Quick ID on brown gunk

First time growing anything. Been researching quite a bit. First grow. Set up this 100 gallon recirculating raft system. Growing vegetables. Did first water change 4 days ago, scrubbed with 10:1 bleach mix. Using Gen Hydro 3 part Flora series. It seemed like right after I added nutes to the res, within minutes, there was this brown slime gunk collecting on the roots, near the surface for the most part. I feel the Flora Micro, which I hear stains roots, had something to do with this. It rinses off and the roots look clean as photos 2 and 3 show a before and after. Growth has been pretty slow but I attribute this to many factors at this point.

Can someone with more experience help me ID this so I can look into getting rid of it or preventing it in the future? Thanks everyone.

Maybe try some aquashield for the roots. What's the water temp?

Personally I'd have a look at doing an H2O2 treatment, I've seen great things come from the judicious use of hydrogen peroxide.

alp

alotapot said:

Personally I'd have a look at doing an H2O2 treatment, I've seen great things come from the judicious use of hydrogen peroxide.

alp

Click to expand...

I've brought a few back from the dead with H2O2 myself

Yup its brown gunk. Verified.

Triple: is there any odor, something reminiscent of stagnant water? Could be an algae bloom. I hope that helps. HSA

read this thread it is by a good dude that saved my girls his name is(heisenberg) DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes . by https://www.rollitup.org/members/heisenberg-229726.html
I made this tea and followed the directions to the ''t''....and this is what i gotView attachment 2117753 NO JOKE HE KNOWS HIS SHIT.... you can see where my roots were nasty and gunked h2o kills the good bacteria with the bad the ''TEA'' over populates the good bacteria,and the bad (slime - gunk) gets ate !!
its a big read ,but sooo worth it ...bad roots never again!!!!!!

dame that looks pretty bad. GH stuff makes brown root stains as well. Get some H2o2 or Dutch Master Zone.

Thanks fellas. I'm looking into everything you mentioned.

Some kind of root rot... I see shit like that if I'm dumb and lazy and fail to change a bucket for a month. Replace nutes every week, get your temps down and it should go away IME.

looks great man nice save

I have to disagree with all you guys.

It's not root rot or the brown wouldn't wash off like it does in that 3rd pic. And look at the netpot in the third pic where you can see the sludge buildup right at the waterline.

I wouldn't add H[SUB]2[/SUB]O[SUB]2[/SUB] because while I do agree that it's helpful in a disaster, it's a little harmful if there isn't a disaster and I don't think you're in disaster mode.

My guess is that you might have added the nutes in the wrong order and caused some precipitate, although I've never seen that stuff float like yours seems to be doing. Is your water all clouded up or is the gunk just floating on the surface?

Did you mix your nutes up well before adding them to the solution? That Flora Series is seriously thick stuff and it does develop salt precipitates that settle out in the jug. Some folks even get out a drill with a spade bit and stick it down in the nutes to stir the $%&# out of it before mixing - especially if the jugs have been sitting for a long time.

I see you're floating your netpots on insulating foam boards. I suppose there is some chance that the foam boards, or the glue that attaches the aluminum backing, could be reacting with something in the nute mix. Is this the first time you've run this system with the foam boards? If so, try mixing up a gallon of fresh nutes at the same concentration (making sure to add the nutes in the proper order) and then add a couple chunks of that foam board to see what happens.

I love the idea you have about floating the netpots in the foam boards but if your plants get very big, I'm wondering if you'll have trouble with the foam tipping over. Just a thought.

Back to the topic... If you try adding beneficial bacteria, then don't use the H[SUB]2[/SUB]O[SUB]2[/SUB] or the Dutchmaster Zone. Both of those products are excellent at killing bacteria. The tea sounds like a good and cheap fix but it might take a couple weeks to work.

My recommendation is to check the foam in a gallon of newly mixed nutes (as mentioned above) and if that isn't the problem, then dump the res and try a different nute brand like Dutchmaster or Advanced Nutrients that is more of a clean mixing liquid than that Flora Series. Not to knock the Flora Series - it's good stuff.

Hope that helps.