First time 6 site RDWC 60 gallon problems

[Cold$moke]

Yup pressure fit.
I havet run into a pump yet that will push apart pipes tapped together hard

 

[HydroRed]

Alright all Sterilized and cleaned with 30ppm Purox bleach and running pump for 45 min. Any bits of the sludge that was left was getting attacked by the bleach and breaking up, I manually removed any bigger pieces, not much was left after my initial scrub to loosen things up and getting out the shop vac and even got all the pipes too.

View attachment 4088476 View attachment 4088478 View attachment 4088479
Drained down to a low level and gave it another scrub all around, washed the sides and then shop vac again.
Soaked the 12" air stones in bleach and then rinsed under hot tap water while rubbing to get off any slime.

Fill time now...
Tap Water: 210ppm PH 8.3
MegaCrop: 90g for 60ish gallons
H2O2: 100ml of 29% which works to about 4ml/L (15ml/g)
Total PPM at 425
PH 5.67

I went with a bit extra H202 and will add a bit more on the next light cycle just to keep things in a sterile range until things get better. Decided to lower dose the Mega crop for now. I was being thrown off at the amount of PH Down I had to use with tap water but i guess it will hold more steady than the 12 hour adjustments with RO.

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took each netpot and washed it under the tap while rubing off what ever slime I could, any weak ones would pull off with the nitrile gloves. I washed from the bottoms, sides and tops. Good thing they were small, easy.

Roots are all white from what I can see, might be some bits of slime in the only pot that was attacked the most. the rest look fine. I hope the tap wash sterilized the pots. My goal was to have the least amount of organic material that the H2O2 has to burn off.

I use 3% H2o2. 15ml of 29% per gal may be a bit aggressive. Its like soup....you can always add, but once its in there...its in there.

 

[kingtitan]

oops I think I am confusing you guys lol.

100ml of 29% makes 1000ml of 3% of which I added 15ml/L vs Your 10ml/L. 88ml/L is used for disease treatment from the grow bibles.

 

[kingtitan]

Very nice!

A couple things to consider:

• Either paint, or cover, your lids so the light doesn't get through and wreak havoc with your roots. PlastiDip spray paint works really well for blacking out the lids.
• Instead of returning the water using an elbow, and just pouring the water into your reservoir, create a "waterfall", which will add copious amounts of DO to your water. This can be done very simply, with a pipe or tube, with small holes drilled in it, to jet/spray the water into the reservoir.

This is mine. It's just a short length of PVC with little holes drilled in it.
View attachment 4088576

Thanks for the tips!

When I was looking to buy buckets at $14 a piece + lids, I was at my lowes doing some pre-plumbing idea shopping and they had these 12 gal strong boxes on clearance for $2.50!! ( nI remembered you suggested going with totes) So i jumped on that and bought all they had, which was the last stock in the city apparently. The really awesome part is the lids are are black and light proof! I just threw on a very light coating of white plastic paint to have reflection and to keep the tubs just that little bit cooler!

With the spray bar, I experimented with elbow, spray bar and even a couple of T's and found that the elbow with the barb on one end and the thread on the other side ( not the barb x barb) created a TON more mixing and bubbles, its spraying down pretty good. I actually keep it facing to the side a bit to create even more turbulence. The threaded end acts differently and seems to "hollow" the stream and adds that much extra. I could have 5 air stones in there and it wouldn't do as good as this is doing, I am going to try different elbows now, like one that goes 3/4 to 1" or something.

 

[Cold$moke]

Water agitation is great but surface area disruption and flooming rule lol

I like to use tees that are as big as possible

Causes the water to flume out the sides in a big sheet gaining surface area before it crashes and causes suface disruption

Try a 1/2 or 3/4 to 11/2 on the tee sides

 

[rkymtnman]

Thanks for the tips!

When I was looking to buy buckets at $14 a piece + lids, I was at my lowes doing some pre-plumbing idea shopping and they had these 12 gal strong boxes on clearance for $2.50!! ( nI remembered you suggested going with totes) So i jumped on that and bought all they had, which was the last stock in the city apparently. The really awesome part is the lids are are black and light proof! I just threw on a very light coating of white plastic paint to have reflection and to keep the tubs just that little bit cooler!

