H202 in Coco Coir- Why/How to Use?

[Zombierider]

Hello! I have had 3 successful runs with the Drain to waste style in coco coir and general hydroponics flora series nutrients, but I have encountered root drainage issues on some phenos while others drain quickly from veg-harvest. I've mainly attributed this to the fact that I use 1-gallon pots and grow MONSTERS, and some drink more than others, causing the roots to become so compact they can't drain well. I dont currently use anything in my res for roots, just been keeping it @ 65-72 degrees and cleaning my res well between each fresh batch of nutrients. This is where my question about H202 comes in:

Aside from adding perlite or rice hulls to help with drainage (which adds ANOTHER step which I would prefer not to do), would adding H202 to my res from seed-harvest help prevent root issues and maybe this drainage issue? It seems unnatural to have a sterile root zone though, so I worry about it causing a loss of terpenes.

I haven't found any solid info on whether or not coco coir has micro-organisms, but I can clearly see some white mold-microorganism looking stuff on my roots so it must be inoculated with something. I don't want to add H202 on my current run for fear of freaking them out on week 4 of flower with something new. However, I'm considering using h202 on my future runs to keep my res cleaner and avoid root rot, but is it truly necessary? Will keeping my res below 72F degrees keep my res stable enough not to need h202? Cocoforcannabis recommends h202 for every res from seed to harvest, so Im a bit confused if I should be using it really. Below is a couple shots of my current run of Peyote Wifi, Banana Krumble and Big Apple Cookies!

If I can be SUPER DEMANDING and maybe ask some of people with knowledge of coco and synth nutes, like @Aqua Man @Moe.Red ?

 

[Zombierider]

Heres my current run of Banana Krumble, Peyote Wifi and Big Apple Cookies.

 

[Moe.Red]

Well, there are a few things to unpack there.

To cut to the chase, I am not sure how adding peroxide would make the roots drain better.

As far as coco having microbes - yes it will have some. It does not arrive to you sterile, and if it did it wouldn't stay that way long. It is a very good house for microbes because of the porosity and air exchange. But that is equally true for microbes you don't want.

Generally I advise people to pick a team and either use an inoculant like great white, or use a sterilizing product like h202. Doing neither leaves too much to chance imo.

 

[Zombierider]

Well, there are a few things to unpack there.

To cut to the chase, I am not sure how adding peroxide would make the roots drain better.

As far as coco having microbes - yes it will have some. It does not arrive to you sterile, and if it did it wouldn't stay that way long. It is a very good house for microbes because of the porosity and air exchange. But that is equally true for microbes you don't want.

Generally I advise people to pick a team and either use an inoculant like great white, or use a sterilizing product like h202. Doing neither leaves too much to chance imo.

Thanks a bunch for reading my long azz question, i had a coffee and was feeling all type-ey.

Anyway, it makes sense that doing without anything for roots is leaving me open for pythium etc. I just figured since ive gotten away with it until now i didnt need it, but as they say "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". I started thinking about all this because I wanna re-veg my banana krumble cuz she is SO DELICIOUS smelling, so i really wanna keep her roots healthy.

Should i incorporate a root innoculant/sterilizing agent mid flower or will this shock them? I will for sure be using something next grow. I might just try one res with h202 and a seperate res with great white or recharge during veg. For bloom Im thinking Mammoth P, as its liquid, and I tried NPK microbes bloom but it's rather grainy stuff and hard to keep suspended in the water for even distribution, so i nixxed it.

 

[Moe.Red]

There are folks that get away with doing nothing. @smokedareefer is an example.

When I was first starting out years ago, I tried RDWC with nothing because I didn't know better. Lost the crop to root rot. So there is a risk involved with doing nothing. There is a risk to your wallet using great white. There is a risk to plant roots and chelates using H2O2. Pick the risk that suits you best.

It does not make sense to inoculate with great white mid flower unless there is an emergency. The colonies take so long to develop you will be harvesting before you are protected. H2o2 can be added any time.

I'm holding back on a recommendation because I am still studying this, and I have a side by side test coming up that will hopefully prove or disprove what is "best." But I can tell you that I started with nothing, moved to h2o2 in a panic, then got into live res and have never looked back. I have not had root rot in many years. Just don't use hydroguard, too expensive for what it is.

