Diatom hell! (Not cyanobacteria)

I use one teaspoonish of shock granuals mixed into one gallon of water and then dose that at 1 ounce per gallon.

I don't check the ppm of it or anything fancy. I use what was recommended when I read about it years ago and never looked any further into it when it worked .

graying.geek said:

assuming my solution is the correct

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sorry to say, but hth is actually 52% not 62%. my bad.

but to answer, if ppm is less than 5 ppm free chlorine, it's safe for humans and plants.

so either:
1. your calculation is off and it's more than 5 with the 72% stuff you have
2. maybe it's one of the inactive ingredients in your mix?
3. do you have chlorine in your water or nutes that is adding to your ppm levels?
4. you are adding it too often and it keeps upping your ppm level?

rkymtnman said:

sorry to say, but hth is actually 52% not 62%. my bad.

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Doesn't make a significant difference in the calcs. Probably puts your PPM around 3.0, which, according to the lit, is fine.

: said:

so either:
1. your calculation is off and it's more than 5 with the 72% stuff you have
2. maybe it's one of the inactive ingredients in your mix?
3. do you have chlorine in your water or nutes that is adding to your ppm levels?
4. you are adding it too often and it keeps upping your ppm level?

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Validating my calcs using your's and @Thundercat 's numbers makes me pretty confident that I'm figuring it correctly, and I'm adding it to the res every other day, per instructions.

How old are your clones/seedlings when you put them in the res?

graying.geek said:

I'm adding it to the res every other day, per instructions

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i added once a week to my res. .

graying.geek said:

How old are your clones/seedlings when you put them in the res?

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from seed, maybe 3 weeks. when roots get 4 to 6 inches, plant maybe 3 inches tall.

My clones get veg res water from the time they have roots basically. You can always start lower and raise it. I also usually only add it every 3-4 days so there should never be any build up in the system. Between doses all the existing chlorine should have evaped back out of he system.

rkymtnman said:

i added once a week to my res. .

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Alternating days at the same concentrations came from another thread, and the hypocholorite is supposed to degrade/dissipate in 24 hrs, so I'm a bit skeptical as to buildup, but I'll back off to once a week. Certainly more convenient!

Thundercat said:

My clones get veg res water from the time they have roots basically. You can always start lower and raise it. I also usually only add it every 3-4 days so there should never be any build up in the system. Between doses all the existing chlorine should have evaped back out of he system.

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sounds like he's stacking his ppms on top of each other. 3 becomes 2 becomes 5 become 4 becomes 7 etc.

graying.geek said:

Alternating days at the same concentrations came from another thread, and the hypocholorite is supposed to degrade/dissipate in 24 hrs, so I'm a bit skeptical as to buildup, but I'll back off to once a week. Certainly more convenient!

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is this for prevention or do you have rot now? if prevention once a week is good. for rot, twice a week maybe.

Twice a week is about what I do, and is half as much as every other day. I know it might all evap in 24 hours but I've always err'd on the side of less.

myke said:

Sounds like you got it worked out,the vit B will gunk up your air stones so mix it well in a separate bucket first.
Cover the lids with something to reflect that LED light.

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I always mix my nutes and such in a separate bucket and then add to my res. So the B vits are well mixed before they ever hit the res.

I also noticed a couple of gnats flying around so I Mylar taped the top of the buckets to keep them out and keep the res sealed and protected.

The girls are recovering but one is definitely unhappy. Probably because I trimmed back her damaged roots.

Last res check I noticed some roots looking unhappy and not growing, so I did some light tugs and a lot of the “infected” roots came off. So I cleaned her up of the bad roots and she’s been in recovery since.

The other girl on the right has already recovered well and the roots are growing every day!

Thanks for the help everyone!

graying.geek said:

So I'm trying to switch from H2O2 to Calcium Hypochlorite but seem to be struggling with concentrations. Note the grams of Ca(Cl0)2 is adjusted for the Burnout-73 being 73% hypochlorite and each molecule being 72.9% ClO- by mass, which, from what I read, is the PPM you want to measure.

Here's my method: I add 5.5g 73% Ca(ClO)2 to 1 liter H2O to give me a 4000 PPM ClO- stock solution. I'll then add 80ml of that to my 80 liter res to give me 4 PPM ClO-, correct?

The peroxide worked great, but is 10x the cost of burnout, hence my desire to switch. Problem is I've had 2 plants die inexplicably after switching so I assume there's something wrong with either my understanding or my calcs.

TIA.

