, however, delicate molecules. the protein in enzymes can be denatured easily by high temperatures, extreme pH, or radicals (like the hydroxyl radical). same thing as overcooking a piece of meat: you're distorting the three-dimensional shape of the amino chains. for enzymes, that shape matters. every enzyme has a different range of conditions that it can tolerate.

the manufacturer of hygrozyme says using it in conjuction with H2O2 is fine in low concentrations. so i don't see what all the fuss is over using the two together.

i just wish that they put a leak-proof cap on the piece-of-crap bottle hygrozyme comes in!!!
 
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