 

[smokedareefer]

I would suggest he keeps doing what hes doing if it isn't broke.
I'm one that doesn't do anything and have been getting away with it and have been using nothing for the last 10 years or so.
I run a 4 site RDWC store bought from current culture. First attempt with this system everyone told everybody its gotta be live or sterile or you'll be dealing with root rot. So my plants are in the system about 8 inches tall and i give them the recommended dosage of h202 and it really pissed them off , quickly changed out the water and have been running neither ever since thinking if anything went astray i would convert to a live system. That was 10 years ago and ive been doing nothing ever since aside from my normal chasing of my tail. Besides the root rot which ive never had to deal with (that i know of) there is always something.
I too grow some pretty good size.

Edit: dealing with an issue yesterday i checked the roots of 2 of the 4 plants. Plant 4 with a problem.

 

[Zombierider]

There are folks that get away with doing nothing. @smokedareefer is an example.

When I was first starting out years ago, I tried RDWC with nothing because I didn't know better. Lost the crop to root rot. So there is a risk involved with doing nothing. There is a risk to your wallet using great white. There is a risk to plant roots and chelates using H2O2. Pick the risk that suits you best.

It does not make sense to inoculate with great white mid flower unless there is an emergency. The colonies take so long to develop you will be harvesting before you are protected. H2o2 can be added any time.

I'm holding back on a recommendation because I am still studying this, and I have a side by side test coming up that will hopefully prove or disprove what is "best." But I can tell you that I started with nothing, moved to h2o2 in a panic, then got into live res and have never looked back. I have not had root rot in many years. Just don't use hydroguard, too expensive for what it is.

Hmm, risk to wallet vs roots? Since optimal root health/best quality end product is the goal here, then the risk to the roots and uptake/chelation issues from h202 are not worth it imo. Will just use h202 to clean my irrigation lines and such between runs, but overall, I think great white, or anything with those beneficial fungi and bacteria, will be best. Will be using Great white next run.

As for this current run, as the roots still drain well and seem healthy, I might forgo the h202 for now. However if I do notice any signs of root rot, Ill add some h202 at half strength just to finish out this run.

I'll be very interested in your results from the sterile vs nonsterile test. It seems to me that microbes in hydro is not totally understood amongst even commercial pro growers, so your literally at the cutting edge of cannabis research. 💨 💨

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

I'm not a scientist, and my personal experience is hardly what anyone would consider 'scientific', so take what I say with a grain of salt.

We now run a 12 site AutoPot system all running 50/50 coco/perlite. First two runs we tried to keep the res sterile, mixing in UC Roots and trying to keep everything as sterile as possible. We didn't have any issues with plants growing, outside of one plant that randomly offed itself, but did have issues with brownish sludge developing in the res and clogging the lines.

The last two grows were done using Hydroguard, and Great White. Plants performed about the same, but that res was so much cleaner and the lines never clogged.

If someone has a solution to replace Hydroguard I'm all ears, cause it is expensive.

 

[Zombierider]

I would suggest he keeps doing what hes doing if it isn't broke.
I'm one that doesn't do anything and have been getting away with it and have been using nothing for the last 10 years or so.
I run a 4 site RDWC store bought from current culture. First attempt with this system everyone told everybody its gotta be live or sterile or you'll be dealing with root rot. So my plants are in the system about 8 inches tall and i give them the recommended dosage of h202 and it really pissed them off , quickly changed out the water and have been running neither ever since thinking if anything went astray i would convert to a live system. That was 10 years ago and ive been doing nothing ever since aside from my normal chasing of my tail. Besides the root rot which ive never had to deal with (that i know of) there is always something.
I too grow some pretty good size.

Edit: dealing with an issue yesterday i checked the roots of 2 of the 4 plants. View attachment 1323351 View attachment 1323353

To my untrained eye those roots look pretty damn healthy. I assume its the nutrients like micro or other dark nutes that cause the roots to be tan vs pure white? Yeah my gut tells me to just finish this run w/o adding anything new, since they seem to be happy as punch. However, on my first grow, I noticed a fermenting smell coming from of the rootzones that wouldnt drain too well. So the issue of drainage + no microbes or h202 meant I think I gave it some root rot. Plant seemed to recover though since I harvested some fat sticky nugs from it.

