DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Redoctober said:

Looks fine to me. Sometimes they can release pigment that makes them red, usually the stems of the fan leaves exhibit this. This is perfectly natural. The stems themselves can turn brown and lignify as a stress response. Lignin is a precursor to bark, which forms anyway when the stem gets thick enough - it has to in order to support its own weight. In hydro, I've had times where the pH is off for a few days and I begin to get brown stripes on the stems. It's not ideal because lignin restricts growth potential, but when you correct the issues, be they pH, mites, nutrient deficiency, root rot etc. the stems will turn back to a nice healthy green. Just happened to me as a matter of fact.

I had a plant with bad root rot, but I mixed in the tea and two weeks later the upper part of the plant is now flourishing. It's sometimes not possible to convert back the part of a plant if it is badly damaged, but you can get new nice upper growth.

Your plant looks fine though. She'll grow up nice and healthy. You have nothing to worry about

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that's great news m8 and thanks for the reassuring comments.

Spanky84 said:

That might again be a problem because filter at the intake would probably get clogged very quickly and stop the pump from working (or even damage it).

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Yeah it probably isn't worth it. Oh well, air stones it is then!

Does anyone recall if Heisenberg said it's okay to use an organic guano product like Budswel in the tea or in a RDWC setup?

Budswel Info: "The Guano Company’s Budswel is a finely sifted mixture of high-phosphorus bat guano,
worm castings and seabird guano. Use to boost production in fruit trees and fruit-bearing vines like
watermelon, cantaloupe, squash and grapes. Also an excellent base mix for roses or flowering beds.
May be combined with Super Tea."

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Can brown sugar be used in place of molasses in tea?

Yes, I'm using brown sugar. 6,5 g on 2,5 L of tea seems to do the trick.

this looks bad 48 hr after tea, roots look black no smell or is this what it looks like working?

This does not look good. Please provide us with a bit more info on your grow. How have you been brewing your tea, whats your res temp, what are you adding, what procedures are you taking to get rid of the problem etc.

From what I have gathered form my experience and reading this thread, you should:
1) Make sure your res is 100% light proof
2) Make sure your temps are under 70F (21C)
3) Make sure you have enough bubbles (they say at least 1W pump per gallon is what you are aiming for (ofcourse you could have a factory grade compressor it won't help you if your airstones are tiny or cloged).
4) Never add crap to your res. By crap I mean almost any aditive your hydro store guy will try to sell you. You only need pure inorganic nutes and some microbe tea.
5) Brew your tea properly. My formula for 2,5L of tea is: handfull of EWC (ancient forest seems to be the king, but I use locally made EWC available in my country), 6,5 g of unrefined brown sugar (Heisenberg uses molases but I cant get my hands on those), quarter of a teaspoon of great white and some nitro/aquarium cleaner bacteria I ordered online (its called nitripro, it seems t ohelp keep things clean). Add everything, shake violently so that ewc breaks into small pieces, add water and bubble for 48 hours. My room is a bir cold so I add a small aquarium heater so that temps are 22 to 25 C in the brew. With each res change I take about 100 mL of tea, mix in about quarter of a teaspoon of ZHO and pour directly on the root mass hanging in an empty bucket before adding water.
6) If you already have slime, dump your res, take a sprinkle bottle with some water (tapwater is just fine for this one) and use the spray to clean as much slime as possible. If there are roots that are dead beyond recovery (decomposing, falling apart when touched), cut those off. Then fill your bucket with pure RO water, add some H2O2 (I put 120 mL 3% peroxide in 5 gal res) and let it bubble for a day. Next day dump that water, wash the roots, put fresh water with a bit of nutes (not full dose) and add tea directly on the roots as mentioned above. NEVER add H2O2 and bennies at the same time as H2O2 will kill them and make them slime brakefast.
7) Mantain propper res hygiene at all times. Never allow organic mater to accumulate in your res. Specially if you are recovering from a slime problem clean as often as you can, and if you see any dead roots floating around filter them out. Starvation is what this method is all about. We are trying to starve the slime, so we are inviting all kinds of gursts to come eat all their food. If you leave a sweedish table of organic matter in your res this will ofcourse fail.

i read the whole 300 plus pages to start
know what i did wrong used flora nova grow and rapid start
1) Make sure your res is 100% light proof 2) Make sure your temps are under 70F (72 rite now was 68 )
3) Make sure you have enough bubbles ( looks good )
tea was made as page one stated to make ( look and smelled good )
this clone look bad from day one. have a nice looking clone roots look the same, have one roots are still white.

