Dwc woes - constant failure

[smokedareefer]

Wow, that GH dual diaphragm quad outlet air pump is no joke - I expected it to be strong, but yeah, it blows away the 10w air pumps I was using, seems to be much cooler running than those too, although definitely a bit louder. A fair tradeoff. I've added a second large cylinder air stone to each bucket. Should I be concerned about this air pump being turned up all the way/damaging the roots? I've currently set all 4 outlets on it to be fully open.

Sure - good idea. I've got 2 large cylindrical stones in each bucket, and 2 in the main res which is located outside the tent. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to get another one of these GH dual diaphram air pumps, and put 2 more stones in the main res too - thoughts?

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My newer current culture 13 gal setup (3 years ago) came with a 2x2 stone for each module, none for the epicenter only the water fall there. And this

 

[Aqua Man]

Sure - good idea. I've got 2 large cylindrical stones in each bucket, and 2 in the main res which is located outside the tent. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to get another one of these GH dual diaphram air pumps, and put 2 more stones in the main res too - thoughts?

Might be a bit to much but those pumps are adjustable right. You can turn it down a bit imo especially this young

 

[hm7]

Might be a bit to much but those pumps are adjustable right. You can turn it down a bit imo especially this young

Yeah, it has a valve on each outlet. I'll turn them down a bit - Thanks!

 

[pga881997]

-Should be use ROwater or put 24hrs outside if water have clo
-Problem i thinks is about your water because root can be dead if have oxygen aeration
-Can be root rot if dirty something in the tank => just clean to all thing with alcohol and start again
-And about nutrients in veg time : silik,voodoo,b52,calmag,AB ANnutrient => Ph should be 5.5 and increase 100ppm every week (start from 350PPM)

 

[hm7]

Welp... it's time to throw in the towel on both of these and start over I think. Tomorrow marks day 28, and these are are still only an inch or two tall, and showing absolutely zero signs of recovery or improvement of any kind. Yeah, I could continue to limp these along for another week or two to see if they maybe start to come back, and maybe with enough time they might but .. I really feel like I could start over and within 1-2 weeks be where these are currently, and hopefully have healthier/better ones.

Gonna start two more, and then make sure I continue top feeding going forward. Hopefully that was the problem. I guess we'll see if I can progress with some new ones, or am doomed to encounter this same cycle of growth for 2 weeks then having them die.

 

[hm7]

Yup - as I suspected from the get go, managed to get root rot going up in the net pot. Both roots def had some crap up in them once i dumped the hydroton out, the one is especially bad with some nasty black clump of crap.


Suggestions on how to clean out the res/system? I'm going to be washing the hydroton, then boiling it... I figure that should sufficiently clean it. Not really sure what to do about the buckets, tubes, res, etc....

 

[geemonty]

Yup - as I suspected from the get go, managed to get root rot going up in the net pot. Both roots def had some crap up in them once i dumped the hydroton out, the one is especially bad with some nasty black clump of crap.


Suggestions on how to clean out the res/system? I'm going to be washing the hydroton, then boiling it... I figure that should sufficiently clean it. Not really sure what to do about the buckets, tubes, res, etc....

I just use h202.

Now to figure out what you are doing to cause root rot on your seedlings.

 

[beluga]

I just use chlorine bleach. Any bleaching agent will do; some you just want to rinse more thoroughly.
Next time around (if there is a next time) I'm going to just try a strong solution of pH down... some preliminary reading suggests that just lowering intracellular pH is effective in killing oomycetes and I know for sure it's the best way to kill fungi, even more so than bleaches... so I bet phosphoric acid will be quite effective. Even just cleaning vinegar would probably be enough.

I just went through rot treatment for live systems over here.
It seems to be going well. I'll have 1-week progress pics up once my lights go on this evening.

 

[hm7]

I just use h202.

Now to figure out what you are doing to cause root rot on your seedlings.

I wish I could justify the cost. H2O2 was the only thing that limped me through my first run, I loved it and it worked extremely well but ... it's too expensive and hard to get large quantities of. Trust me, I wish I could definatively figure out what is causing this root rot to set in ever single time. I feel like if I could figure that out and fix it, I'd be good, but it continues to plague me.

I just use chlorine bleach. Any bleaching agent will do; some you just want to rinse more thoroughly.
Next time around (if there is a next time) I'm going to just try a strong solution of pH down... some preliminary reading suggests that just lowering intracellular pH is effective in killing oomycetes and I know for sure it's the best way to kill fungi, even more so than bleaches... so I bet phosphoric acid will be quite effective. Even just cleaning vinegar would probably be enough.