I like the idea of using microbes as an insurance policy basically. Even though I have gotten away with it through my last 3 grows, I figure it cant hurt to experiment with the microbes. Might be a waste of money and I never did really need it, but better to have it and not need it than...you know the rest haha.

Thanks for the insight bro. Keep proving all these microbians wrong.

 

[Zombierider]

I'm not a scientist, and my personal experience is hardly what anyone would consider 'scientific', so take what I say with a grain of salt.

We now run a 12 site AutoPot system all running 50/50 coco/perlite. First two runs we tried to keep the res sterile, mixing in UC Roots and trying to keep everything as sterile as possible. We didn't have any issues with plants growing, outside of one plant that randomly offed itself, but did have issues with brownish sludge developing in the res and clogging the lines.

The last two grows were done using Hydroguard, and Great White. Plants performed about the same, but that res was so much cleaner and the lines never clogged.

If someone has a solution to replace Hydroguard I'm all ears, cause it is expensive.

Well I will for sure let someone more knowledgable give you a better answer, but so far as I understand, Hydroguard just has a few microbial innoculants, where-as Great white has a lot more. Honestly, I have heard about many products people like better than Hydroguard: Recharge, Mammoth P, RAW Microbes gro/bloom, Great White, Orca. Just a few alternatives. Im gonna try great white because...come on it has a fricken SHARK on the bottle lol.

 

[Moe.Red]

If someone has a solution to replace Hydroguard I'm all ears, cause it is expensive.

Hydroguard is bacillus amyloliquefaciens at very low concentrations. It is expensive and only a single species of BB.

Southern AG fungicide is the same BB, more concentrated, for a fraction of the cost. If you want to run a single species, that's the way to go. You will naturally get others as well like the nitrifying bacterias, but they eat different stuff and will not compete, help, or hurt your plants.

 

[Moe.Red]

Well I will for sure let someone more knowledgable give you a better answer, but so far as I understand, Hydroguard just has a few microbial innoculants, where-as Great white has a lot more. Honestly, I have heard about many products people like better than Hydroguard: Recharge, Mammoth P, RAW Microbes gro/bloom, Great White, Orca. Just a few alternatives. Im gonna try great white because...come on it has a fricken SHARK on the bottle lol.

yes sir, those products are far more than bacillus amyloliquefaciens.

I dig sharks too. And orcas.

 

[Moe.Red]

I'm just gonna drop this here - skip past if you have made up your mind or don't prefer to get too deep.

The rhizosphere is so much more complex than "you got root rot or not." That seems to be all people talk about with sterile vs live.

The plants talk to the microbes in the root zone via exudates. They can and do put sugars they worked hard on in the leaves into the soil / water to encourage bacteria growth. They push out acids or bases to adjust the PH right at the roots, which allows them to request one nutrient over another. They push out amino acids, enzymes, hormones, and more. They talk to other plants via beneficial fungi. Beneficial fungi quite literally increase root mass by passing nutrients and water thru their tissue and to the roots.

Why do they spend as much as 12% of their energy on feeding stuff around the roots if it does not benefit them? That's just not how mother nature works.

You get none of that if you carpet bomb life in the res. The plant will still try, but the results and benefits are getting cock blocked by H2O2. You need symbiotic organisms to make use of the exudates.

 

[smokedareefer]

I'm just gonna drop this here - skip past if you have made up your mind or don't prefer to get too deep.

The rhizosphere is so much more complex than "you got root rot or not." That seems to be all people talk about with sterile vs live.

The plants talk to the microbes in the root zone via exudates. They can and do put sugars they worked hard on in the leaves into the soil / water to encourage bacteria growth. They push out acids or bases to adjust the PH right at the roots, which allows them to request one nutrient over another. They push out amino acids, enzymes, hormones, and more. They talk to other plants via beneficial fungi. Beneficial fungi quite literally increase root mass by passing nutrients and water thru their tissue and to the roots.

