Brown Slime on Roots, whats wrong???

well im out off to bed gl bud ill catch up on this tomorrow. Nice grow btw captainkush looks good bud. peace

Briester Behemoth said:

Well I'm using Fox Farm hydro schedule at 1/3 to 1/2 strength. Im also using Cal Mag and Liquid Karma in regime. The only organic product is Big Bloom but I was using that last week with no problem.

Click to expand...

Here is a great thread I found when I first had my brown slime problems.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=55259

In my own case, I added floralicious to my DWC mix. I outlined exactly what went down in my log but basically, the first thing you may notice would be a PH spike. In my case I went from a very stable 5.9 to 6.9 in a few hours. Then nute lock out. It can be deceiving because you can think you are just having a def, when in reality your nutes are locked out due to the slime making your PH spike.

To Mooch:

No worries, we are all just trying to help out

CK

cal mag is for magnizium and calcium deficentcy, the brown slime is bad bacteria thats feeding on the organic material and sugars, buy h2o2 from the hydro store and completly rinse ur res and then add that stuff 2 ur normal regimine, u shouldntneed all those nutrients any way it g ets 2 thick for hydro, your just throwing ur money down the drain, all u need is a 3 part or 2 part nutrient system,. its al so good 2 try 2 spread it out the plants can only eat so much any way, if it calls for a teaspoon per gal try half that, good luck

captiankush said:

I am wondering specifically about any organic based nutes. That brown slime LOVES organics and I know a few people who had everything going just fine until they added some organic product and BANG, the horrible slime happened.

CK

Click to expand...

This guy is right on the money. This brown slime will keep comin back and suffocate your roots. I had the same problem and knew it had something to due with the organic nutes I was using so I tested it out. I pulled the whole plant out and clean out the roots and system to rid of any brown slime. Then I did the test. This happened to me in veg and I was using General Hydroponics Floragro and Floramicro and General Organics Bio Root and Calmg. Plant 1 had just Floragro and Floramicro. Plant 2 had Floragro, Floramicro, and Calmg. Plant 3 had Floragro, Floramicro, Calmg, and Bio Root. In just over 1 day plant 3 had brown slime. Plant 2 didn't have brown slime but it did develop some brown residue of some sort in 3-4 days and when you rinse the roots it comes off. It also did stop growth on the plant. Plant 1 complete success. No problems, solution stayed clean, and in about a week the plant fully recovered from the brown slime and the roots took off. On one of the plants the brown slime did completely kill the roots and I had to cut it off. Since cleaning the system and roots out the plant did a 100% recovery and roots were growing like crazy. Now I'm just using Floragro, Floramicro, and great white in veg. Not using Calmg and the plants are doing fine without it. So stay away from any organic stuff. That's the source of your problem. Only use chemical in hydro. Here's a pic of one of the plants I had that was affected by the brown slime. It suffocated my roots and eventually killed them. This is the one I had to cut the roots off because the roots keep breaking apart in the solution and contaminating it. Plant fully recovered.

Damn those are some gorgeous roots on there. Yeah, I decided to pull the Liquid Karma. I feel like the bacteria are loving that carb rich solution. Thanks captiankush for that link. Bought some hydrozyme and applied at a rate of 5 tbl per 10 gal. Also cleaned out the reservoir and washed the roots again. Wish me luck cuz I hope this works. Unfortunately the hydro store closest to me doesn't carry food grade h202

Briester Behemoth said:

Damn those are some gorgeous roots on there. Yeah, I decided to pull the Liquid Karma. I feel like the bacteria are loving that carb rich solution. Thanks captiankush for that link. Bought some hydrozyme and applied at a rate of 5 tbl per 10 gal. Also cleaned out the reservoir and washed the roots again. Wish me luck cuz I hope this works. Unfortunately the hydro store closest to me doesn't carry food grade h202

Click to expand...

Thanks! Not sure how bad your roots are but mine did die. I rinsed my roots off with plain water. No hydrozyme or h202. They recovered fine. Just keep a close eye on your plant and it should recover too. Good luck!

Briester Behemoth said:

Thanks captiankush for that link. Bought some hydrozyme and applied at a rate of 5 tbl per 10 gal. Also cleaned out the reservoir and washed the roots again. Wish me luck cuz I hope this works. Unfortunately the hydro store closest to me doesn't carry food grade h202

Click to expand...

You can also use 3% h202 that is commonly found in walgreens, etc. I apply it at a rate of 30 mils per gallon.

