Brown Slime Sludge After Adding Great White

[flyingsteve]

22 Gallon RDWC
70F +-1
GH FloraNova Grow nutes @ 500ppm NaCl


I recently had a problem with some brown algae (cyanobacteria) and I fixed it up using bleach. After 2 days the brown algae and the associated foam on top of the water cleared up and the cultivation tubs didn't have the nasty fish tank smell, followed by lots of new white roots forming.

At the same time I started the bleach treatment I started brewing some beneficial tea using Great White and Unsulphured molasses. I flushed the system and cleaned everything up, then added fresh tap water which I treated to remove the chlorine/chloramines and heavy metals. After that I added the gallon of beneficial tea and about 1/2 scoop of Great White directly to the system. I began brewing a new gallon of tea and about 36hrs later I also added that in to the system with yet more raw Great White, 1 scoop full this time.

About 8hrs after adding the second batch of Great White today I noticed a brown slime, almost sludge or muddy appearance forming on the walls of the cultivation tubs at the water line and on the air hoses. The new white roots that have been growing out over the past 2 days still look white and OK and the brown damaged and dead roots are starting to get this same slime on them. It wipes off of everything easily.

I'm suspecting that I added WAY too much GW and what I'm seeing is the crazy overgrowth of colonies. The res has a foresty kinda smell... Earthy I guess... But the slime when removed and sniffed smells nasty. The water is also cloudy brown... The GH Floranova Grow nutrients turn the water brown, but this is a cloudy brown.

OK, so is this normal and OK? Should I be worried? I'm thinking I just used way too much GW.

Thanks

I should also note that the pH went from 5.8 to 5.4 over the past roughly 10hrs... Also, I just opened up the canister filter and pulled the filters out and dumped the water. Didn't find anything unusual. There were some caked up bits of Great White in the bottom but when I had the brown algae there would be blooms floating around and I saw none of that. Reinforcing my thought that I simply added WAAY too much GW.

 

[dl290485]

hehe read the info they provide

I can't remember where I read it- but they tell you that the sludge that sinks to the bottom of the bucket is the carrying agent.

 

[dl290485]

Ah look how nice I am- I went and found it for you:


That's on their website.

 

[flyingsteve]

hehe read the info they provide

I can't remember where I read it- but they tell you that the sludge that sinks to the bottom of the bucket is the carrying agent.

Right, but this is on some of the roots, mostly the dead/damaged roots not the healthy white ones and it's on the sides of the cultivation tubs along the water line and some on the air hoses... It looks slimey but it wipes off cleanly and easily. I pulled up one of the air stones and it was clean, not caked or coated in anything. In my experience when you have a nasty infection the air stones get caked up and the slime is usually quite resilient and difficult to remove.

 

[dl290485]

Ah sorry you're right. I didn't read your post properly because I thought you were talking about the carrying agent.

Yeah you have all the signs of bad pathogens building up and making gunk. PH movement is a good indication of that when added to the physical evidence.

You say you brewed the GW? You may have cultivated bad bugs at the same time and inoculated your grow with great white and bad bugs.

I think if you are doing a soiless hydroponic grow it's best to just stick to that and not try to incorporate organics... just like if you are organic you shouldn't try to incorporate chems. You really need to be always running a sterylizer in your water because in such a set up pretty much any biological life is going to be bad for you plant. Since you are using chems- you don't need microbes to create fertilizer for you and they won't be able to form a proper relationship with your plants anyway.

I'm not going to tell you that myco doesn't work in soiless set ups- but it opened you up to two weaknesses
1) You stopped sterylizing so you could add the organics- thereby 'letting your shields down' on your set up and letting the bad bugs in
2) You likely poured in bad bugs with the brewed GW.