Why do they spend as much as 12% of their energy on feeding stuff around the roots if it does not benefit them? That's just not how mother nature works.

You get none of that if you carpet bomb life in the res. The plant will still try, but the results and benefits are getting cock blocked by H2O2. You need symbiotic organisms to make use of the exudates.

Totally agree but in layman type language. Not to hyjack this thread but look at those 2 root pictures above and note the fibrous root structure compared to previous sample where i let the ph drift (dive) to 4.3.

 

[smokedareefer]

Hello! I have had 3 successful runs with the Drain to waste style in coco coir and general hydroponics flora series nutrients, but I have encountered root drainage issues on some phenos while others drain quickly from veg-harvest. I've mainly attributed this to the fact that I use 1-gallon pots and grow MONSTERS, and some drink more than others, causing the roots to become so compact they can't drain well. I dont currently use anything in my res for roots, just been keeping it @ 65-72 degrees and cleaning my res well between each fresh batch of nutrients. This is where my question about H202 comes in:

Aside from adding perlite or rice hulls to help with drainage (which adds ANOTHER step which I would prefer not to do), would adding H202 to my res from seed-harvest help prevent root issues and maybe this drainage issue? It seems unnatural to have a sterile root zone though, so I worry about it causing a loss of terpenes.

I haven't found any solid info on whether or not coco coir has micro-organisms, but I can clearly see some white mold-microorganism looking stuff on my roots so it must be inoculated with something. I don't want to add H202 on my current run for fear of freaking them out on week 4 of flower with something new. However, I'm considering using h202 on my future runs to keep my res cleaner and avoid root rot, but is it truly necessary? Will keeping my res below 72F degrees keep my res stable enough not to need h202? Cocoforcannabis recommends h202 for every res from seed to harvest, so Im a bit confused if I should be using it really. Below is a couple shots of my current run of Peyote Wifi, Banana Krumble and Big Apple Cookies!

If I can be SUPER DEMANDING and maybe ask some of people with knowledge of coco and synth nutes, like @Aqua Man @Moe.Red ?

Another thing id be interested in is if your nutrient usage would increase if you did go live or sterile.

Today im at day36 flower and feeding at 500 ppm. I hear some high feeders on this site.

 

[Moe.Red]

Totally agree but in layman type language. Not to hyjack this thread but look at those 2 root pictures above and note the fibrous root structure compared to previous sample where i let the ph drift (dive) to 4.3.

I think about you and your results a lot. I do not have an explanation. But I am certainly using them as a data point in my reading and testing, just trying to wrap my head around this.

Perhaps when I have a bit more experiential knowledge, it might make sense to send me a sample of your roots. They will clearly have microbes on them, what kind tho? I don't know, only have guesses. But I could find out (probably)

 

[Moe.Red]

Another thing id be interested in is if your nutrient usage would increase if you did go live or sterile.

Today im at day36 flower and feeding at 500 ppm. I hear some high feeders on this site.

Yeah I see that too. 500 - 600 is a good safe zone for me too.

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

Hydroguard is bacillus amyloliquefaciens at very low concentrations. It is expensive and only a single species of BB.

Southern AG fungicide is the same BB, more concentrated, for a fraction of the cost. If you want to run a single species, that's the way to go. You will naturally get others as well like the nitrifying bacterias, but they eat different stuff and will not compete, help, or hurt your plants.

Southern AG is so much cheaper. Gawd damn.

Just need to figure out the dosage now.

 

[Moe.Red]

Southern AG is so much cheaper. Gawd damn.

Just need to figure out the dosage now.

I just noticed you run great white. You do not need both products, it already contains the bacteria in hydroguard.

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

This is all really good to know. The live res is new knowledge and so far it's been awesome.

Maybe this is off topic, but since we're talking about live reservoirs, what kind of life span are we talking for the microbes? How long does it take them to set up? I noticed Moe said it takes a while to set up. Usually during a run we'll 'change' the res but it's really just filling it up with more feed water (with microbes) rather than dumping it, cleaning it out and starting fresh.

Is there a way to keep them alive between runs?