Sweeteners / Molasses for drip recirculating?

I've been reading a bit and I am getting conflicting answers on this topic. First off, I would have to agree with the side that says the sweeteners/sugars are meant to feed the microbial life you have in your system in order to keep it alive rather than causing your plant to uptake the sugars provided, which to my knowledge weed does not uptake sugars. So, if I am wanting to feed my beneficial bacteria in my system without causing an outbreak of bad bacteria, would it be a smart move to include some sort of sugar in the system in minimal amounts to just provide food for my benies? I've also read that added sugars to a hydro system, specifically recirculating drip systems, cause them to clog / slime up and is an utter nightmare. Which brings me here; do I add some sort of sweetener such as flora nectar/molasses or do I stay away from the sugars and just back add beneficial weekly to prevent die off? I'm growing in coco so I figure the microbes can survive being that its not a pure H2O hydro system and a media hydro setup which they can live in. Thanks for the help everyone.

- BD

I bought molasses once to add to a DWC and after a few hours research decided against it.

I realise this doesn't answer any specifics, but I can say that I do research a lot and back then it just didn't seem worth the risk. I've never used them since and get healthy plants with around 1gpw as standard. I don't see the point in introducing something like that so late in the game.

Just my 2 cents.

A little more digging, it seems like a lot of guys dont want to risk the slime/bugs. I wonder if humic acid and kelp supplements would be sufficient enough to feed basic levels of microbial life while preventing an overgrowth of bad.

I know that Floralicious was made for that specific purpose. To support and feed beneficial microbes, along with a minor kick of nutrients for plants. About the molasses; If you were in standalones I'd say go for it. But being RDWC, I think you should probably steer clear of it, though some others more knowledgable may disagree here.

I ran molasses in my dwc and got Pythian straight away. Now I use flora nectar. It’s good