DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Fuck it off and start again..prolly got that much.acid in your system now..bettr to be safe than sodrry..yes one does spend some money on nuts and other products trying to sort this shit..focus on getting your ewc in there and you should start having a win...sorry about grammer , typing is near impossible on this phone..

Spelling excused sir. I hate typing on this god damned thing too. I'm leaning more and more torwards starting over because I can run the system for a week while the seeds germ to make sure this shot is dead for good. I figure if O run ot for a week with bennies before I replant I can be sure I killed it. Terry just informed me I can just transplant them to soil since algae hate slime. I will probably just put them in soil and try my hand at skipping veg and flowering after seedling stage. Wanted to try it before but was too busy building the dwc. Since Ill have a feww weeks to kill while I wait for new seeds to get delivered and germ nows as good a time as any. Thanks for the help bro. Im gonna upload vid of my setup in a couple minutes on my thread if your interested.

Here is the link to my setup if that helps any http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBejwi1GPzo I built it myself

If you guys are using tap water with chloramine you should dechlorinated it with conditioner from the pet store. I have found my tap water renders aquashield, pondzyme, and heisenberg tea ineffective.10 ml of conditioner instantly makes 100 gallons of tap water safe to drink and for fish/plants.

Hydroburn said:

If you guys are using tap water with chloramine you should dechlorinated it with conditioner from the pet store. I have found my tap water renders aquashield, pondzyme, and heisenberg tea ineffective.10 ml of conditioner instantly makes 100 gallons of tap water safe to drink and for fish/plants.

Click to expand...

Interesting thanx

Mr. Heisenberg is it possible running the brewer all the time and culture the benes by adding sugar or molasses once every few days? Probably also need to change the worm castings once a few weeks. This way we don't have to buy any more mycos (the expensive one of the ingredients). Small time grower don't have to worry about tea expiring and large scale growers would have unlimited supply of the tea.

Has anyone here tried colloidal silver (colloidal shield)? My local hydro store said it will kill it and any other disease. I cant find much about it though. They said I can just add it to my system then flush and it will kill everything.

Yourass, constant tea brewing is not recomended because after some time one type of microorganism will outgrow all others and you'll end up with greatly decreased diversity or even monoculture.

Random avatar, I did a quick google search and found several articles describing the negative effects of Ag+ ions on root elongation. Also, I don't know if Ag ions are mobile in plant. If they are they would probably acumulate in plant tisues.

Spanky84 said:

Yourass, constant tea brewing is not recomended because after some time one type of microorganism will outgrow all others and you'll end up with greatly decreased diversity or even monoculture.

Random avatar, I did a quick google search and found several articles describing the negative effects of Ag+ ions on root elongation. Also, I don't know if Ag ions are mobile in plant. If they are they would probably acumulate in plant tisues.

Click to expand...

wouldn't the advice you gave me with regards to my dwc issues work in this scenario also???? a good clean, just ph'd water with Orca/Voodoo Juice or other Bacillium packed product for a few days. that advice served me well.... very well. with thanks to Spanky84....
all thanks to Spanky's advice......

The reason that wouldnt work is because the plants are so young and the fungus grew fast. Has anyone actually tried the colloidal silver. My store had to call an expert because they had never run into this type of brown algae. The pro said use quarter strength, run for 3 days then drain. Supposedly the plants know to avoid the silver so it wont disturb their oxygen levels. I just added it now so we shall know soon enough. Supposedly works in a day. I feel like the first monkey they shot into space. Being the test case is scary.

Spanky thanks. That makes sense.

RandomAvatar said:

The reason that wouldnt work is because the plants are so young and the fungus grew fast. Has anyone actually tried the colloidal silver. My store had to call an expert because they had never run into this type of brown algae. The pro said use quarter strength, run for 3 days then drain. Supposedly the plants know to avoid the silver so it wont disturb their oxygen levels. I just added it now so we shall know soon enough. Supposedly works in a day. I feel like the first monkey they shot into space. Being the test case is scary.

Click to expand...

I know the feeling, but that is how it goes. We will try to help you as much as we can but at the end you have to figure out what works for you by trial and error. In any case, my sugestion is, brew some tea and when you change your res in three days wash your roots with water and imediately pour some fresh tea (time your brewing so that 48 h mark comes exactly when you'll be doing the change) over your roots holding them above new res. That way if this product works and kills most of the microorganisms, you'll add a diverse supply of new organisms that will hang out at the rootzone preventing the slime from taking over once more.

Thanks for all the useful help. I added the colloidal silver already. Im hoping it works because it is best at 72 degrees so I can run a little hotter. I am running bennies in my individual bubble buckets. Im hoping the silver keeps it sterile like they said because undercurrent recommended keeping the system sterile anyway. Thanks again for all the info.

In my opinion, you can never keep a res sterile. Chemicals you put in will inhibit microorganism growth to a point, but will never kill 100% of everything in concentrations that are safe for plants roots. Both roots and microorganisms are living cells, and although roots are tougher, chemicals have no way of distinguishing and selectively acting on just one type of cell.

What you are actually doing is puting a concentration of chemicals that is near the sweet spot where roots will not be badly affected, but microorganisms will be sufficiently suppressed not to take over everything betweeen res changes. If you already have slime, that approach might not work because you'll always have spores living in there (no mater how well you clean they'll be there, trust me), and little other microorganisms on the roots mean once those spores hatch there will be nothing stoping them from taking over everything really fast once your chemical concentration drops just slightly or there is sufficient food that they can multiply faster then the chemical is killing them. That's why people using H2O2 sometimes see it fail after some time.

I'm no RDWC or sterile expert, but that's what I got from reading on the forums about this topic...

Also, as I said, I'd be careful aout adding silver for a long period of time as it acts in a way similar to heavy metals, acumulating in organisms over time and poisoning its tisues.

I am new to this forum but have seen some of the best advise here so I decided to invade Two question on this topic..First I will start with saying I am using DWC (not recirculating) with GH Flora series and I've got the slime mass and brown algae.

1- Do I still continue to use synthetic nutes like GH flora series with the tea?
If so, recomened dosages for simi young plants?

2- How long or how many times can I add tea before I have change out the bucket?

Great post by the way and I am excited to be apart of the community.

I might be wrong, but I'm seing shitload of people using GH flora and having slime problems. I wonder if its only because its a poppular product or is there a pattern...

1) Yes, you should always use pure synthetic nutes in DWC
2) I don't think there is a limit, but you should change your res weekly for other reasons.

Thanx! I will continue my normal dosage of nutes with tea. Thank you thank you!

I use flora, and was having issues as well with brown nutes and slimy res, but i dont think the nutes were the issue honestly

So thats it then dear people of DWC. Don't use flora nova.