DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Only the Great White, unfortunately. I would have preferred Ancient Forest, but convenience determines action at times. If need be, I can throw some into the mix with future batches, when I get around to a store that carries EWC.

I'm still optimistic the Great White has a good population. At the very least, if all new roots are immune to slime from this point forward I'll be quite pleased.

Hey guys. I've got a few questions.

First off. Heisenburg, great thread. it is really comforting that you obviously know your shit. not to mention all these guys saying how much your recipe improved their grow.

my tea has been brewing for 44 hours. i couldnt get ancient forest, but the shit i got is supposedly an old school staple. (says the hydro guy) they also didnt have aquashield and ZHO powder so i bought great white and called it good.

my questions:

my tea doesnt have alot of foam, just a thin layer of standing bubbles, Is it bad if i dont have a healthy foam?

#2
what i have must be the dreaded brown slime because my ph has been rising like crazy and it looks like it, aside from the fact that it hasnt turned brown, it is white.

you cats shouldnt need a pic cuz it looks just like the brown slime only its white.

could this be cause ive been treating it with H202? is it something entirely different?

To thunder99, my slime starts out clear, then turns cloudy before the roots underneath start to rot and turn brown. Any organic matter or H2O2 makes it worse. Increased oxygenation doesn't help either.

Today's results:

No new slime this time, and pH was completely stable all across the board, not even a slight shift (I haven't had pH this stable in months).

The new slime was beginning to turn brown, so I gave the extra slimy girls a thirty minute drench in running, chlorinated tap water before applying the tea. They began to droop fairly quickly, probably because I was quickly killing off all the beneficial beasties they are relying on right now. This actually makes me optimistic, gives me evidence the GW beasties are forming a relationship with my girls.

Based on these observations, I'm fairly certain my first application of Great White tea was indeed pre-mature, and the last one was fully mature, so I gave the girls one plus one half the dose as the previous two doses. If they look good next time, I may do double, fill 10% of the res with tea.

I'll be more careful not to add pre-mature tea with future batches.

Thanks vh13.

i wasnt using much h202 cause i didnt feel comfortable treating my ladies with such a harsh chemical, so hopefully i didnt do much damage. it started out clear, and i guess you could say it is cloudy. i would say it is a light tan color.

its been about 20 hours since inoculation. i came home from work to find that my ph had barely rose since early this morning and the strong fungal smell that was in the room is gone. my roots still have nasty white/light tan clumps of death on them but the roots up near the net pot that were previously brown and sickly now look much better, they are well on their way to being white again (i think). also the buds grew slightly, and in the past 5 days i hadn't noticed any growth so hopefully this is a good sign.


i hope im home free! what do you guys think?

hey Vh13,

when you say pre-mature do you mean that you didnt brew it for the full 48 hours? or that even after 48 hours they still werent mature.

I brewed a few hours short of 48, but night time temperatures were lower then normal, so I don't think the microbes bred enough to eat up all the sugar. After roughly four days of brewing the tea no longer encourages slime. My last application (this morning) was brewed for roughly six days, waiting on the results.

I plan to keep a tea brewing for 10 days before I use it all up and start another batch.

For the zho powder spoon mine has two ends, one big one small, which do you do?

The amount of foam that forms when I brew my tea depends on how much EWC I use. I've never brewed without EWC so I don't know if the foam shows up with just great white. I have made batches where the foam was barely forming and it still worked just fine.

Thor1911 said:

For the zho powder spoon mine has two ends, one big one small, which do you do?

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I use about 1/2 small scoop for 2.5 gallons.

Thanks Heisenberg. I am using EWC and Great White. I'm not sure if I can say that i had a foam, to me it seemed like more of a thin layer of standing bubbles. instead of being a tight pattern of small bubbles it consisted of larger bubbles, you could still distinctively see the brown color of the liquid below.

I inoculated my system on Wednesday but before I got slimed I had a res change scheduled for Sunday. I'm going to go ahead and change it again with a fresh batch of what i hope will be a more concentrated batch of tea that re-encourages me with some nice foam. I also plan on taking more time while sterilizing and taking my girls under the kitchen sink sprayer for a quick scrape/rinse off.

Does anyone think that by attempting to remove some slime by hand could do more damage that good seeing as how I will be reintroducing the tea?

thunder99 said:

Thanks Heisenberg. I am using EWC and Great White. I'm not sure if I can say that i had a foam, to me it seemed like more of a thin layer of standing bubbles. instead of being a tight pattern of small bubbles it consisted of larger bubbles, you could still distinctively see the brown color of the liquid below.

I inoculated my system on Wednesday but before I got slimed I had a res change scheduled for Sunday. I'm going to go ahead and change it again with a fresh batch of what i hope will be a more concentrated batch of tea that re-encourages me with some nice foam. I also plan on taking more time while sterilizing and taking my girls under the kitchen sink sprayer for a quick scrape/rinse off.

Does anyone think that by attempting to remove some slime by hand could do more damage that good seeing as how I will be reintroducing the tea?

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Thunder I would've recommended to stay strictly on his recipe, works 100%

Thor1911 said:

Thunder I would've recommended to stay strictly on his recipe, works 100%

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Oh for sure, I know it works becuase of everyones testimonies to that fact. My hydro store didn't carry the products recommended so i went with the great white. I will be surprised if Great White and EWC doesn't work because Great White has a bunch of Bacillus strains and two strains of Trichoderma as well as many different types of other random Mychorrhizae.

thunder99 said:

Oh for sure, I know it works becuase of everyones testimonies to that fact. My hydro store didn't carry the products recommended so i went with the great white. I will be surprised if Great White and EWC doesn't work because Great White has a bunch of Bacillus strains and two strains of Trichoderma as well as many different types of other random Mychorrhizae.

