yes i thought about going the bleach route, but the chemical in it (cant recall the name off hand) is toxic to the plant. im sure if its diluted enough like anything else you can skate by with it.
i use bleach to clean equipment. i thought of trying it out of despiration when the brown slime still came after using a heavy dose of DM zone. i still think about running physan 20 all through cycle to keep my res clean. but the reason i choose to stick with beneficials is i know as long as i keep innoculating every 3 days, i will NEVER have a problem with rootzone. and everything else ive tried as far as sterile, running beneficials has my roots growing at least 4x as fast and they look healthier than any sterile ive tried. roots in sterile look a beautiful white and its appealing to the eye. when i run beneficials i get buildup on the sides, on my airstones, on tubes, and even on the roots. i can pull my roots up right now in veg and they will have dark material on them that almost looks like slime. but the difference between bad slime and beneficial slime is i can take my plants to the sink and spray water on beneficial slime and itll spray right off revealing extremely healthy white roots, super thick and fat and basically the textbook image of what a healthy rootsystem should look like. and the beneficial slime does not hinder root growth at all, its just the bacteria colonizing my rootzone. and thats fine by me because the results rock.
on the otherhand, pathogen slime sticks to the roots and smothers them. turning them brown and brittle. i cant spray it off, i cant rub it off, i cant do a damn thing to get it off the roots. and not only that, the roots get so weak the slightest tug and they will break off.
i stick with the bennies because it works hands down thru every situation, and you can even run res temps higher than 'ideal' with no problems (although i still keep my res at 66-6
. plus its cheap as hell. i can buy a huge bag of EWC and alaska humus for less than 20 dollars. and a bottle of molasses for 5 dollars and have enough ingredients to brew tea for months. plus i keep my mother plants in soil and they like to get hit with the left over tea
also chemist have you ran without koolbloom at the end, like just running maxibloom until the end before flush? and if so was there a difference?