DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

Cheesy fingers said:

Please someone help me answer the above questions .... also do I need to bleach the system again before the beanie tea goes in? the main problem I'm having, is how do I cure the rot that I believe lives in the root riot cubes ... ? And is killing the new root growth ? The cubes stay very wet with the splash from the bubbles and especially as I have to cover them to prevent light leaks please someone help me get these roots growing again ... Thanks in advance

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Wish I had enough knowledge to help you but I think once the rot set and get a hold of the root system for real you cannot heal the plants back to health, have to be on it in time and brew lot´s of tea.

Same happen to me, got myself a chiller and could not get rid of it just came back again and again almost tore my hair off. Had to clean everything, sterilize very carefully and use tea from the start before it finally worked. Sterilize everything like crazy and start over, that is what I did including grow space, gear, all of it. I think sometimes it´s faster to just start all over cause decease free healthy strong plants grow so fast.

But better someone with more knowledge like Heisenberg answer that for you, I would pull, sterilize and start over but like I said wait for a better answer before you decide what to do?

Good luck.

dr.medecine said:

Wish I had enough knowledge to help you but I think once the rot set and get a hold of the root system for real you cannot heal the plants back to health, have to be on it in time and brew lot´s of tea.

Same happen to me, got myself a chiller and could not get rid of it just came back again and again almost tore my hair off. Had to clean everything, sterilize very carefully and use tea from the start before it finally worked. Sterilize everything like crazy and start over, that is what I did including grow space, gear, all of it. I think sometimes it´s faster to just start all over cause decease free healthy strong plants grow so fast.

But better someone with more knowledge like Heisenberg answer that for you, I would pull, sterilize and start over but like I said wait for a better answer before you decide what to do?

Good luck.

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Thanks for the reply that's my thought. but I will wait to see if someone has A miracle cure

you cant cure it because it is systemic but they will grow new roots and you can get through flower... just run the tea.

You can increase the life in the worm castings before you add them!
By adding some extra ingredients to the worm castings and setting them aside for a day or so you can multiply the life within this already top notch input. You can also do this before brewing them up in to a compost tea.

Supercharging your worm castings is a fairly straightforward process. The three main ingredients are Worm castings – of course, Oatmeal and molasses.
Firstly find yourself a source of oatmeal, I prefer to grind my own from oats – this gives me a fine powder that I can mix evenly through the worm castings. This puts a source of food for the fungi contained within the compost throughout the mix as opposed to random sites if you just add oats.
It also increases the surface area of the oatmeal overall increasing it’s efficacy.
Next the molasses. Make a fairly dilute solution with water at about 500:1 or so and spray on to your castings. Just enough to make them damp. You don’t want pools to occur or to clog up the pores in the castings too much. This will provide a food source for the bacteria - if you’re used to brewing compost teas you may think that this step is unnecessary and you’d be half right – you don’tneed to mess with your vermicompost just like you don’t need to add high octane fuel to your car – but if you want to squeeze every last ounce of performance out – it’s worth it.

Finally place a secure lid on your mixture and place it in a reasonably warm dark place away from anything that can get at it. I personally add air holes to my pots with cotton wool acting as a breathable membrane. This keeps things aerobic whilst keeping anything unwanted out of the mix.
After 3-4 days or however long you’re happy with you should now have a mix with visible fungal hyphae. If you chose not to grind your oats you’ll find this concentrated at the sites of the food source, but if you mixed the powdered meal through it will be all over. You’ll have also kick started other life within the worm castings too! The bacteria will already be an order of magnitude above what it was before and if you place a sample under the microscope you may be surprised to see more nematodes than you are used to if you simply brew your tea with standard vermicompost. All because you gave a kick start to the soil food web, either before you add it back in to the rhizosphere or before you go on to brew it up as a tea.

thats pretty cool man... probably going to try it.

Hydroburn said:

thats pretty cool man... probably going to try it.

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Defo worth a try I did, I looked under a scope massive difference on side by side tests. !

