Urgent, brown algae in undercurrent.

Hi, I am running a custom 15 site under current dwc. I'll go into exact specs and start a grow journal tomorrow when i have more time. I have had the system running with a mild dose of hydrogen peroxide and bleach to clean out all the vegetable oil I used to get the pvc in the iniseals and clean any residual pvc cement that might have gotten by me during assembly. So my seedlings finally sprouted this morning and as I go to put the net pots in the lids I notice fxcking brown algae on the outer lips of my pvc pipes in the buckets. I am gonna make heisenbergs tea as soon as any stores open (its 421am here) but I was wondering what i should do to clean the bucket that would allow me to plant them tomorrow. I was thinking just a bunch of hydrogen peroxide and a little bleach but wasnt sure if thats the best solution. I wanna nip it in the bud before I put my fragile seedlings in the system. I am severely pressed for time (my father whad a heart attack and Ive been at the hospital all day). Normally I'd just hunt the boards for my answer but when I finally leave here I wont have long before I have to go back so time is important. If anyone could give me some good advice on how to rid yourself of brown algae when your system is empty I would greatly appreciate it. If I dont hear from anyone in the next couple hours ill just wind up running a shit ton of hydrogen peroxide and some bleach. Oh yeah the system holds roughly 210 gallons if that makes any difference in your answer. Thanks in advance and I will start a grow journal soon. Oops before I forget, I was germinating my seeds on the top of my res lid ( that now has algae inside) can the algae go airborne and infect my seedlings? If so should I already be worried? I spent like 300 on seeds ( a bunch of autos too ontop of the 15 for the undercurrent). I hope not, todays already been kind of a bummer. Oh well if you can help thanks. And before you answer please remember that I am already gonna make heisenbergs tea and run bennies, I just wanma take advantage of the empty system and get rid of the algae before I expose my roots.

pondzyme, or aquashield. Bleach or H202 will work but you will have to dump the system before you use the tea.

Cool. I plan on draining and refilling the system anyway before I put in the plants. Do you think my seedlings could be affected? They arent in the algae water but are near it. If so Id rather jist start over instead of risk stunted growth or other issues. Thanks for the fast reply. Really appreciate it.

Don't panic. Just treat. Use the tea asap. Meanwhile bleach or h2o2.

I doubt seedlings are a problem.

Your seedlings will be fine. Is this your first rdwc grow?

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Hey guys thanks for all the help. Sorry i took so long to reply. On top of my dads issues I had to put my cat down so its been a a shitty week. With all of your help i killed the algae. Just started the bennies today and planted the seedlings in the netpots. So some info on my system... its a homemade undercurrent system with fifteen13 gallon square buckets connected by 3 inch pvc and a 1200 gph danner pump. I am using evolution airstones hooked up to 2 alita 80 lpm air pumps( crazy airation). As for lights I am running two 600 - 1000 watt lumitek digital dimmable ballasts with sunmast er cool delux bulbs. As the plants grow I will be turning on more lights gradually, eventually there will be six lights total running between 600-1000 watts apiece ( depending on heat). For hps bulbs I will be running my hortilux bulbs. This is not my first grow but is my first dwc. If anyone is interested I can start a thread on how to build the undercurrent correctly and where to order the buckets and uniseals for cheap as hell, they were the hardest parts to locate for a reasonable price. I personally would rather build it myself since I find some of the parts current culture uses to be of cheap quality ( like the thin pvc and the fact the buckets leak light). As for my strains I am running thc bomb amd thc cluster bomb since I have had the best luck with the bomb seeds line ( super resilience to bugs, mold and the yeilds are fucking nutts. Hoping to pull atleast 8 a plant. I will start a journal as soon as life slows down a little and keep everyone updated. Thanks again. I was really freaking out about the algae.

Chiller is required. System is light proofed right?

Unfortunately I am too cash strapped at the moment to replace my chiller so I have been using frozen phed ice. The buckets are light proofed but a small amount of light was shining through the net pots. I cut small holes in paper plates and put them over the plants to block the light. It works well.

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. 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.

Welcome to the slime club. Good Luck

Yeah. This shit sucks. Starting to miss soil.

RandomAvatar said:

Yeah. This shit sucks. Starting to miss soil.

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You won't miss the fungas gnat larvae snacking on your roots though.

I was always lucky with soil except for my first time which was all my fault due to low nutes during flower. I always thought uc would be easier but this algae shit is ridiculous. I havent been able to sleep because I have to check ph every 3 hours. I'll be even more upset with dwc and myself if I have to scrap the seedling and start over again. I am not sure how affected the roots are as they are still in the netpot but since they are so young I;m fairly sure they wouldnt survive a sterilization dip. Would they?

i did not get the slim till the roots hit the water right after rez. change

good luck
this will be my third time trying this time starting with the tea
learning D.W.C in 5 gal. buckets (watched youtube seen a video about the slim it really sucks ) said to my self i won't get it.. sure as shit pow it's there ph just go's up and up screw it it hangs at 7.0
it don't care what water temp. is the slim has a mind of it's own

so far it's winning 2/0

I saw your posts on heisenbergs thread. That sucks. My problem is that i can see alot of slime in my pvc already. I submerged the net pots about an inch in the water to keep them wet. Im guessing it has already gotten to them. Im just not sure if I should even botherfixing them or just start some new seedlings and clean the res and run it with benniesfor a week before putting new seeds in to make sure it doesnt come back. I fucking hate wasting time and money if its just gonna come back as bad as before.

physan 20 works good to start up .5 ml. per 5 gal the stuff foams real good cleans every thing ( slim well come back tho )

i'm waiting for my clones to root to start again tea from day 1 this time No rapid start or flora nova

they say keep it simple ya rite


210 gal. ro water that's a lot to be changing

RandomAvatar said:

I was always lucky with soil except for my first time which was all my fault due to low nutes during flower. I always thought uc would be easier but this algae shit is ridiculous. I havent been able to sleep because I have to check ph every 3 hours. I'll be even more upset with dwc and myself if I have to scrap the seedling and start over again. I am not sure how affected the roots are as they are still in the netpot but since they are so young I;m fairly sure they wouldnt survive a sterilization dip. Would they?

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Once the system gets up and running you wont really have to worry about ph. I check every second day now and it never changes. So stick at it.
My water was affected early on with brown algea what I did was clean all my buckets with hot bleach then once I added all my water I added pondzyme (cheap as shit) thats all I use now.
You can't use pondzyme with h202 but you wont need h202 if you have pondzyme in there eating all the nastie stuff.
Goodluck don't give up. Its totally worth it

Thanks for all the info guys. About the pondzyme, I was told it isn't that good for plants. I dont mind having to spend the extra cash for bennies though. Do you guys have an opinion on wether I should try and clean the seedlings roots or should I just start over? Starting over is starting to sound better and better to me because I can clean the system and run it for a week or two with the bennies to make sure it doesn't come back while the seedlings germinate. I2icho how old were your plants when your algae happened and what did you use to soak the nutes? Since my roots arent out of the pots if I decide to try and repair them should I submerge the whole net pot in the sterilizing solution?

Pondzyme is for ponds obviously so fish and plants both live in ponds too so I don't see why it would be no good for your plants.
My plants were a few weeks old so still in seedling stage.
If it happened again I would definitely start over. There's always a chance it will come back if you didn't kill everything with the bleach.