Salts and microbes

Can't speak to salts killing microbes, my suspicion is the concept is mostly BS, but I can say that it does not kill worms. This last run I turned over my worm bin for the first time and used a go bunch in the mix. I guess I did not de-populate well enough and worms went into the coco. The pots are loaded with worms 50+ days in.

A little background
When I set up this run I did a typical blend of coco/perlite/worm castings/ activated charcoal. I also added Gaia green 444 as per the can. with almost every watering I do a 1/2 dose of salts and I don't water to run off. The general theory being the dry amendment are loaded with microbes and after they get wet the microbes make their living eating the dry amendments. The idea is can I have the best of both worlds the dry amendments both provide and feed the microbes giving those benefits and with the salts adding a bit more horsepower and finer control.

Seeing the worm thriving is a positive sign

For next run I am planning on
- . cutting out the old plant trying to leave most of the root ball
- add a few fresh worm castings
- re-amend with the organic feed
- load in a fresh seed/peat pellet.

I am thinking about top dressing with rice hulls the theory being that the worms will do their work at the interface between the soil and the hulls with the hope of digesting some of the hulls and releasing the silica. I will add rice hulls to the worm bin to get some pre-digestion happening

ComfortCreator said:

So...if someone has an N excess, could adding a large population of bacteria be a way out of it quickly? I'm just trying to understand what I can do with the knowledge regarding N.

Click to expand...

No. Bacteria and fungi break down organic matter containing nitrogen, including added urea, into ammonium (NH4+) then other bacteria oxidize that or any added ammonium down into nitrite (NO2-) and still more bacteria immediately break that down further into nitrate (NO3-). Then the roots take it up. The plants eventually end up as organic matter in the soil and the nitrogen cycle continues.

When these bacteria run out of oxygen for oxidizing NH4 into NO2 and NO3 they can start turning NO3 into N2 or N2O (nitrous oxide) but you don't want to starve your growing medium of oxygen. It's more important in reef aquariums which can have deep substrate and porous rocks or purpose built reactors that provide anaerobic environments.

Wikipedia is awesome for this stuff and much more extensive and reliable than random bros like me on RIU. I remember learning about this stuff in school of course but Wikipedia is a great refresher.

Just getting caught up here,
So adding some cal nit would be a quick solution for those week 4 N deficiencies?