Hello Heis and other knowledgeable members. I have been a fan of this thread for a couple months now off and on. Heis you sound like you know your shit man I wish we were friends so I could soak up knowledge.

Heisenberg said:

I don't think there is any disadvantage to never or rarely changing the res water as far as microbes are concerned. I personally have been going longer between changes lately, but never more than 2 weeks. Plants can eat different nutrients at different times, which can lead to too much of one element and not enough of others. Often times too much of one chemical can lock out others. Don't forget your plants use their roots to dump stuff into the water too. So changing the res ensures that we have a proper balance. Still, many growers never change the water once flowering starts and do just fine, and each has their own preference for nute 'addback'.

Lots of accomplished growers say cannabis roots prefer darkness, but I have never heard any of them explain why. When people stress darkness it is always in the context of preventing algae. Maybe someone will come along and enlighten us. I do recall one grow with someone using a huge res completely uncovered while treating with great white. If I remember right he had no algae problems for a long time but then he got slimed because he sprayed for mites and let it drip into the res, killing his bennies. So it could be that a clear res will keep some bad microbes primed and ready to take over if they get a foot hold.

One thing I see over and over again when reading about compost teas is the advice that fresh tea is the best tea, and as time goes by you will lose much of the diversity. Diversity is a major factor in preventing disease. When we cool the tea in the fridge we slow the processes down to near halt which helps preserve the diversity. So for our purposes, cooled tea used on day 5 is almost certainly better than tea that has been bubbled for 5 days. Tea that is bubbled instead of cooled is probably fine to use as long as there is no bad odor, but each day it will become less and less effective.

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Hello Heis Ive been a fan for a while. thx a lot by the way!!
question about this comment regarding "Lots of accomplished growers say cannabis roots prefer darkness"
currently I am using home depot orange buckets for my DWC maybe its rdwc? cause its a reverse current through a chiller? I use the TEA and roots start off white but then they turn brown. Is the light coming in from the orange buckets fucking my roots up? In this thread are you talking about water inside a separate reservoir. Because I have four buckets connected by pvc pipe and the water chiller and the pump, so that's my reservoir.

Heisenberg said:

I don't think there is any disadvantage to never or rarely changing the res water as far as microbes are concerned. I personally have been going longer between changes lately, but never more than 2 weeks. Plants can eat different nutrients at different times, which can lead to too much of one element and not enough of others. Often times too much of one chemical can lock out others. Don't forget your plants use their roots to dump stuff into the water too. So changing the res ensures that we have a proper balance. Still, many growers never change the water once flowering starts and do just fine, and each has their own preference for nute 'addback'.

Lots of accomplished growers say cannabis roots prefer darkness, but I have never heard any of them explain why. When people stress darkness it is always in the context of preventing algae. Maybe someone will come along and enlighten us. I do recall one grow with someone using a huge res completely uncovered while treating with great white. If I remember right he had no algae problems for a long time but then he got slimed because he sprayed for mites and let it drip into the res, killing his bennies. So it could be that a clear res will keep some bad microbes primed and ready to take over if they get a foot hold.

One thing I see over and over again when reading about compost teas is the advice that fresh tea is the best tea, and as time goes by you will lose much of the diversity. Diversity is a major factor in preventing disease. When we cool the tea in the fridge we slow the processes down to near halt which helps preserve the diversity. So for our purposes, cooled tea used on day 5 is almost certainly better than tea that has been bubbled for 5 days. Tea that is bubbled instead of cooled is probably fine to use as long as there is no bad odor, but each day it will become less and less effective.

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Hello Heis I'm a big fan and I know this particular thread is old but I started reading from the beginning and I ran across this and I believe it will help me. Its regarding the comment you made about

Right tea will go in today!!
I need to ask a few things so any experts out there that can help me??
Before I add the tea I need to know.

1 ) do I rase the water level so that the beneficial have somewhere to colonise and cubes are saturated ?
2) shall I add tea to res and top feed with the res water until roots leave the net pot ?
3) do I pore the tea through the net pots and hand water till roots leave net pot?