I just went through rot treatment for live systems over here.
It seems to be going well. I'll have 1-week progress pics up once my lights go on this evening.

Thanks - I'll check out your treatment link here. Appreciate it.

Funny enough - I did use cholorine this time, with a chiller, and root rot still set in and got me. As far as what kind to use - 'pool shock', 'bleach', etc - it's very close to the same thing, at least for these purposes - when all we're really after is the HOCL at the end of the day regardless of which method you use to get there.



My main problem right now with chlorine based sterile is two fold:

#1 - I have seen so many conflicting posts sprawled all over the net saying 'just use x% calcium hypochlorite or x% of sodium hypochlorite - mix with 1 gal of RO water, and then add X amount of this solution to your res, per gallon, every Y days'.

The problem here is, not only can no one agree on percentages or amounts to add (they're seriously all over the place from 1g all the way to 6g per gal of water) - but perhaps worse is that no one seems to have done any sort of definitive testing on exactly how much is actually needed to generate and maintain proper free chlorine levels in their res, at least from what I've been able to find. It all seems to be guess work combined with pure speculation followed with tons of "it worked for me, bro!" posts.


#2 - Both ammonia in nutes and also phosphoric acid can react with/cause chlorine gas to form and thus leave your system. Again, without actually testing for both total chlorine and free chlorine levels - this is nothing more than a guessing game. I haven't seen any sort of actual testing of this anywhere showing how long sufficient levels of free chlorine are maintained in the system after adding/mixing nutes/ph down, etc.




I realize a lot of this is dependent upon individual setups, type/brand of nutes, how many air stones/waterfalls, etc - so I'm going to go about this next attempt a bit more scientifically. I've picked up a total / free chlorine tester here, and I want to actually spend some time sitting down and taking some notes on how much of what percentage and amounts are added, and see exactly how long sufficnent levels of free chlorine are maintained in my system with some proper testing done to verify levels daily, before/after adding nutes, phing, etc. I want to be able to actually determine and know for sure if I've been adding too much, not enough, and also how often I need to add more - to maintain sufficient amounts in the system without these guessing games.


*If* I can manage to find a way to maintain sufficient levels (around 4ppm) of free chlorine in my system, I will do one more attempt with it (doing additional top feeding) throughout the grow to try to keep the netpot sterile (which is where I *always* encounter issues - every time it's up in the netpot).

However.... if I find that it's converting to chlorine gas and not sufficiently keeping up adequate amounts of free chlorine levels due to either the ammonia in the nutes or the phosphoric acid in my ph down - then, I will either give up on running chlorine and try to see how feasible/expensive it would be to get and use H2O2 ... or give up running sterile and go back to trying bennies/a live system and hope I don't end up sliming my entire system again (like what happened to my first system).

 

[Moe.Red]

H202 has the benefit of raising the O2 in the res.

Where are you? It seems like just about every drug store in the world has Peroxide on the shelf at minimal cost.

 

[hm7]

H202 has the benefit of raising the O2 in the res.

Where are you? It seems like just about every drug store in the world has Peroxide on the shelf at minimal cost.

Oh yes, it does - I absolutely agree. I love H2O2, and fully understand how it breaks down in the res and what the benefits of it are over HOCL based sterilization. It's fantastic stuff! I always keep a bottle of 12% on hand for emergencies, but it's sketchy to ship/order liquids imo.


Yes, sure I could go down to Walmart and buy 150 small bottles of 3%, then add 1 bottle every 3 days to my res (I'm joking - I'm sure it's not *THAT* much, but ... it's probably still a lot of 3%), but that's going to add up in cost, and again - I don't want to buying my stores out of low percentage stuff.

Ideally, I'd like to use 35%, or.... 12% if I *had* to, but I can't source it locally here, it has to be ordered, and I have no idea of how much of each percent is required, or how often it is either.

 

[beluga]

I wish I could justify the cost. H2O2 was the only thing that limped me through my first run, I loved it and it worked extremely well but ... it's too expensive and hard to get large quantities of. Trust me, I wish I could definatively figure out what is causing this root rot to set in ever single time. I feel like if I could figure that out and fix it, I'd be good, but it continues to plague me.




Thanks - I'll check out your treatment link here. Appreciate it.

Funny enough - I did use cholorine this time, with a chiller, and root rot still set in and got me. As far as what kind to use - 'pool shock', 'bleach', etc - it's very close to the same thing, at least for these purposes - when all we're really after is the HOCL at the end of the day regardless of which method you use to get there.