 

[flyingsteve]

I sterilized everything I used to make the beneficial tea beforehand and I used bottled distilled water... I'm using the myco's to keep the bad shit at bay. I'm not 100% convinced I have something bad going on as compared to just too much GW and what I'm seeing is colony formation OR some of the bacteria/fungi in the GW dying off because of there being too many and not enough food. The reason I did this is because of the brown algae issue which I've been having for months now. I used 1ml/g bleach the other day and that completely wiped it out and the plants started quickly pooping out new roots. I'm gonna let this go over night and see how things look in the morning, if still bad then I will skip breakfast and immediately flush, clean, re-fill and go back to 1ml/g bleach and just keep it that way. I'm fucking sick and tired of these god damn set backs. I didn't have any issues like this with my outdoor hydro setup last year and that was open to infection from all sortsa shit plus very high temps at times. I used GW in that and I didn't brew it, just dosed the powder right in to the F&D reservoir. Used the same nutrients that I am using now. When I pulled the harvested melon and strawberry plants out they looked good with expansive root systems, etc.

 

[dl290485]

You sterilized your bucket before you started brewing- but what stopped air borne pathogens and such from entering the food rich liquid? You only needed 1 single celled organism to fall in and 36 hours later it has a million offspring.

Then when you put it in your res- was your grow being sterilized? I'm not talking about 1 big clean up i'm talking about on going and constant dosage of either h202 or some kind of chloriine compound. I don't see how myco would survive such treatment- but without it, your rig only has to have 1 bug fall in it (just like the brew bucket) and away it goes feeding on what ever is left of the molasses from your brew. Even without the brew in the res, it's too risky to be not always having a constant dose of h202 or a chlorine compound always present in the system.

 

[cannabineer]

I'm not really qualified to assess this, but it could be a simple consequence of microbe war. I am encouraged by the cleanliness of the sound roots and the overall humusy smell.
When will you perform a res change? cn

 

[flyingsteve]

I used 29% h2o2 before with no success on the brown algae whatsoever. Bleach was the only thing that took care of it. Perhaps you are right. When I had the brown algae before I was getting a lot of foam building on the water surface, but there is none of that now and after opening the canister filter I am certain that I do not have a return of the cyanobacteria... In fact, the filters were actually pretty clean. The water doesn't smell foul, but it has an earthy smell. The pH tumbled and from what I read when people have nasty pathogens their pH rises...

What stopped 1 organism from turning into a million 36hrs later is that I added 10s of thousands of beneficial bacteria in the GW, so there is no way that a few nasties would crowd the beneficials out in that scenario.

You might be right, though. I'm just hoping not. We'll see what it looks like and smells like tomorrow and if it's shit I will be flushing and dosing with bleach and reporting my finding on here. Another indicator is if I wake up to find nothing much happened with root growth then I will know there is something bad going on.

 

[flyingsteve]

I'm not really qualified to assess this, but it could be a simple consequence of microbe war. I am encouraged by the cleanliness of the sound roots and the overall humusy smell.
When will you perform a res change? cn

Thanks. I was thinking along the same lines. I guess if I find positive results tomorrow then I will start brewing another gallon of tea and in 2 days flush the system and put the new patch of microbes in and then follow the maintenance dosing schedule. If I find a stinky mess or lack of root growth over night then I will flush go back to using bleach right away.

 

[dl290485]

I was about to say "myco is fungi not bacteria" but then I though oh, let's read the label of the bottle in my fridge. Yeah it does have beneficial bacteria in it too- that's cool.

Good luck with it all

 

[flyingsteve]

I was about to say "myco is fungi not bacteria" but then I though oh, let's read the label of the bottle in my fridge. Yeah it does have beneficial bacteria in it too- that's cool.

Good luck with it all

Great White has an ass load of good stuff in it. Thanks, I'll let ya know how it turns out.

 

[superstoner1]

molasses does not do well in hydro, thatt could be part of it and having about 10x too much greatwhite. Try pondzyme instead.

 

[flyingsteve]

molasses does not do well in hydro, thatt could be part of it and having about 10x too much greatwhite. Try pondzyme instead.

The molasses is used only in the brewing of the tea and is completely used up by the beneficials before adding the tea to the hydro system (according to Heisenberg and other beneficial tea advocates). I tried Pondzyme before... I have a container of it still. I'll say that my results were less than spectacular.

