Preventing build up on airstones?

Hey gang,
I'm going to run an ebb and grow-DWC hybrid by keeping the water in my buckets a little higher and running airstones in them. I'm running organic nutes which can gunk up my airstones in my Rez. Since I'm running a scrog, I won't be able to access the airstones in my buckets to wipe them off.

Is there any way to prevent them from clogging up? What size stones for 4 gallon buckets?

Thanks for any advice.
Lf

Nothing? Really ?

use big air stones and, I guess if you are doing organics, you already have microbes. A lot of the time microbes keep my airstones clean, but I use synthetics.

I don't know how to keep em cllean but if you really want to be sure maybe you could hook up another set of air stones in your bucket/buckets with the air tube coming out but not hooked up to an air pump. Then, if something happened or you began to loose air pressure inside of your bucket, you could switch over to the "alternate" air stone set up. ind of a last resort idea lol.

Microbes. Make your own or buy them. I use Great White.

Beneficial microbes are not the answer..and BTW..great white is a great white rip off when you look at the contents of it. Its mostly micohryzal and some bacteria, there are much cheaper innoculants of much higher quality available.

MY stuff stays pretty clean until I start adding molassis...then it is all bets off, and I start getting slimed. The plants love the molassis but the air stones and rez...not so much. I guess I jsut need to do a test and see if all the gunk that accumulates is actually going to stop the airflow.

Great White covers a huge range of endo and ecto fungi and bacteria. MUCH more varieties than any other mycorrhizal product. I started running it and won't go without it now. If you are adding molasses to your res, then you are wasting money and gunking up stuff for no reason. Molasses is added to feed and stimulate microbial activity. Hope that helps.

LMAO.. Dude... got irony?

molassis feeds and stimulates microbial activity....and yet..is a waste of money? And as far as MUCH more varieties of myco species, they have 4 more than the product I use. I wish I could find out WHICH species they have in there but ala, there is no way to know as they won't tell you on their website. I get bags of it from the lab that actually proccesses them, great white is sitting on a shelf.

At any rate, your wrong about molassis.. No, plants can not absorb most sugars through their roots but molassis does stimulate microbial activity in the root zone in addition to providing organic micro nutrients.

here is a web site with some good myco info: http://www.mycorrhizae.com/tools-tips-products

Buy the big cylinder air stones they dont clog as easy as the aquarium ones.

Is it getting clogged by salt build up? I use drip clean for my farmkit/dwc system.. I'm just saying...

Not really salt build up. It's more like organic "gunk". Not really slime or algae..I don't know what the hell it is but some combination of products definitely creates a coating of brown shit on the walls fo the rez, hoses, airstone. Pretty much anything in the rez. Shooting powder seems to have this effect and molasis definitely does.

Perhaps it is living/ biotic? My rez temps have been a little high 71-72 lately. Anyone have any pictures of what that stuff looks like?

bleach? ... 8-10 ppm as initial shock , then maintain at 4-6 ppm.. sure helped rid my airstone coating

Usually once or twice during flower I scrub my stones.

A quick soak in some mild acidic solution, and then a longer soak in H2O2 works nice too.

legallyflying said:

Beneficial microbes are not the answer..and BTW..great white is a great white rip off when you look at the contents of it. Its mostly micohryzal and some bacteria, there are much cheaper innoculants of much higher quality available.

MY stuff stays pretty clean until I start adding molassis...then it is all bets off, and I start getting slimed.

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You've have a well documented well understood problem, and have been given a cure that has never failed to help someone in your position. Molasses is a known trigger of the slime, and your gunk is an expected result.

legallyflying said:

LMAO.. Dude... got irony?

molassis feeds and stimulates microbial activity....and yet..is a waste of money? And as far as MUCH more varieties of myco species, they have 4 more than the product I use. I wish I could find out WHICH species they have in there but ala, there is no way to know as they won't tell you on their website. I get bags of it from the lab that actually proccesses them, great white is sitting on a shelf.

At any rate, your wrong about molassis.. No, plants can not absorb most sugars through their roots but molassis does stimulate microbial activity in the root zone in addition to providing organic micro nutrients.

Click to expand...

