Hey everyone, first post here. Looking for some insight. This is my 4th hydroponic grow, up until now all have been dwc.
Setup:
3 reservoirs- 2 in tent 1 external
Alita 40 air pump, 2 stones per res
General hydroponics nutes
Using ro water
Maxisun led lights
Recirculating pump guesstimate at 20 gallons an hour
Total water volume is 30 gallons
Feeding regimen:
All nutes added at 2/3 strength
Mix armor si for one hour with pump and air stone
Add calmag mix 5 min
Add trio, micro, gro, bloom
Add diamond nectar
Add floralicious
Let mix another 5-10 min
Ok, I think I covered most of my process, if I missed something let me know.
a couple weeks back, we’ll maybe 3 weeks now I noticed my feed lines into both reservoirs where just trickling, I pulled a plant to peek inside the res and saw that brown slime. Now this being my 4th go at this I already knew the importance of light proofing but somehow overlooked this crucial detail during my initial setup. It was extra stupid of me since I dealt with this same issue on my first dwc grow. So after kicking myself a few times I pulled the plants, cleaned the three reservoirs, cleaned the roots as much as I could and put everything back, also swapped out all hoses. Now I’ve always run beneficial bacteria and enzymes so I maxed out the enzymes and did 1.5 strength on the southern ag. I thought I would be in the clear and continued with my lst and net. So I was good for a week and a half or so but then one morning I’m doing my rounds checking ph and ppm and noticed that my ph was plummeting, from 6.1 to 4.7 over night, literally 14 hours. So fuck, I panic and dump the water mix up another 30 gallons and refill. This time I adjusted the ph to 6.5, I know it’s high but I was trying to account for the swing while staying within the guidelines.
Next day 4 point fucking 7 again. Mind you it takes almost a full day to produce 30 gallons of ro for me. So I noticed this time that my holding can for ro has a slime coat everywhere, even though I was running southern ag and hygrozyme. So I drain it, dump a cup of bleach and ton of water and scrub. Rinse scrub rinse and refill.
another res change , ph’d to 6.4 and the next day I kid you not 4.7
So I’m kinda at my wits end here. And today I said fuck it and added 15ml of 7% bleach to the res and let it circulate for a couple of hours, you can see in the pic how pissed off the plants were.
so after that ran and my plants looked like death warmed over, I drained and ran tap water through for another hour to kinda rinse everything out. Then refilled with new water again minus the bb and enzymes. Ph 6.4 ppm 550 Also ordered a uv sterilizer.
I’ve backed off the lights so they can recuperate a bit , some pics below, they are already bouncing back from the bleach, time stamp bottom right.
question 1 -
if I switch to a sterile system will it stop this scourge of slime/ bacteria/ algae
Question 2-
Will I need to run anything like pool shock in conjunction with the uv light?
Any thoughts ? I don’t want to scrap this grow!
thanks for taking the time to read through!
Setup:
3 reservoirs- 2 in tent 1 external
Alita 40 air pump, 2 stones per res
General hydroponics nutes
Using ro water
Maxisun led lights
Recirculating pump guesstimate at 20 gallons an hour
Total water volume is 30 gallons
Feeding regimen:
All nutes added at 2/3 strength
Mix armor si for one hour with pump and air stone
Add calmag mix 5 min
Add trio, micro, gro, bloom
Add diamond nectar
Add floralicious
Let mix another 5-10 min
Ok, I think I covered most of my process, if I missed something let me know.
a couple weeks back, we’ll maybe 3 weeks now I noticed my feed lines into both reservoirs where just trickling, I pulled a plant to peek inside the res and saw that brown slime. Now this being my 4th go at this I already knew the importance of light proofing but somehow overlooked this crucial detail during my initial setup. It was extra stupid of me since I dealt with this same issue on my first dwc grow. So after kicking myself a few times I pulled the plants, cleaned the three reservoirs, cleaned the roots as much as I could and put everything back, also swapped out all hoses. Now I’ve always run beneficial bacteria and enzymes so I maxed out the enzymes and did 1.5 strength on the southern ag. I thought I would be in the clear and continued with my lst and net. So I was good for a week and a half or so but then one morning I’m doing my rounds checking ph and ppm and noticed that my ph was plummeting, from 6.1 to 4.7 over night, literally 14 hours. So fuck, I panic and dump the water mix up another 30 gallons and refill. This time I adjusted the ph to 6.5, I know it’s high but I was trying to account for the swing while staying within the guidelines.
Next day 4 point fucking 7 again. Mind you it takes almost a full day to produce 30 gallons of ro for me. So I noticed this time that my holding can for ro has a slime coat everywhere, even though I was running southern ag and hygrozyme. So I drain it, dump a cup of bleach and ton of water and scrub. Rinse scrub rinse and refill.
another res change , ph’d to 6.4 and the next day I kid you not 4.7
So I’m kinda at my wits end here. And today I said fuck it and added 15ml of 7% bleach to the res and let it circulate for a couple of hours, you can see in the pic how pissed off the plants were.
so after that ran and my plants looked like death warmed over, I drained and ran tap water through for another hour to kinda rinse everything out. Then refilled with new water again minus the bb and enzymes. Ph 6.4 ppm 550 Also ordered a uv sterilizer.
I’ve backed off the lights so they can recuperate a bit , some pics below, they are already bouncing back from the bleach, time stamp bottom right.
question 1 -
if I switch to a sterile system will it stop this scourge of slime/ bacteria/ algae
Question 2-
Will I need to run anything like pool shock in conjunction with the uv light?
Any thoughts ? I don’t want to scrap this grow!
thanks for taking the time to read through!
