Heisenburg/Mr Bond, please help!!!! (again)
OK so its been awhile since iv been here, had brown algae infect 2 separate undercurrent veg systems about 2 1/2 months ago. Started treating with the tea and had great results, plants rebounded and are healthy as can be in flower. When i filled up the flower systems, i scrubbed the ish out of the veg systems, sterilized the 2 veg systems (i must admit one was cleaned better than the other) and new cuttings were put in. It has been bout 5 weeks now for the new cuts, and i have been treating with maintenance levels (roughly 1 cup per gallon) of the tea since day 1 about 2x a week. 2 weeks ago i had to leave town for a week and no tea was given to them for 7 full days. It seems as if the brown sludge was starting to make a comeback so i have been giving them tons of tea (3x in the last 7 days) and at a higher dosage, like 3-4 gallons of teac for 100 gallons of water. i went in to the room yesterday and 2 plants looked like they were dying, very droopy like they haven't been drinking any water. I freaked out, drained the system to wash out most of the bad stuff, then put new nutes (a&b base, magical, 80ml of root excel, and about 4 gallons of tea. when i went back their today, the sludge is WAY worse since yesterday, and the 2 really sick plants i dont think are gonna make it.... Soooo what to do???
My thoughts are i never really use root excel, so by using it did it make my problem worse? also, i didnt realize until after i was done that by draining the system and starting over with new fresh nutes and tea i am essentially wiping out any establishment of good bennies that have colonized??
part of me wants to give it a few days to see if there is any kind of response from the tea, and the other want to go the physan20 route or a few days to try and kill it, drain and then re-fill with fresh nutes, new batch of tea and i hate to say it but no root excell.
please chime in with your expertise, you both have helped me so much in the past and now i feel like giving up....this algae seems to never go away!!!!!!!
lastly, what would recommend to sterilize the system to prepare the best for next round?
many thanks~!!!!!
Hi Diablo,
It sounds like everything was working out well for you with the tea until very recently. When you were adding normal maintenance amounts of tea to your system, the bennies were perpetually being refreshed and kept the biological diversity high enough to dominate any types of slime that would try to creep in. Unfortunately you went away for that full week... in that time, I imagine that temperature or just the lack of fresh bennies helped foster in the first stages of a slime infection. Perhaps the bennies began to die since they didn't have an adequate food supply (due to lack of fresh bennies) and were quickly turned into food for the bad bennies/slime that had crept in due to another circumstance (like temperature, amount of dissolved oxygen, etc). What is the temperature of your rez? Since your cuttings are still pretty young and in veg, they are a lot more susceptible to infection since they are still establishing their root base.
As for yesterday, the two droopy plants, how do their roots look? If they are all slimed up, that would be the reason for their droopiness... You are correct in your observation that draining the system and starting over with fresh nutes does wipe out any establishment of good bennies, BUT... if you have a slime infestation, then there probably aren't very many good bennies left... they turned into lunch. lol
You said you drained and refilled the system, but it doesn't sound like you did a full cleaning on it (scrub with hot water & H202/isopropyl/bleach, rinse). Heisenberg has stated that a strong tea inoculation, with maintenance tea added every 3 days or so, should be enough to reverse and fight the slime, however he also states that it is important to practice proper rez conditions. While I have seen that do the job (just adding the tea without a rez cleaning), I have also seen more severe slime infestations that required a full cleaning/sterilization in order to halt the slime growth -- simply adding the tea may not be enough if the slime has exploded. My understanding and experience with this tea is that it works with maximum effectiveness for recovery if proper rez conditions are practiced, specifically including the sterilization of your system prior to inoculation. If there is active slime in the system when it is refilled, that mass of bad bacteria can quickly consume the fresh bennies from the tea, and subsequently cause the slime to get even worse in a rather short period of time. If the system is sanitized, but the roots have been slimed over, recovery can be quite quick, as the mass of bennies in the tea can quickly consume the bad bacteria on the roots. If the system is full of slime though, it can easily overwhelm any amount of bennies you add in, especially in a RDWC environment.
About the Roots Excel. According to House & Garden, Roots Excel has some 'very important' bacteria that thrives in an anaerobic environment. This isn't necessarily the problem, but it may not exactly help things. Heisenberg has stated that Roots Excel is a great product, but used in combination with the tea greatly reduces its effectiveness and value (since its expensive). As great as Roots Excel is, it probably only offers a handful of bennies vs. the diverse tens of thousands you'll get from a proper tea brew. I would imagine that the mass diversity of a proper tea would quickly consume a lot of the bacteria to be found in Roots Excel, just as it consumes the bad bacteria in a slime infestation. If anything, add some to your tea brew but don't add any into the rez. Or, don't use it at all as a test.
About your dosage. Heisenberg's formula puts maintenance tea at about 1 cup per 5-10 gallons. For slime fighting and initial inoculation though, its really more like 1 cup per 1 gallon. Quick calculations tell me that should put you around 6 gallons of tea for an initial inoculation, and I would say an additional gallon for upkeep would be sufficient?
As for sterilization, a good cleaning with hot water and H202 goes a long way. Some people find comfort and ease in using something like Physan20, but it has also been mentioned in this thread by other users that sometimes not even Physan20 or DM Zone can combat the slime, depending on the severity of the infection. I have never used Physan20 so I may not be able to provide much advice here. But I think it's unnecessary for you to use it if you just give the system a good once-over cleaning and a proper tea brew. Also as part of your inoculation, be sure to pour some tea over the root crown of each plant to maximize the effectiveness of the tea. On your last item about hydro-fungicide... again, shouldn't be necessary with a proper tea brew. If I recall correctly, this slime generally isn't a fungi anyway, it's more of a bacterial bio-film. Plus if you use ZHO, Sub-M, or related products in your tea, they provide sufficient beneficial fungi into the mix. Perhaps the Physan20 & hydro-fungicide would be easier for you to administer in your RDWC environment, rather than scrubbing the whole thing, but it would be crucial to rinse it completely clean. Any Physan20 left in the system when fired up would decimate any bennies you add, and potentially throw you back into infection territory.
Well hopefully I didn't talk too much. As an international super spy, I was always taught to keep my mouth shut. MI6 is probably reading this and thinking I'm giving away government secrets. LOL
Cheers mate, hope this helps... let us know. Post some root pictures if you feel so inclined.
Bond... Mr. Bond.
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EDIT: See, I talked so much that Heisenberg beat me to the punch. Haha...
Doc is there a reason why the roots love to cling to the tea particles?
Please note that I didnt rinse the top near the net pots. I did not want to stress the plants nor the bennies in that area. Not sure if it would have or not though. 
Do they look fine to you Heisenberg?