The cultivation tanks look the same as last night, no worse, no better. The roots look pretty much the same as well, maybe slight growth but that's about it. I'm just gonna flush and go back to using bleach.

The pH has barely moved off from where I adjusted it to last night but the roots just don't seem to want to grow down in to this muddy soup.

 

[flyingsteve]

So I gotta research this but while I was draining the system out I poured a splash of bleach in to each cultivation tank... That was a bad idea!! The water bubbled up and a nasty gas began filling up the place. All that was in there was water, GH nutes, superthrive and bennies.... Must've been something with the bacterial colonies. No clue but I want to find out!

 

[hellraizer30]

First off 70f and above is no good! Need to control water temps! Shoot for 66f

stop using h202 or bleach!
and brew some quality tea. If making tea use orca vs great white.
and dont add so much mollassis

 

[flyingsteve]

First off 70f and above is no good! Need to control water temps! Shoot for 66f

stop using h202 or bleach!
and brew some quality tea. If making tea use orca vs great white.
and dont add so much mollassis

I got the brown algae at 66, too... Temperature doesn't matter according to Heisenberg. 70f is fine for water temps, though.

When I added bleach in last week the bacteria cleared up and the plants started putting out a lot of new roots. I'm gonna keep using the bleach until I can run experiments with beneficials as I can't afford to have any more ridiculous set backs.

 

[Alaric]

First off 70f and above is no good! Need to control water temps! Shoot for 66f

stop using h202 or bleach!
and brew some quality tea. If making tea use orca vs great white.
and dont add so much mollassis

Got to disagree with u on this one-----I've had many successful crops (1gram per watt, 60 days) running in the high 70s-----I perfer to run high 60s but I live in a very hot summertime temps climate.

 

[hellraizer30]

I got the brown algae at 66, too... Temperature doesn't matter according to Heisenberg. 70f is fine for water temps, though.

When I added bleach in last week the bacteria cleared up and the plants started putting out a lot of new roots. I'm gonna keep using the bleach until I can run experiments with beneficials as I can't afford to have any more ridiculous set backs.

Temps do matter m8 but by all means keep using that bleach

 

[flyingsteve]

Temps do matter m8 but by all means keep using that bleach

Thanks for your approval?

I didn't say temps don't matter, I said I got the same infection at low temperatures. My chiller is set to 65f +-1f... Doesn't matter. Lower temps slow metabolism of pathogens and increases DO... This shit built a thriving home on all of my air stones, I'm guessing they're aerobic.

If you'll lend your time to reading this sticky:
https://www.rollitup.org/dwc-bubbleponics/361430-dwc-root-slime-cure-aka.html

When a clear snot forms on roots in a DWC, and the normal course of treatment for root disease doesn't work, you probably have something called brown slime algae, which actually isn't algae at all, but a cyanobacteria. It loves oxygen and doesn't need light to grow. It doesn't care if your res is chilled or not. Safe levels of H202 slows it a bit but doesn't cure it. It can show up for DWC growers for no apparent reason even after years of successful grows. Once it shows up it's often a nightmare to get rid of. It WILL eventually spread to other DWC tubs, although it almost never gains a foothold on older well developed healthy plants/roots.

Several root conditions will cause a slimy build up; doesn't mean you have the brown slime. Common root disease is almost always caused by improper res conditions, and they improve greatly when those conditions are corrected. This isn't true of the slime. When to suspect brown slime algae is when you are doing everything right and still can't get rid of it. People who get this try the normal stuff... More bubbles in the water, cool res temps, and h202 treatments. The slime may appear to be gone at first, but comes back strong in as little as 12-36 hours. It starts out subtle like a clear coating of mucus on the roots with no odor. Plants often still appear healthy for a while, but all root production stops. In a very short time it will cover the entire root base and become thicker and sometimes turns yellow. Eventually it strangles the roots which causes pythium to set in, and at that point turns brown and finally has an odor.

I brewed my first gallon of tea with Great White and very little molasses, I'd say 1/4tsp to be exact. The liquid was a nice clear amber brown color with a healthy smell when I added it.