Cheesy fingers said:

Right tea will go in today!!
I need to ask a few things so any experts out there that can help me??
Before I add the tea I need to know.

1 ) do I rase the water level so that the beneficial have somewhere to colonise and cubes are saturated ?
2) shall I add tea to res and top feed with the res water until roots leave the net pot ?
3) do I pore the tea through the net pots and hand water till roots leave net pot?

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Raise water level enough to wet the hydrotones (at least with the splashes from the bubbles) but not too close to soak the cubes.
Run the tea through the net pots. Top feed til the roots are visible then lower the water level to about an inch below the net pots (bubbles still splashing higher).
Good luck bro

https://www.rollitup.org/index.php?threads/841773/

please someone answer!

ok a couple of things I'm confused about. I believe I have a RDWC system. That's a DWC system that has a reverse current created by a pump that's transfers water from 5 gallon bucket to 5 gallon bucket via pvc pipe. right? Anyways I don't have a separate reservoir. I have five 5 gallon buckets connected by pcp pipe filled with water just below bottom of basket.
1.My question is what temp should my water be ? 68 degrees or more like mid 70's. I heard that the benies in the tea are not really active at 68 degrees?
2. I am using home depot orange buckets.. should I paint them or leave them orange?
3. when Heis uses roots excel in tea does he put it in Sock or directly into water?

one more question people.

If I don't have slime right now and starting a new run, how much inoculation do I require per gallon of tea? amd how often and how much should I add to remain disease free?
thanks

damn last question.
RO water or tap water? and why?

splifjoint said:

please someone answer!

ok a couple of things I'm confused about. I believe I have a RDWC system. That's a DWC system that has a reverse current created by a pump that's transfers water from 5 gallon bucket to 5 gallon bucket via pvc pipe. right? Anyways I don't have a separate reservoir. I have five 5 gallon buckets connected by pcp pipe filled with water just below bottom of basket.
1.My question is what temp should my water be ? 68 degrees or more like mid 70's. I heard that the benies in the tea are not really active at 68 degrees?
2. I am using home depot orange buckets.. should I paint them or leave them orange?
3. when Heis uses roots excel in tea does he put it in Sock or directly into water?

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1. 68 degrees is a good point mid 70's and you are pushing it. I use a cheap effective way with frozen water bottles.

2. I only use black buckets but I'm sure you wouldn't have to paint the range buckets. So let them be.

3. I never use tea before in my dwc so I can't answer that question. I just keep it simple.

ok Sky Rocket thanks for the answer.. So your saying that I can use the orange buckets even if they clearly don't keep light out?

as for the other questions I asked them in this particular forum because I've had the slime before and have gotten rid of it via the Tea.... so does anyone else have a imput that they got from Heis?

Lol cmon mannn

splifjoint said:

ok Sky Rocket thanks for the answer.. So your saying that I can use the orange buckets even if they clearly don't keep light out?

as for the other questions I asked them in this particular forum because I've had the slime before and have gotten rid of it via the Tea.... so does anyone else have a imput that they got from Heis?

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If it doesn't block out light then spray paint them....

Scroga said:

Lol cmon mannn

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lol, it's football season

you need to light proof your buckets.

Light leaks are the route of all evil !

Hey everyone and I'm sorry to post this as I believe I read about it somewhere in this thread.
So I changed my res yesterday and added two cups of a week old tea that smelled normal. Today I noticed some foam building on the surface and the res smells OK. Roots are also OK and white with little staining in the roots above the water level. I just needed a confirmation that the foam is OK and that I'll go away. Also the pH was up to 6.7 this morning from 5.8 yesterday!
The pH has been raising to about 6.2 every day in the past 2 weeks and started to stabilize lately but today went up to 6.7.
Thanks in advance for any reply and help!

https://www.rollitup.org/index.php?threads/841773/

Yes foam is fine, when yo. see NEW white root growth you will know you are winning...