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Sounds like you should open up your own thread and ask for help instead of hijacking mine.... Just courteous...

sadanimalknight said:

Sounds like you should open up your own thread and ask for help instead of hijacking mine.... Just courteous...

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Yep, sorry. Seemed relevant in the beginning but spun out of control. Regrets....

graying.geek said:

Yep, sorry. Seemed relevant in the beginning but spun out of control. Regrets....

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It’s all good friend.

I’m still not out of the woods with my girls, didn’t want to see this thread spin out of control off topic. Just Incase others take the same path I’m on.

Nothing Annoys me more than unresolved or off topic threads. As someone who often looks to forums for help or info I come across threads that have a title that matches my situation as is either unanswered or just full of irrelevant info.

But it’s all good.
Good luck with your journey!



Also, I’m doing a res change today so we shall see how the roots are doing.

Well, even with the new nutes and such I’m still seeing the gunk affect any root that’s in the water....

Res is clean, airstone is clean, pretty much everything but the roots are clean.....

This is rather annoying....

i would make a solution of peroxide and water and dunk each netpot in that many times. i would guess that running it thru just the drip ring is not getting into every nook and cranny.

and for the size of those plants, i'd expect a much greater mass of roots. how much did you trim off?

rkymtnman said:

i would make a solution of peroxide and water and dunk each netpot in that many times. i would guess that running it thru just the drip ring is not getting into every nook and cranny.

and for the size of those plants, i'd expect a much greater mass of roots. how much did you trim off?

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I mean I ran those rings for a day and sprayed everything down with h202 and a sink sprayer. So hard to imagine I didn’t throughly soak it. My fears is the porous growstones are harboring the bastards.

I’m going to run 6ml a gal of 34% h202 in this nute changeout and keep the drip ring on and see if that helps any. I may just have to get pool shock after all but for now I’ll run the h202 since I have 1/3 a gal left.

As far as root trimming, take a look at the third and fourth photo of my original post. That big gunked up root mass was shedding worse than my dog into the bucket and sink when hosed down. So, during my last res change I “gently” tugged on the sickly roots to remove any that were super messed up.

So, most of that mass came off. You can see how they filed out laterally since.

That girl has been super unhappy since the root slaughter and is starting to show some def’s and lack of growth since. Fortunately the roots are recovering somewhat, I just need to fix this gunk issue.

I’m totally switching to hydroton next run to hopefully not have such a nightmare....

sadanimalknight said:

I’m totally switching to hydroton next run to hopefully not have such a nightmare

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i run growstones too. they won't harbor any more nasties than hydroton.

so just to be clear, you aren't using RAW anymore. what is your nute recipe now? nutes and additives?

rkymtnman said:

i run growstones too. they won't harbor any more nasties than hydroton.

so just to be clear, you aren't using RAW anymore. what is your nute recipe now? nutes and additives?

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Not running RAW.

Just K4L hydro grow blend (the one without the bennies)
K4L B Vit.
H202.

3/4tsp each of the two part grow (430ppm.)
literal pinch of B Vit.
18ml H202

Ph of 5.5

Well, as an update. Girls are improving greatly with the conversion to K4L nutes and a sterile res.

Roots have started growing great and my res has almost 0 fluctuations. Ph and ppm remain about the same as when I start a fresh res and the girls are drinking a good amount of water in the last 3 days (about a gallon per plant)

I noticed one of the girls didn’t seem to be growing as fast as the other. Upon checking I discovered the drip ring had clogged and the roots were not as developed as the one with a working drip ring. After clearing out that ring, the roots have started to really take off!

I’m close to my res change scedual and plan on bumping up the ppm to 600ish this week.

Looks like I’m out of slime hell and back on track!

Thanks for all the help everyone! Can’t wait to see these girls flower! I’m worried my setup is too small now! Lol

As a recap

-NPK industries RAW grow is NOT suited for DWC regardless of what they say.

-EWC/myco tea did get rid of my original Cyanobacteria issue but opened up the gate to diatom issues that fed off the stuff in the RAW nutes

-Switching to a “synthetic” salt based nutes and incorporating h202 cleaned up the diatom issue

-Roots are white and healthy (mostly, some still are stained a little brown) and growth is back on track.

In the end I am very pleased with K4L nutes and recommend them. (Pick your poison, we all have what we like to use)

Sorry for the LED washed out pics. The lights were on and I didn’t want to shut them off just for a few photos. I didn’t think anyone would mind since they don’t need to be “looked at”.