DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Spanky84

Active Member
Sooo much reading. Thanx :)

One more update. It's about hour 35 and my tea smells less earthy and kind of like fresh bread. Is this OK smell?

EDIT: Some foam is starting to collect where the water surface touches the bottle edges. All looking good for now. If this does not work as a bacterial tea, at leas I can make bread with it :D

PS. I have found a post some time ago stating it's bad to filter out the brewed tea through a coffe filter as it filters out fungi. Should I use some kind of cloth instead? I don't put my EWC in a sock, I mix it directly into water, so I really need to filter it through something...
 

sprechenz

Member
I bought a bulk container of it for $85 that treats 3750 gallons I think. It's the same process as the ABX you would take for a human bacterial infection (it's actually used for humans who are allergic to penicillin), 4 days, one dose per day of 0.25g/gallon, and you need to complete all 4 doses or the bacteria might build a resistance to it just as they would inside us, which is why your prescription directions say "always finish this medication even if you feel better".

The directions are for fish tanks so they tell you to do 25% water changes on doses 3 and 4, but we are not trying to save the good bacteria needed in an aquarium so I opted for no changes. (another brand of EMycin just says 4 doses no water changes so I knew it was cool)

I did the same prep as before using tea, just emptied and sterilized to the best of my ability (using a spray bottle of 40ml/gal Physan 20) then rinsed system twice, wiped down dry. Did the same root prep also, rinsing roots under the tap, getting anything dead or easily pulled off out of the root ball and net pot.

Filled with fresh water, 120 gallons in my case, put the plants back in, added the 30 grams of ABX, then the nutes. Proceeded to add another 30 grams every day for the next three days. The ABX adds about 70ppm per dose, 280ppm total, and from the MSDS I could find, I'm not sure what most of that 280ppm actually is, because for every 5 grams of powder there is only 0.4 grams of actual erythromycin. The website for the product says there is some vitamins to help the fish, and I know there is sodium in it...which worried me because our plants are pretty sensitive to sodium in the solution and I knew 200+ ppm would kill them, but they didn't die so I can't say for sure what the actual makeup of the 280ppm is. If I had decided to risk using it full time I would contact the company and ask for a break down of the solutes in the product.

After about 7 days (3 days after last dose) I saw the same results as successful Tea users saw...bright white roots poking from the net pots, plants returning to rigid upright position with green color...the slime was obviously dead.

I could not find any evidence as to whether it was systemic and it's not made for edible plants of fish so there probably isn't any readily available. I only spent about an hour on google though so a more thorough search would probably tell you since it's a widely used antibiotic for humans. I know we take it internally but it's a little different if the plant assimilates it and stores it in foliage that is then heated and inhaled which is why I chose not to flower those plants. I did veg them for 20 days just to see if the slime would return and it did not.

Something I noticed also is the label states this ABX is selective and does not kill the "good" bacteria in the aquarium so there is a possibility it could even be used with the Tea as a real nuclear solution, pending it's systemic properties I suppose.

My story is just so similar to so many others and has me wondering, almost conspiracy theory tin foil hat style, why everyone's story goes "so I've been getting awesome harvests for years and suddenly 2 years ago, or 1 year ago, bam, I got it. There has to be a reason for that. Like there was an outbreak in all the water tables and reservoirs around the world or something (since I see we have international slimers in here also) I've been growing DWC and RDWC for about 6 years and have had about 1 harvest per month, every month, and all without root issues other than a little pyth here or there that was easily eradicated with Aquashield...until about 6 months ago when one plant in a 8 plant system wilted overnight, then every single plant I've tried to grow in any of my RWDC systems has gotten slimed and bad. It seems to have appeared to everyone a few years ago and all at the same time, and is now trickling though the grow world like the new norovirus us humans are dealing with. Has me freaked out and this tea is my last shot before going to the horrendously labor intensive (compared to a well designed RDWC) coco setup.

I've noticed a few people, out of the many that have success, that have me really worried in this thread, who said even with the tea they get slimed just as bad, or worse, and it appears they are doing everything right and following all my spark notes I've taken as follows

Ancient Forest is REQUIRED for fail-proof results.
Myco Grow Soluble is REQUIRED for fail-proof results.
Do NOT add too much molasses.
Brew for 48 hours at the temp your res will be kept.
Add tea to WATER ONLY for 12 hours, THEN add nutrients, and ONLY chem nutes, NO Organics, NO exceptions.
Reinoculate every 2-3 days, especially at root crown/directly into net pots.
You might see slime, but don't freak out and add any sterilizers etc. and let the tea work for at least 10 days before decided it's not working.

I originally got my hopes up quite a bit because every failure I would read about as I read page after page would eventually be sorted out to user error, usually with the ingredients.....Scares me that there was a few people who I saw follow all those rules and made the "perfect tea" and still got slimed worse than or equal to without the tea, and that would only leave the ABX route IMO which I'm not willing to take at this point.
Thanks for the info.

So do you think then if you do have to go the ABX route that you would have to use the ABX for the first three days of every res change?
 

Spanky84

Active Member
Ok, situation is at the moment as follows. I have brewed some tea at higher temps (22 to 26 C, my thermostat setup is not perfect, it will be better next time). It got nice foam, nice biofilm and 24 hours after adding it roots are OK. Oldest root is a bit brown, but I see no buildup so I suspect its just nute stain.