With the spray bar, I experimented with elbow, spray bar and even a couple of T's and found that the elbow with the barb on one end and the thread on the other side ( not the barb x barb) created a TON more mixing and bubbles, its spraying down pretty good. I actually keep it facing to the side a bit to create even more turbulence. The threaded end acts differently and seems to "hollow" the stream and adds that much extra. I could have 5 air stones in there and it wouldn't do as good as this is doing, I am going to try different elbows now, like one that goes 3/4 to 1" or something.

\

i built my rdwc with some 3/4 pvc end caps( the semi round kind, drilled about 10 holes of really small holes) kinda like a kitchen faucet sprayer

that sprayed into 27 gal totes.. a waterfall of any kind is way better than any air stone/air pump

 

[kingtitan]

Water agitation is great but surface area disruption and flooming rule lol

I like to use tees that are as big as possible

Causes the water to flume out the sides in a big sheet gaining surface area before it crashes and causes suface disruption

Try a 1/2 or 3/4 to 11/2 on the tee sides

Thats the word..Flooming! when it crashes into the water it creates a whole lot of movement and bubbles.

 

[Cold$moke]

Thats the word..Flooming! when it crashes into the water it creates a whole lot of movement and bubbles.

No flooming means when your breaking the surface tension of the water just enough to see it raise like a bulbble

You got more waterfall and surface agitation then true flooming

But i use the term flooming in the sense that i make sheets of water .which is more surface area so i might have been wrong in describing it that way

 

[kingtitan]

Looking good 16 hours later. I might have saw some very small build up on the rez pvc end but everything else looks sparkling. I think the roughed ends on the pipes may be allow stuff to "hang" on and grow? similar to what i found on the air stones. I used sandpaper to bevel the ends a bit cause i used uniseals and it made it easier to push in without any damage to the seal.



I' start my journal and start posting there tonight.

 

[kingtitan]

No flooming means when your breaking the surface tension of the water just enough to see it raise like a bulbble

You got more waterfall and surface agitation then true flooming

But i use the term flooming in the sense that i make sheets of water .which is more surface area so i might have been wrong in describing it that way

the normal elbows make more of a solid stream. the threaded end which is slightly bigger tends to cause it to spread or flare and has more air mixed before it even hits the water.

Wonder if i take PVC and cut a long slit in it to make a sheet, it wont make more bubbles but more surace is hitting? its so hard without a DO meter cause the bubbles make you think its doing something more lol

 

[Cold$moke]

You can get creative and make the bar go across the whole res

And if you can make a thin enogh cut so that water will"stack" up causing it to sheet the hole way.

Just be careful slitting pipe whatch your fingers and use a clamp

 

[kingtitan]

Alright so I am looking at them today and see a thin layer of slime developing on the roots, and there seems to be a slight brown tinge also on some roots. Looking at the bottom of a few I see slime building within the net pot.

Not sure what to do anymore other than maybe ditching the RDWC this run and try to put these into ProMix and go my usual route and start again with new plants next season. Or to try the earth worm tea that Heisenberg has recommended?. of course after letting what ever H2O2 in the system neutralize.

Maybe my H2O2 mix is not strong enough? maybe I should go with the 88ml/gal that Jorge recommends?

Sorry I keep saying Jorge Cervantes when I mean to say Ed Rosenthal.

 

[kingtitan]

Ok so there was no stopping this slime. I hit the net for an in depth research on this slime and found some great info and it all lead to the EWC tea. I brewed the tea while my very expensive order of Great White is on the way.

I brewed the tea and then did yet another flush and sanitize. The net pots and roots are were getting pretty bad very quick, they would not survive more than 5 days max. They haven't grown in 2 weeks, roots barely making any progress. I gave them all a good pressure wash in the sink with room temp water, pulled off any roots I could, making sure to get extra pressure into the pot itself to wash out any slime that could. Got globs of brown snot.

7 hours later and a miracle was happening before my eyes. The plants were starting to perk up already, by 16 hours they looked very happy and were far from the deathly wilt. Roots were looking great but there was still slime building back on the newly cleaned roots slowly.

By day 2 the plants roots have cleaned up, the slime that liked my thermometer probe was gone also. Plants are up and praying to the light, they have grown more in the last 30 or so hours than they have in 2 weeks.

