Bacteria free reservoir, electrical dudes?

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LurchLurkin

Active Member
OK so I was thinking..

As long as you're not on DWC, why not use electricity to kill the bacteria in your aero cloner, ebb and flood, nft, etc.

Just have all the water in the res, put in a little contraption, and walk away (so you're not tempted to touch) then zap. You would need a plastic res that wasn't piped with a conducting metal. It takes like 10000v to arc so just use low volts and probably something along the lines of just milliamps. Once a day manually shock the res for a few minutes and no bacteria could build up.
 
Jimdamick

Jimdamick

Well-Known Member
You be killing good micro organisms mon, that the roots need.(it wouldn't work anyway) You want to kill everything, just use chlorinated water, or ultra violet in your res, but it is not advisable.
 
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LurchLurkin

Active Member
Uv can hurt the minerals. Beneficial bacteria smackteria. Why wouldn't it work? Does it only work because the electricity heats them up and thus your res? Chlorine can't kill everything.
 
Doer

Doer

Well-Known Member
You do not want to heat your reservoir or you will kill the beneficial microbes and allow Pythium, not a microbe, to flourish. I've been wiped out.

And chillers take so much energy, it is not worth it to me.

You simply do not want to kill everything. Just add some Myco and some AquaShield from the hydro store. Those will fill the bio-niches and exclude Pythium.

Don't worry about sterilizing, except for cutting clones.
 
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LurchLurkin

Active Member
Well electricity kills everything. It will even kill you if you take 500 milliamps directly across your heart.. That's why I admit this is dangerous and has its limitations.

Although if you had an electrically insulated res (read, no contact between the water and any conductor), a given charge would fry bacteria, fungus, virus, anything. Provided the voltage is kept low so it can't arc.

Beneficials aren't conducive to all types of hydro and some things are hard to kill with chemicals alone - bacteria can build up a tolerance to both cleaners and antibiotics. I imagine that to an extent it could even build up a resistance to electrocution if you didn't fry them all with too low a dose.
 
Doer

Doer

Well-Known Member
LurchLurkin said:
Well electricity kills everything. It will even kill you if you take 500 milliamps directly across your heart.. That's why I admit this is dangerous and has its limitations.

Although if you had an electrically insulated res (read, no contact between the water and any conductor), a given charge would fry bacteria, fungus, virus, anything. Provided the voltage is kept low so it can't arc.

Beneficials aren't conducive to all types of hydro and some things are hard to kill with chemicals alone - bacteria can build up a tolerance to both cleaners and antibiotics. I imagine that to an extent it could even build up a resistance to electrocution if you didn't fry them all with too low a dose.
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I am just saying your are rowing the wrong creek. Sterilization of an active reservoir is not a good idea.

Ben's are good for roots. So it doesn't matter what you say, Ben's are good for roots.

This idea that you can have a good grow maintaining antiseptic conditions is not correct to me.

So, false premise I say. :) Kill everything? Why?
 
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Spanky84

Active Member
I'm not sure you could kill bacteria with low voltage alone. There are some electric pulse sterilization techniques, but low voltage electricity just won't flow through the volume of water in an insulated bucket just like that. Perhaps there would be some effect in a volume very near the electrodes because of electrolisis but I'm quite sure anything that has stuck to the roots would be unaffected.

Plus bonus question, why would electricity kill bacteria but not the roots?
 
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LurchLurkin

Active Member
Well at levels high enough to kill bacteria it could kill the roots, that's why it wouldn't work in Dwc.

I found out that it's called anodic oxidation, and as applied in horticulture it just uses a bunch of electricity to essentially form new chlorine compounds from the reservoir nutrients.
 
boilingoil

boilingoil

Well-Known Member
As I understand pure water is not conductive so you are actually send the charge through the mineral components and I would think it might change the chemical structure.
 
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