On friday I'm doing a rez change, so I'm thinking, would it perhaps be benneficial to run some H2O2 through my res tomorrow and sterilize everything, starting the day after with fresh load of bennies? Or would it be best just to change the res and not complicate things?
 

Spanky84

Active Member
I'm not sure if I should, thats why I keep asking a lot of questions :)

Roots look fine so no changes is actually what I'm looking for really.

It will be 7 days since last change, so it will be my regular cleaning time (my thinking is that cleaning everything often denies nasties most of their food and reduces chances of problems), and it will be 3 days since adding the tea so it will be necesary to add some more anyway. It just came to me, if I used sterilizer before adding fresh nutrient solution and some bennies, would that kill everything on the roots and give bennies good starting enviroment for colonization, or would it just stress the roots and kill benneficial fungi living there, giving nasties an edge.
 

Scroga

Well-Known Member
are they in shock already? or do you see any new root growth? sounds like its not going to hurt but it is a fine line with h202
 

Spanky84

Active Member
No shock. There have been tons of new roots poking everywhere.

I might be overthinking the whole thing because all the root slime horror stories got me a bit scared. I'll probably just put them in a clean bucket, wash the airstones and thermometer probe and let them grow.
 

Ryan1986

Member
Hey guys quick question I have read most of this thread and saw a few things about filtering the tea but I can't find a good way to do it every time I put my tea in my rdwc it leaves it supper nasty and that thing is a bitch to clean any good ideas.
 

Spanky84

Active Member
Have you tried witha piece of a dense cloth?

Coffe filter will definately filter out all the EWC particles but I'm worried it might filter out other stuff we dont want filtered out.
 

Hydroburn

Well-Known Member
I put about 1/3 tsp mycogrow soluble directly in a 5 gallon cloner yesterday since they had decent roots. 12 hours later, slimed like a mother fucker (+1 dead un-rooted clone)... won't be using the product again or even fucking with tea again. I have brewed it a few times and was never impressed. Sticking with aquashield and pondzyme because it works for me and any time I try something different I get fucked. Anyone else struggling with tea I suggest just abandon it and give this a try... not trying to stir the shit or start an argument, but I'm pretty pissed right now.

My plan is to clean the res, wash out the roots under tap water and swish them around in a little mild bleach water for a sec... then make a new res minus any nonsense like mycogrow. I've set myself back 2 weeks.

slime.jpg
 

Spanky84

Active Member
You got brown slime on your roots or just slimy film on your stones/bucket walls? Did you pui in anything other then inorganic nutes in there?

I never heard of anyone having problems with this kind of products. I had a bad batch of tea get everything slimed up, but have used great white (basically the same stuff as mycogrow) and never had any issues. Could it be possible that you had abundance of organics in the res already that caused bennies to reproduce very rapidly and create slime themselves?
 

colatraine

New Member
I have been using this tea for a couple weeks with some great success...I have been applying 1 cup every 3 days to my 2.5 gal res and 2 cups with nute change. I have noticed a lot more roots growing but it seems to look sketchier everyday. It is starting to look like regular slime...is this bene after-slime?or just plain old cyanobacteria brown slime? There isn't a bad smell in the res like there was before but this just looks unhealthy... using DM gold nutes, ppms-400, ph-5.7-6.4, temps 71-72 F. The plant on top looks good but is not growing 'super fast' by any means.
Anyone who would know any information about what this could be I would greatly appreciate it...
slime?.jpg
 

Spanky84

Active Member
Photo is not very clear. You have a lot of hairs sticking out from the roots and thats a good thing. I can't see very well whats happening on the root mass to the right. Is it a root mass glued together in brown snot, or is it just a bunch of individual root strains tangled up together? If you are not sure, try spraying some water giently on the roots. If rots are freely moving as water flows down them, its OK, if they are fixed by a layer of gunk, its bad. Also, if you spray some water, you'll see slimy stuff coming off if you have root slime.

You'l also feel healthy roots texture if you take it between two fingers, pulling giently and leting it slide on your skin. Slimy root will feel like an overcooked spageti.

PS. tuging on our roots too much is probably a bad idea.

PPS. Growing superfast is a relative thing. Mine were showing almost no growth for a while and got me real worried, and then I saw it was actually pushing sh*tload of roots superfast. Sometimes plants just focus on building roots and grow leaf mass very slowly, or the other way around.
 

Hydroburn

Well-Known Member
You got brown slime on your roots or just slimy film on your stones/bucket walls? Did you pui in anything other then inorganic nutes in there?

I never heard of anyone having problems with this kind of products. I had a bad batch of tea get everything slimed up, but have used great white (basically the same stuff as mycogrow) and never had any issues. Could it be possible that you had abundance of organics in the res already that caused bennies to reproduce very rapidly and create slime themselves?
Everything was fine running pondzyme until I added mycogrow and then 12 hours later slime bloom. I have an oz left from when I used to bubble tea and figured I'd use it. I don't run organics... DG grow/protekt/bloom. haven't had a root issue in months. Only thing I don't like about pondzyme is I can do without the barley flakes.
 
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