Hey al, just want to say thanks for all your info thus far. Your old threads inspired me to coppy cat your set up to the best of my abilitys. I find it hard to belive I can actually ask you questions after all these months of study on your posts with you absent. I never thought I'd have this opportunity!
Be careful. I don't think I'm quite the deity you make me out to be. I'm neither a chemist nor a botanist. However, I do have a good general science background and a highly developed bullshit detection protocol and can run a grow op.
So now that that is said before you leave, how am I going to kill my root rot? Maybe my res needs to be covered?
Don't cover the rez, you'll create a moisture trap that will encourage pathogens that require high humidity and air to thrive, such as pythium & algae.
I am going to put my air stone back in and start using h2o2 again.
That ought to fix it. Do a once-off 10x dose of H2O2 to try to get on top of the pathogen load in the system.
I am off the bleach that fatmans thread had me beliving would cure it.
If you use enough sodium hypochlorite to control the pathogens, it'll probably be enough to kill the plants.
My h2o2 is only 29% ,so around 1.72 or round up to 1.8 ml per liter every 3/4 days
Yep.
My brand of h202 is nutrlife brand. So do you think that it too will have a stabilizer in it? (Canada seems to have tight rules on h202)
Query the mfr. They'll probably tell you what's in it.
Do you cover up your pots from light? I have to cut some black/white to cover the rockwool otherwise the algae grows on the top layer of rockwool. Thank again al.
No, I don't bother. I don't get much algae. A
little algae isn't generally a problem. After all, it's a plant and indicates that growing conditions for plants must be OK in your media. However, a big thick layer of green slime is nasty and may provide food for an infestation of bugs. Keep your media tops dry; may have to pack pots fuller and perhaps not flood quite as high. If you do use some means of shielding the media tops from light, don't use anything that seals tightly. You do want air circ across the media tops.
alright al im cutting out the vegging and i went through you harvest 2 weeks thread again and im going to set up the new op with the 4x4 trays, im sold on it, 16 oz's every 2 weeks is just to hard to pass on. now im using hydro rock in my pots but its getting expensive for the fact that basically the lower half of the rocks i dont even save because i would be pulling roots out for weeks (call me lazy if you like lol). in your thread you are using floc (loose rockwool) and just fill around your rooted cubes right.
Yep, cutting out the vegging will give you much shorter internodes. Don't forget to trim off all the branching on the lower 1/3 of the plants. Any branch more than about 1" long gets the snip. This will encourage large, dense bud formation on the terminal (top) colas.
Clay pellets etc. are a pain in the ass. They're heavy, expensive and hard to dispose of. Cleaning them for re-use is a messy, wet job and there's no guarantee that you'll be able to sterilise them enough to prevent transmission of root diseases from crop to crop. Using fresh, sterile disposable media is a much better way to go.
Now where can i find some
been looking in socal for 2 years now.
Hit ye Google. Your answer is there somewhere. Also, you can always ask your local hydro shop to order some in for you.
I've also just found the data on 'Sure To Grow.' It may be a reasonable facsimile of Fytocell, however, it's made of polystyrene, which isn't biodegradable. Fytocell is. You can dig waste Fytocell into your gardens and it will disappear completely in about a year. I don't dig my waste Fytocell into my gardens only because I simply don't have enough garden space to support that method of disposal. Whether you care or not is up to you.
Hey al, always great to see you, I have been growing in dwc/rdwc, im not sure if you have done much of this, also not quite sure of what diffrences are specific to unqiue styles of growing. But I respect your opinion greatly.
Thanks.
I am about to run the UnderCurrent system, on another tree growing site there have been a lot of failures recently with the system(lots of 2 lb plants as well), I have not see anyone using h202 in these systems.
I can see why there would be a lot of failures. The UnderCurrent system would not lend itself to easy cleaning. It's also not SoG friendly. SoG involves growing a large number of small plants. UnderCurrent would work better in situations where you, for legal reasons, must restrict the numbers of plants you grow. Plants would have to be vegged and then cut back a couple of times before flowering. This would have the effect of giving you a larger number of small, fluffy buds. SoG gives you a smaller number of highly dense buds. There's no growing method which can beat SoG for sheer yield per sq ft of lighted floorspace and for best bud density. SoG wins every time because the method puts the main bud mass of all the plants in the highest intensity area of the lighting's pattern.
The owner/creator of the system recently addressed the problems with so many peoples crops failing, and I was hoping to get your opinion on it, and if you think this is more of a dwc thing, First off he also recommended canna aqua vega,flores as base nutrient.
UC is kinda like DWC without the benefit of having an air stone in each grow container. No wonder people are having problems.
One of the inherent weaknesses in a "sterile" set up is the absence on life. It is this absence that can subject the plant roots to invasion by what equates to be the most resiliant and biocide resistant strains of pathogens.