Your welcome for the link, its by far the best info source on this issue I have found. The thing that makes the brown slime a pain is that it is so commonly misdiagnosed as root rot and as I found out, treating it like you would root rot does nothing to this little beastie...it just smiles and keeps on wrecking shop on you. If you dont treat it quick, it will kill your girls. Fast and accurate diagnosis is imperative.

Good luck & hope all goes well with the ladies.

CK

Briester Behemoth said:

I'm having serious problems with brown slime on my roots. Below is my grow log from 2 days ago. Up till 2 days ago, I had zero problem with browning of roots. I was thinking that this might be due to very weak florescent tube ambient light but am not sure at.
So far I have added 1/2 tbl per gal of grocery store bought h202. What else should I do. (Below
are pictures). All four plants have the slime build up, some worse than others. This seems strange since this has happened in 48 hours....

2/21/2010
Emptied resevoir
Filled w/ water and half bottle of rubbing alcohol for 15 min, ran for 15 minutes
Wiped down with towel
Filled with 10 gal of Glacier water
8 tsp TB per 10 gal
7 tsp Liquid Karma (LK) per 10 gal
4 Tbl BB per 10 gal
1 tsp OpS per 10 gal
1/2 tsp Earth Juice Down per 10 gal

Click to expand...

The slime thats growing on your roots is Algae. It is growing because the roots have either been exposed to light for too long or there is light seeping threw your roots in your grow medium

Briester Behemoth said:

Damn those are some gorgeous roots on there. Yeah, I decided to pull the Liquid Karma. I feel like the bacteria are loving that carb rich solution. Thanks captiankush for that link. Bought some hydrozyme and applied at a rate of 5 tbl per 10 gal. Also cleaned out the reservoir and washed the roots again. Wish me luck cuz I hope this works. Unfortunately the hydro store closest to me doesn't carry food grade h202

Click to expand...

Also, the algae is feeding off the nutrients you are giving it. So if you keep feeding your plant whatever nutrient your feeding it, the algae will get fed along with it too.

thats not true if the roots are at the bottom of ur media in the chamber theiers no chance light has 2 do with it, its from running ur water 2 thick and trying 2 grow the plants with nutients instead of letting the plant grow on its own, keep changing the water weekly add hygrozym at the begging and then h202 every 3 days after that if needed, if i was u i would run hygrozym and water for a day and then re change water and then ad nutes. hydro is a marketing skam

actually the alge is thriving on warm water, and im preety sure its bacteria feeding on the protiens and sugars and organic material, i could be wrong but i had a bad case my self, with a botanicare system im sure thier wasent any light leeks, the slime on roots never stoped untill i used h202 and got the water temp in cheak

This is the last straw.

Still having slime build up problems. Its starting to visually affect the plants at this point. One of the plants has yellow, not yellow-green, straight up yellow growth on the very top. Also having leave curling problems.

I'm gonna go with what you said reefermaster. 10 tbl of h202 (3% concentrate) and 5 tbl of hydrozyme in my 10 gallon tank.

How I cleaned:
First, I rinsed out everything, including the nets that i'm using to block out the lights. I threw out the rockwool that was in these nets. I ran the system with 10 gallon of water with 3/4 of a large bottle of 90% isopropyl alcholol. After doing this, I dumped out the water and scrubbed using the rest of alcohol. I unassembled everything and scrubbed it out the best I could. I noticed some residue build up. Side note: Is this normal? After doing this I rinsed everything down, ran the system with pure water to rid it of alcohol. I then washed new rockwool to fill in the empty nets to fill in the empty holes where the maies were. Filled the system with cold water.

Hope this works....

good luck dude, and make sure the PH is 5-6 and there is no light, and cut off all the nasty looking roots

thanks for reminding me about the pH, I totally forgot about this

Ph being off could lock up any or all nutes/additives you might be using, have you been checking PH from day one?

yep.

so i think its the tigerbloom thats the problem. Maybe this isn't a alage thing. Has anyone ever heard of Tiger Bloom darkening roots?

u could have a few issues if u only have a 10 gal res u gotta be carfull how much shit u put in it, tiger bloom will probly stain ur roots whitch means ur giving them 2 much the nutrient solution is 2 thick, and that doesent help your other issues, flush the plants again and let them sit in cleean water for a good 2-3 days 2 rise all the old nutrients off, h202 is strong shit if ur using hydro grade u only need 3 ml per gallon, that would be 2 tbl spoons if its the regular brown bottle i would suggest like 5 ml, every 3 days or so, make sure ur water temps are 65 or lower, also u may be over watering, good luck