Each day so far (3 days) I have dosed 2-3 cups of the EWC left over from the batch stored in the fridge to my 60 gallon system.I decided to do this cause I wants to get a hold of the issue here and there was no harm in over doing it anyway.

I cant wait to see what the Great White can do as it has a ton of strains of Mycho!

I have been converted to a live RDWC!

I want to thank the group of people who fought, researched and then developed a remedy for this awful nightmare Cyanobacteria for 5+ long years over at ICMAG. There are individuals taking credit for this work and that is a bit sad ( I wont call anyone out), though the OP still is civil and humble about it. So please if anyone ever has to deal with this just make the tea, its simple and you don't need any of the other ingredients in the recipe. If earth worm castings is all you got it will work. And if you want to read the story and expand your knowledge, give a read at https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=282376

 

[Cold$moke]

I tried to tell you

All you needed was some hydroguard edit sorry if you cant get it in your location though if that was the case

 

[Cold$moke]

I think your h2o2 mix was mabey too strong and you oxidized the roots leaving stuff to turn into slime.

I had the same exp with bleach my system was fine till i added bleach then i got slime.

Put the hydroguard in and bam new roots all white

 

[rkymtnman]

is there any way that you have some light leaks in your totes, lids, netpots, tubing, etc?

i'm still amazed that the southern ag and/or the peroxide didnt' fix it.

 

[Cold$moke]

I think he mabey just didnt give the ag time to do its thing @Jypsy Dog uses it in his dwc cucmbers with high outddor temps

Or he killed off the ag with residual h2o2 stuff is a strong oxidzer

These are just assumtions though

 

[rkymtnman]

I think he mabey just didnt give the ag time to do its thing @Jypsy Dog uses it in his dwc cucmbers with high outddor temps

Or he killed off the ag with residual h2o2 stuff is a strong oxidzer

These are just assumtions though

i use southern ag too. i don't think he used enough and then he killed it off with the peroxide. it works great for me without a chiller in waterfarms

 

[Cold$moke]

Im hitting 77 degrees at times with mine
Using hydroguard atm
I hover around 72-74 degrees normally

 

[kingtitan]

So taking into consideration that it IS working for DWC for some, I think I may just have a bad or expired batch.Not that I am willing to try again, ever. I think I have found my happy place with the full spectrum of bennies and fungus to mimic the biology of live soil, this works in harmony with me as I have a 25 year reef keeping hobby.

Why do I think my SAG is off? Sunday night I took two 5 gallon buckets and filled one with ~4 gallons RO 2ppm water and mixed in 200ppm of Megacrop I did the same with the other but only used 2 gallons water as this one was going to run as a aero.

Bucket #1 - 4 gallons water: I have 2 spare air valves on the manifold for the RDWC so I piggy backed the air for this bucket to run an airstone. This ran as a DWC. (ADDED 5ML/GAL of SAG)
Bucket #2 - 2 gallons water: I used my DIY aero sprayer, same as I started my cannabis seeds before transfer to the main system. (ADDED 1 DROP of SAG)

I had rooted scotch bonnet and jalepeno peppers in rapid rooters that I had planned to pot and then transfer outside for spring. but instead wanted to see if I could get this southern AG to work for me.

The buckets right now are at 20 hours and both of them are foul. A lot more than my RDWC was (possibly because of the lower volume of water?)

the DWC bucket with the most AG is stinking real bad, like the worst freshwater fish tank I have ever smelled. there is goop mostly clear and white (like it started in my RDWC) that is longer than the roots themselves, the air stone looks like a fern or some horrible creature from the deep. THICK layer of slime around the rapid rooter as well.

The Aero bucket...ack its less foul but the spraying and air mix was making the slime spread in a different way. The slime was on the sides of the pail and on the pump as well unlike doing it in DWC.

I will leave the DWC bucket cause I am too tired to deal with that ATM. I'll make sure that I bring a laser class weapon to fight what ever demon is going to be popping out when I check it tomorrow!

Ill try this out during the summer outside in one of the gardens and see what it does if used as intended. For the purpose we use it for, maybe test it out smaller scale before dumping it on a production run.