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Just ask them to order it, they'll have it next time they get a shipment in then. If you don't wanan do that then research these products http://www.genhydro.com/genhydro_US/subculture.html

Thor1911 said:

Just ask them to order it, they'll have it next time they get a shipment in then. If you don't wanan do that then research these products http://www.genhydro.com/genhydro_US/subculture.html

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Are you worried my tea won't be effective because I didn't purchase the exact ingredients Heisenberg suggested? I purchased the Great White thinking it would be sufficient, because it contained both of the key ingredients Heisenberg said to look out for.

I suggest aquashield+ZHO powder because they are the cheapest I have found and still do an excellent job. Pretty much any other product can be substituted, like the sub-b/m, great white, ect. The important things to look for are the trichoderma fungi and the bacillis bacteria. AN microbe products piranha and tarantula, for whatever reason, seem to make the slime 10 times worse, so stay away from those. When it's all said and done, the ancient forest EWC probably already has everything you need, the other stuff is just an extra safeguard.

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I thought it could be possible that Great White would work better since not many people have discussed personal experiences with using Great White, and it is supposedly a very good product. Usually you get what you pay for (or so I'm told) So since time is of the essence i couldn't be waiting for products to be shipped in. I took a stab at the Great White feeling optimistic.

thunder99 said:

I thought it could be possible that Great White would work better since not many people have discussed personal experiences with using Great White, and it is supposedly a very good product. Usually you get what you pay for (or so I'm told) So since time is of the essence i couldn't be waiting for products to be shipped in. I took a stab at the Great White feeling optimistic.

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This was my operating philosophy as well. My local hydro shops said they do not (now or plan to ever) stock "soil amendments."

I'm trying this strictly with GW, but I may throw in a small handful of local compost in my next batch. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a local beastie that eats this slime I picked up locally.

I also bought a bottle of Grandma's molasses, while at the grocers, which will also go in my next batch instead of brown sugar. I suspect my nice looking clumps were actually colonies feasting upon undissolved grains of sugar. Molasses should give me a more stew-like texture, rather then soupy grits; maybe I'll have more even results rather then spotty coverage.

11/6/2010 EDIT: Another res top off with 5% GW solution. I'm seeing some healthy new roots, not much though, so I clipped about 90% of the slime covered and dead roots. The pH is still pretty stable, considering this is the last top off before res change.

I also have another batch of GW brewing, this time with the Grandma's molasses and a pinch of local compost, over two years old, finer then sand and black as worm poop.

vh13 said:

11/6/2010 EDIT: Another res top off with 5% GW solution. I'm seeing some healthy new roots, not much though, so I clipped about 90% of the slime covered and dead roots. The pH is still pretty stable, considering this is the last top off before res change.

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Hey man, how did your plants react to cutting most of the afflicted roots?

thunder99 said:

Hey man, how did your plants react to cutting most of the afflicted roots?

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Well... they've never liked having their roots trimmed, but it's been necessary to battle the slime before now. Many leaves wilted and suffered from the loss of lower biomass.

I did a res change today, one eighth of a reservoir with a fresh batch of molasses+GW+compost brewed two days. The Grandma's certainly makes a smoother consistency, and there are lots of nice snappy bubbles now too!

My basil is now growing white roots at a normal pace. The dead roots (not covered in slime) are definitely breaking down now, they smell wonderful, like rich compost.

Another plant is growing slow, popping fresh roots (after recent heavy root trimming) despite a reservoir completely lined with slime. I suppose the micros in the res died off, and the slime is feasting, but the new roots seem adequately shielded.

The other girls are still in shock, or are still recovering slowly.

That shit scares me. I had the understanding that the bennies would clean up the sick roots. you know? Eat up all that nasty goop.

Was i wrong? Once afflicted always afflicted? I hope not. I don't think I would sleep if I had cut off 90% of my girls' roots.

thunder99 said:

That shit scares me. I had the understanding that the bennies would clean up the sick roots. you know? Eat up all that nasty goop.

Was i wrong? Once afflicted always afflicted? I hope not. I don't think I would sleep if I had cut off 90% of my girls' roots.

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the bennies killed all the goop in mine, also took care of affected roots, I didnt chop any roots off

thunder99 said:

That shit scares me. I had the understanding that the bennies would clean up the sick roots. you know? Eat up all that nasty goop.

Was i wrong? Once afflicted always afflicted? I hope not. I don't think I would sleep if I had cut off 90% of my girls' roots.

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Damaged roots are like damaged foliage; they rarely spring back to life. Keep an eye on the new growth. New shoots do not show up when slime is present. The bennies should be cleaning up your old roots and such, but it doesn't happen over night. I prefer to let mine hang over a sink and spray them vigorously until a lot of the dead roots have fallen off. I even give them a slight tug to see if they give way.

Yo Heisenberg-What base nutes do you use? Any addatives?

I've been having great succes using dyna-gro and am currently testing Humbolt Big Up powder with it in my DWC set up. I haven't had problems with this slime build-up, but I also use Hygrozyme in all my grows. Part of me says if it's not broke don't fix it but I'm tempted to ditch the Hyrgrozyme and give your tea a shot for a comparison. Have you ever tried Hygrozyme?