A clean, mineral based nutrient run with homeopathic dosages of select beneficials is the most likely way to avoid DWC sudden death syndrome.
Sterility leaves a vacancy for disease organisms to fill....intro of bennies promotes the colonization of a plant symbiotic microbe which will out compete the pathogens....or at very least compete with them for territory in the root zone.
Bottom line.
***Root crown inoc with products like Great White and ZHO (Botanicare) which have myco properties which need constant root contact
***Aqueous inoc with bacillus Subtillus like Companion, Aquashield which can colonize in solution.
The rule of thumb in the UC with bennies is less is more, inoc without adding excessive biosolids. Its these biosolids that creat biofilms which cause anerobic layers which can lead to pathogen habitat.
Most relavent thing to consider.
Biocides will ultimately mutate the current pathogens that do exist into super strains of fusarium, phytophera, pythium, verticillium....whatever they might be. Very much like what has happened in hospitals with Staphylococcus infections becoming increasingly drug resistent.
Natural competition from indiginous beneficial microbes will keep these root diseases in check, keeping them from specializing into specimens that are evolved to resist antibiotic suppresion.
Moral of the story......sterility is a pretty slippery slope.
Oh, jesus fucking christ on an ugly motorcycle... Woowoo city. It took 5 mins for my eyes to recover from rolling back into my head after reading this. Anyone who mentions the word 'homeopathic' without using it in a totally ironic or derogatory sense is a full-tilt
kook and can be safely ignored. This joker is using a bunch of sciencey sounding terms to say more or less nothing.
A system based in inorganic nutrients can be sterilised with H2O2. No microbe can develop a resistance to H2O2 because it'll be dead on contact with a sufficient dose. Dead microbes don't reproduce.
Also Have you ever had any problems with brown algae, or any experience with it?
I have tried in the past to kill it with 50% h202 when running dwc buckets, but with no luck, do I need a larger dose that the 10ml per l?
Algae is a plant and will have similar H2O2 resistance characters to larger plants, such as cannabis. To reduce algae problems, clean the system thoroughly and block light to any surface or material which is unavoidably kept wet or is wetted frequently. H2O2 will have some effect on algal spores, but once algae has established, you'll have to physically remove it.
Thanks for stopping in, have missed reading your entertaining posts.
Thanks.
When adding h202 to this system, any recommendation on how to add it? if I put in the epicenter would I need to dilute it in water first? Do you think the dosage of h202 will change since the roots are in water, where as the rockwool might act as a bit of a buffer?
First and foremost, I wouldn't use the UC system. It looks like a recipe for disaster, not unlike hempy buckets. It won't lend itself well to SoG and the per sq ft yields and bud density won't be as good.
Thanks man, So if I used a 250w/400w mh with 5-10 mothers, what size pots would you recommend I use? I only have 3x3 for all my mothers AND clones.
Sheesh, you're not asking for much, are you?
My mother area is about 2'x6' for 10 mums. I have a separate clone box which is about 20"d x 30"w x 36"h.
If you're going to have enough room to flower 60 plants, maybe you should look to devote some of that space to mums & clones
Also what if I grew them out with my 600w mh then stuck them under the floros, would that work or?
No. The mums will need a consistent, regular source of high intensity light. Mums will not give you the quality of stems you will want for cuttings without some sort of HID lighting.
Do the world a favor and call it r-dwc.
How about we just call it a bad idea and leave it at that?
sure to grow is basically polyester pillow stuffing. same as phytocell?
No, Fytocell is not polyester pillow stuffing. It's a resin-based foam material.
Molasses/sugar from what I hear is to keep the system "cleaner" not necassarily to feed though right? Keeps salt build up down??
Man, that's about the wrongest thing I've ever heard said about molasses. Sugars won't clean anything and definitely won't remove nutrient salts. The only place you should use molasses is in oatmeal cookies. Keep molasses and other sugars a safe distance away from cannabis plants!
two words, Spider Mites. Any thoughts or stories on how to get rid of or deal with them. I got them and man are they a pain. It looks like a 100 dollar fluoromite spray mite have worked finally. But I seriously doubt that. They survived dips in various oils even!
One word: abamectrin (sometimes spelled avamectrin). There is no substitute. Kills spider mites every single time. However, if you ever get a spider mite infestation, the grow op has to be cleaned out totally and vacuumed THOROUGHLY or they'll be back. They're clever little bastards and will hide in the tiniest nooks and crannies. Plants that are heavily infested with spider mite should be put in plastic rubbish bags and disposed of. The plants won't yield well and are not worth saving. If you see just a few (under 50) on one leaf in your op, you MAY be able to save the grow. MAY.