just don't know if i had slim or root rot

ordered Dutch master to start with. added tea to the one with white roots not changing ro water till i get nutrient. seems that's when it starts roots not in water yet just started to pop out sides of 10 inch net pot plant still growing
sorry can't type or spell good
is the black normal with the slim or just brown slimy looking is it to late i hear taps playing... last week roots were brown slimy looking right after nutrient change made tea that's what i got now brown and black roots , waited 12 hrs added nutrient wrong stuff i know now (flora nova ) about page 200 or so
tea updated recipe:
1 tsp mycogrow per gallon
1 tsp of ZHO per gallon
3/4 tbs molasses per gallon
1 handful ancient forest per 2 gallon
used Physan 20 first to clean good rinse the roots the black was just a little spot over night wow that's all you see
is it too late time will tell

update
the black slim washed off with warm water
added one cup tea day 3
all 3 dwc have the slim now

Its a thing to be going through let alone witnessing...
drop your rez clean system with hydrogen peroxide and roots too.. Make a quick tea with just the ewc and inoculate plants pronto to prevent further damage...ditch old tea..its not working..try a new recipe..

How long did you brew for? Did you gas off the chlorine before brewing?

scroga said:

how long did you brew for? did you gas off the chlorine before brewing?

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^^^this^^^

One thing all tea brewers neen to get if you plan on trying new resipes or to just know the diversity
of your tea! (Get a microscope)

transplanted one plant to soil before slim takes over just started to slim (looks ok )
i'm thinking to late for the one leaves are drying up
the black came back on roots

going to start over
still going to try and save the one plant brewing new tea

take 3
new tea and use from start of grow this time all dutch master line up this time (not dm zone don't work)
Thank You Mr Heisenberg
DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

So long as they still got some good leaves their savable...but alas infected

i pulled the one with bad leaves root rot at the stem i'm thinking or slimmed

there was new white roots starting at the stem hard to see in pic
one left going to try and save leaves are just starting to yellow

This is from another thread I posted but I'm trying everywhere so I;m hoping someone here could help. I had an algae problem before I added the plants. This is all after I initially noticed brown slime when i was going to transplant. Here is my problem and questions... O.K. so I cleaned out my system with a shit ton of hydrogen peroxide, emptied the system, flushed again then added ro water with cyco nutes (225 ppm) and ph'd to 5.5. I ordered great white bennies ( comparable to mycogrow) to make a tea as per heisenbergs instructions. the bennies were two days away but I was afraid of damaging the roots during transplant if I waited any longer to place them in the hydroton and net pots so I panicked like a noob and prematurely placed them in the system before adding the bennies. Everything was looking good. Ph was stable and checked every 3 hours. Besides my water sometimes rising to the high side {up to 75 degrees but normally at 70} everything was looking stable. Yesterday morning I got my bennies and started my tea. As soon as I finished my tea I checked the ph of my systems water {as I do every four hours} and it had risen to 6.8. I removed my airstone from the rez and checked the system... Of course the damned algae is back. So again like a noob I panicked and added the great white directly to the system at 8 scoops per 100 gallons as per the directions in an attemp to get a leg up on the algae before it kills me. So my questions are... Should I just keep the water I have in the system and hope the Great white alone will take care of it? Should I leave the water I have and then supplement with the tea as soon as its ready and if so should I still dose at heisenbergs instructions of 1 cup per gallon, even though the great white bennies are already in there? Should I wait until the tea is finished then drain, flush with h202, flush again with water and then add ro water with the tea and nutes? Or should I just start over? the roots still arent out of the netpot so they are very immature and Im not sure if any of this would shock them. I have no problem with hard work but Id hate to see alot of effort and money wasted on bennies if im just gonna have to restart again. Also the problem is making it very hard to keep the ph below 6. How long would it take the bennies to start to help with that? I am having to use alot of ph down every few hours and im sure it cant be good for the babies. I am completely at everyone heres mercy and have appreciated all of the great advice. Hopefully we can fix this. Thanks again.

Hers a link to my innitial post with system info if that helps any... https://www.rollitup.org/dwc-bubbleponics/802015-urgent-brown-algae-undercurrent.html

Is the ph still rising after adding great white?

The ph actually started rising after the great white. Before it would take a few hours to hit 6.8 os so. After great white it takes about an hour or so. I ph it back to 5.5 then it raises. It seems to take alot of ph down to lower it below 5.8 almost like the great white is phing the water. Cant figure this shit out.