My main problem right now with chlorine based sterile is two fold:

#1 - I have seen so many conflicting posts sprawled all over the net saying 'just use x% calcium hypochlorite or x% of sodium hypochlorite - mix with 1 gal of RO water, and then add X amount of this solution to your res, per gallon, every Y days'.

The problem here is, not only can no one agree on percentages or amounts to add (they're seriously all over the place from 1g all the way to 6g per gal of water) - but perhaps worse is that no one seems to have done any sort of definitive testing on exactly how much is actually needed to generate and maintain proper free chlorine levels in their res, at least from what I've been able to find. It all seems to be guess work combined with pure speculation followed with tons of "it worked for me, bro!" posts.


#2 - Both ammonia in nutes and also phosphoric acid can react with/cause chlorine gas to form and thus leave your system. Again, without actually testing for both total chlorine and free chlorine levels - this is nothing more than a guessing game. I haven't seen any sort of actual testing of this anywhere showing how long sufficient levels of free chlorine are maintained in the system after adding/mixing nutes/ph down, etc.




I realize a lot of this is dependent upon individual setups, type/brand of nutes, how many air stones/waterfalls, etc - so I'm going to go about this next attempt a bit more scientifically. I've picked up a total / free chlorine tester here, and I want to actually spend some time sitting down and taking some notes on how much of what percentage and amounts are added, and see exactly how long sufficnent levels of free chlorine are maintained in my system with some proper testing done to verify levels daily, before/after adding nutes, phing, etc. I want to be able to actually determine and know for sure if I've been adding too much, not enough, and also how often I need to add more - to maintain sufficient amounts in the system without these guessing games.


*If* I can manage to find a way to keep around 4ppm of Free Chlorine in my system, I will do one more attempt with it (doing additional top feeding) throughout the grow to try to keep the netpot sterile (which is where I *always* encounter issues - every time it's up in the net pot).

However.... if I find that it's converting to chlorine gas and not sufficiently keeping up adequate amounts of free chlorine levels due to either the ammonia in the nutes or the phosphoric acid in my ph down - then, I will either give up on running chlorine and try to see how feasible/expensive it would be to get and use H2O2 ... or give going back to bennies/a live system a try again and hope I don't end up sliming my entire system again (like what happened to my first system).

This might be overthinking it.

Getting into the nuts and bolts has its benefits. But I've been bleaching my shit that's gotten unwanted microbes on it for many years to no overt ill effects.
And using all sorts of other shit. I guess the point is.... many things around your house are effective. Amply diluting it is going to be your main concern.
I run my shit through PVC.... I'm not losing sleep over the miniscule amount of chlorine leftover in my system after a cleaning.

If I had to take a poke at it, I'd say having leftover cleaning residuals in your system is very much tertiary to what's actually causing your issues.

 

[hm7]

This might be overthinking it.

Getting into the nuts and bolts has its benefits. But I've been bleaching my shit that's gotten unwanted microbes on it for many years to no overt ill effects.
And using all sorts of other shit. I guess the point is.... many things around your house are effective. Amply diluting it is going to be your main concern.
I run my shit through PVC.... I'm not losing sleep over the miniscule amount of chlorine leftover in my system after a cleaning.

If I had to take a poke at it, I'd say having leftover cleaning residuals in your system is very much tertiary to what's actually causing your issues.

I don't mean any offense by saying this, so please - don't take it that way.... but .... this is exactly what I mean when I reference finding random posts online stating "just do this and you'll be fine - it worked for me!".

There's way too many variables, as I listed above, that could be unique/different to each individual person's setup that could or could not be keeping free chlorine levels sufficiently high enough. Again - without actually testing anything and just dumping random amounts in - the fact remains that you just don't know. You're only guessing.

Guessing was fine in the beginning, but ... I'm still failing playing the guessing game. It's time to actually back it up with some legitimate testing and actually see what my free chlorine levels are. Maybe something in this system is causing it to convert instantly over to chlorine gas and that's my problem? Again without testing, I simply have no idea. I've failed too many times and wasted far too much time in general now to keep guessing and doing what I have been doing - something isn't right, and clearly it's not working for me.



This has been a brand new system I made for this. I built and flushed it out, and then hand cleaned everything with H2O2, and now also bleach once before this attempt too. There shouldn't be any sort of left over cleaning residuals in my system. If there are, I have no idea where they may have come from. New pumps, new air pumps, new stones, new chiller, new lines, new res, new buckets, new netpots, etc - everything was built and flushed several times over a period of a couple weeks before placing plants in the system and yet - root rot sets in, in the net pot.

 

[Aqua Man]

Use peat starter plugs, wait until you have a good root mass, too feed once every day or 2 and personally id go with defgaurd.

