Undercurrent Culture!!!! looks like it really kicks asss!!!

Yes. RO systems do not disenfect water, try removal all the minerals from the water.

The amount of disinformation in this thread is a really pretty staggering.

If you get the slime, the slime is always going to be there ready to strike. I have run the tea with excellent results. Every time I try and run sterile I have problems. Chlorine can prevent it but the one time I dosed, I dosed a little high and the plants were shocked for about a week. If I had one or two plants I would try again. But, I have 14 plants under 14 600's. if a crop
Fails on me then I lose thousands in electric bills. Which is not an option.

The tea is easy and works great. It can even prevent outbreaks in warmer waters. I can't recommend it enough. Check out the "how to breed beneficial bacteria" thread. All the info is there along with many success stories. H2o2 and zone ain't going to do jack shit to fight Cyanobacteria. Nether is cold water, more air, or total light proofing.

Cheers

I have had my sights fixed on the Current Culture gear for a while as i've seen it produce absolute beasts! I'd love to have one and have been toying with the idea of building a modified setup based on the design. I currently just rigged up 10 waterfarms in series circulating, but my high ass put the entire thing together with the standard 'blue' water farm tube and i got algae and brown slime galore and it almost ruined the babies. It was literally out of control, on the roots, in the tubing it was nasty.

Anyways, I drained everything and sterilized all the buckets and res with a mild bleach solution. I covered all the tubing up and then started with fresh solution with 10 ML of Aqua Shield/ gallon. It's been about 3 weeks now and there are no signs of any slime, or algae. Whatever kind of bacteria is in the Aqua shield is keeping the bad stuff at bay. Chilller set to 67

Whaddabout UV sterilization to kill cyanobacteria if it works?

onthedl0008 said:

Whaddabout UV sterilization to kill cyanobacteria if it works?

Click to expand...

Tried it with a few fixtures from a Hospital ER and it didn't work. But now it's easy to sterilize all my scissors and blades before taking cuttings.

Yea i was just doing some research on it some people swear by uv and some say the same it doesnt work on cyanobacteria..
Im gonna keep researching this its very interesting knock on wood ive never had to deal with it.

Just put some beneficial bacteria like GreatWhite in there or use the Heisenberg tea for complete prevention.

Here is the deal on UV. In typical RIU fashion, some jackass will contradict me saying "I use it an it works awesome"

UV will kill ALL bacteria, even cyano. It will mutate the cell walls and that is the end of that. The problem however is that the organisms must pass through the light to be killed. So while your water (most of it) will not have the bacteria, your roots would still have it. You would have to treat the roots with the UV to sterilize them. So your Rez would be as sterile as my ex wife's vagina, the individual containers and roots would be as dirty as the stripper I'm currently fucking.

Lastly, UV is not good at penetrating through particulate matter. So if you use any nutes that cloud the water, the efficiency of your sterilization drops off quite rapidly.

The real issue however is the inability to treat the roots.


If aqua shield works than you likely had a bad case of pythium or some other anerobic bacteria. Aqua shield (bacillus) is good stuff and I use it in al my cloners.

I'm looking at getting a grow bot and a 12 ucxl. I will crush it. Can't wait to start. Within 3 months should be giving her a shot.

Fuck root rot... I'm converting to undercurrent and can't get the goddamn uniseals to not leak. Dealing with slime seems like a walk in the park compared to some damn uniseals.

I have heard that Vaseline can help to get them to seal up. They are a mother fucker for sure. However cheapest solution out there as bulkheads are hella expensive.

I gave the UC a solid try. Quality gear, good chiller, blah blah blah. I just could not keep the roots healthy without adding beni tea which just got tiresome. The system can produce amazing results and you can crush it. However, the system can also crush your grow..in the manner of about two days. I left my grow for a long weekend and came back to Wilting plants and plants and epic amounts of slime...GFCI that ran the chiller and air pump got triggered.

I have allot of plants and depend on my grows to "put food on my family". In the end, the 20%? Increase in growth rate wasn't worth the hassle. I just switched everything back to flood and drain. The growth is a little slower..maybe 2 weeks to achieve flower size and the yield is a tiny but lower. However, no chiller, no air pumps, no fuckkng clogged air stones and no brewing gross EWC tea all the time.

Back up pumps in my flood drain buckets hooked into a different circuit are all I need to avoid disaster. The time ad activation saved is sooo worth it to me.

Keep on keeping on though, like I said, the system can crush it!

I've been fuckin with it for the last 2 weekends I'm committed/obsessed now to get it water-tight.

Started out running 3/4" vinyl tubing in undercurrent config and was just sucking the return bucket dry because the tubing wasn't big enough for water flow. Switched to 2" PVC trying to seal it with Underwater JB Weld putty, but the shit doesn't bond to the side of the bucket so if you ever move anything, the seal is fucked.

Broke down and ordered $60 of uniseals and waited on shipping; bought 5g gray sterilites light-proofed with reflectix. Drilled smooth 3" holes and 3 buckets are leaking from a uniseal. Going to run a bead of aquarium silicon around it.

Using a 30g cooler for a res; with reflectix insulated totes and pvc, hoping to do something like 1-2 gallons of ice every 48 hours for temps.

Silicone should do it. Sometimes just tweaking the pipe a little bit gets it to seal. Try twisting the pipe. You can use a towel and a big screw driver to bind it and twist it.

If you have some extra cash you can build a DYI chiller out of dehu unit and SS wort chiller. I have a thread on it somewhere. Bee working flawless for me.

After like $350 and about 30-40 back breaking hours over the past 3 weekends fucking my hands up and trying different shit and materials, it still leaks. I've tried buckets, totes, smooth bore 3" holes with uni-seals, threaded couplings with washers, aquarium silicone, underwater jb weld putty, gasket maker etc etc. I'm in an apartment in a carpeted closet with neighbors below... I can't have leaks. Going to chalk it up as a huge fail and take the loss and convert back to DWC.

I have literally constructed, set up, and filled with water, 4 completely different undercurrent systems. My 5 plants have been sitting together in a 5g bucket with nothing but tap water the whole time. The hempy buckets are not connected... just sitting on top of hose.



The yellow shit is rubber cement I just slopped down. I had that joint water tight at one point.