What he said was, adding molasses without adding beneficials is largely pointless. The molasses does not get broken down and pollutes your res, or can invite harmful microbes which result in gunk buildup. If you currently add microbes you did not tell us, so he assumed you have a res with molasses and nothing to eat it but slime. I paid $6 for the OZ of mycogrow powder from fungi.com (identical to great white) last January and still have 1/4 left.

For a DWC grow, it's best to activate the microbes in a tea outside the res first, and not add anything organic like molasses directly to the res. If you add them directly to the res and feed them there, the result is often a gunky buildup because they don't have time to eat the food before the slime does. The solution is to brew a tea and activate the microbes so they are already awake when they go into the res, and then add them to your res every few days to replace the ones that starve. 1 gal of tea inoculates 16 gal of water and lasts about 10 days in the fridge. For maintenance, You need to add 1 cup every 3-4 days.

Anyway here is a 50 page thread where I outline and detail the making and application of this tea, and where dozens of people with your exact problem report being cured.

BTW the species in great white are not hard to find

Endomycorrhizal fungi: Glomus intraradices, Glomus mosseae, Glomus aggregatum, Glomus clarum, Glomus deserticola, Glomus etunicatum, Gigaspora margarita, Gigaspora brasilianum, Gigaspora monosporum

Ectomycorrhizal fungi: Rhizopogon villosullus, Rhizopogon luteolus, Rhizopogon amylopogon, Rhizopogon fulvigleba, Pisolithus tinctorius, Laccaria bicolor, Laccaria laccata, Scleroderma cepa, Scleroderma citrinum, Suillus granulatas, Suillus punctatapies

Trichoderma: Trichoderma harzianum, Trichoderma konigii

Beneficial Bacteria: Bacillus subtillus, Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus azotoformans, Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus coagulans, Bacillus pumlis, Bacillus thuringiensis, Bacillus stearothermiphilis, Paenibacillus polymyxa, Paenibacillus durum, Paenibacillus florescence, Paenibacillus gordonae, Azotobacter polymyxa, Azotobacter chroococcum, Sacchromyces cervisiae, Streptomyces griseues, Streptomyces lydicus, Pseudomonas aureofaceans, Deinococcus erythromyxa

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Too bad your setup limits you to not access your stones, at $1.00 a piece that's unfortunate. I change stones and pumps every run without issues.

Legal...you ask questions and you get mad at the answers? You need beneficial microbes. Use what you want, but use them. I've used Heisenberg's tea, and it works great. I use Great White just because it's easy...and it works. And smoke a joint and chill out, stop slamming everyone when they're trying to help. Good Luck.

Didn't mean to shit on anyone. Was only saying that there are much cheaper myco products out there in-lieu of great white. Then I was responding that adding molassis was a waste of money..which it is not. I run full course of biotics and use hydro organic and a few fully organic nutes. My bigg problem is that I flower in a scrog, so once the plants are fully en-twinned in the scrog screen, I have no way of lifting up the buckets and getting to the air stones

I appreciate everyones help. I think I will skip the molasis this wound and go with a more hydro friendly sugar solution. Guess its just going to have to be trial and error in terms of seeing if the airstones can "make it through" to the end or not. Or if they even help. This run is essentially a strain trial. 6 different strains, 18 plants. Going to run some with airstones and some without and see if their is a difference. Perhaps I'll post a blog up when and if I see any difinitive results.

You could always go with something like Sugar Daddy from the BC product line of TechnaFlora or any other sugar additive. Molasses helps to put on the weight and trichromes so a sugar alternative is a great idea.

Hey guys! I saw that you misunderstood me legalflying, so no harm, but thanks for clarifying Heisenberg! I really like the idea of feeding the microbes prior to putting in the reservoir. Perfect sense!

Ahh I see your situation now. You are doing organic DWC. With all the organics in there among the bennies you are basically turning your res into a big tea brewer. All sorts of things happen in the res that we normally let take place in the tea, such as ph flux, biofilms, and gunky build up. I think your plants and roots will probably be okay, but I doubt you will be able to avoid some buildup on your air stones. I would suggest getting a pump powerful enough to get through it. When I make my tea the stones get very gunky due to the concentration, but my 35wt pump plows right through.

If your roots are getting a slimy build up you probably have 'the slime' and organic DWC may not be an option for the environment you're in.