 

[beluga]

Trust me bro.... just do this and you'll be fine - it worked for me!



All jokes aside. What makes you think you've done everything else right to trust the results on the chemical element?
That sounds like some anecdotal thinking to me... but maybe it'll be fine and work for you

 

[hm7]

Use peat starter plugs, wait until you have a good root mass, too feed once every day or 2 and personally id go with defgaurd.

I wish I could use plugs without an issue, but every time I use them - they get saturated and the plants die within the first week. That's why I stopped using them/rooters/rockwool and started going straight into hydroton directly - which has allowed me to go from 1 week, to now about 2-3 weeks before the problems set in. However, the problems haven't stopped, they've only delayed.

I do absolutely think additional/lots of top feeding may help my problem - I am definitely going to do this going forward.



Ideally, I'd still like to run a sterile over a live system for 2 reasons:

#1 - I'm still afraid of sliming my system.

#2 - With 12+ gal of water and no way to install a large enough RO system to do that here - I'm stuck using tap water, which I know has some sort of chlorine/chloramine in it already. I really don't have the space to be letting 12+ gal of water sit out if it's chlorine, and if it's chloramine (which I believe it may be), that won't help much either - and both of those is going to kill any bennies I add into the system anyway - unless I'm missing something?

 

[hm7]

Trust me bro.... just do this and you'll be fine - it worked for me!



All jokes aside. What makes you think you've done everything else right to trust the results on the chemical element?
That sounds like some anecdotal thinking to me... but maybe it'll be fine and work for you

I never claimed I was? Only that my next plan of action was to actually do some true legitimate testing to verify total and free chlorine levels are being sufficiently maintained in my system instead of just guessing/assuming they are and throwing random amounts in that people on the internet are adamant are working for them, when they themselves haven't done any testing on their end either.

 

[beluga]

I never claimed I was? Only that my next plan of action was to actually do some true legitimate testing to verify total and free chlorine levels are being sufficiently maintained in my system.

That was just to illustrate the point that, even with all our meticulous tracking of numbers, there's still a lot to work on that is strictly anecdotal. Given few controls, even just the reasoning for collecting data for one variable is anecdotal.

People are too quick to write things off as "bro science" when many of those practices are really just the passing of effective traditions which haven't been verified by data.

I think there's an element of common sense to sanitizing a system... pour in enough that it smells like the chemical that you're using; rinse until that smell is no longer there; then rinse more with purer water. You don't really have that option with odorless things, so just go nuts until nuts seems too nuts and then thoroughly remove the nuts.

 

[hm7]

That was just to illustrate the point that, even with all our meticulous tracking of numbers, there's still a lot to work on that is strictly anecdotal. Given few controls, even just the reasoning for collecting data for one variable is anecdotal.

People are too quick to write things off as "bro science" when many of those practices are really just the passing of effective traditions which haven't been verified by data.

I think there's an element of common sense to sanitizing a system... pour in enough that it smells like the chemical that you're using; rinse until that smell is no longer there; then rinse more with purer water. You don't really have that option with odorless things, so just go nuts until nuts seems too nuts and then thoroughly remove the nuts.

Sorry, I'm not really following? I never made mention of anything being 'bro science'?

I think I stated the inverse of that by wanting to eliminate a potential point of failure for myself by accurately and legitimately testing and finding quantifiable data on my total and free chlorine levels? I don't really understand how wanting to do this could be met with anything beyond a resounding 'yeah, that sounds like a solid next step! Looking forward to the results! Let's see some actual data!" - but then again, clearly I have many issues, considering the multitude of people who encounter no problems throughout their grows against my constant failure regardless of what I try, change, or experiment with.

That's the scientific approach to finding and correcting issues - testing *one* thing at a time, verifying the data, making adjustments, retesting, etc. Not just randomly doing things or changing multiple things simultaneously. I'm systematically trying to find the point of my failure more than anything to better understand what I'm doing wrong - not just guessing at what's going to allow me to limp another plant across the finish line.

 

[beluga]

but then again, clearly I have many issues, considering the multitude of people who encounter no problems throughout their grows against my constant failure regardless of what I try, change, or experiment with.

I guess that's what I'm getting at in so many words.
The people I see the most frustrated are those chasing technicalities without having much basis for the general feel of things.

I think we can

Just listen to @Aqua Man is suggesting and go from there. Since it's independent of the system you're currently using, I'm sure it will be successful.
I'm also sure your system is clean enough and I'm sure it will work for you if you wait until a plant is well-established before moving it to the system. Then we'll help you with tuning it if need be.