H202 in Coco Coir- Why/How to Use?

[Zombierider]

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.

My first two runs, I went WAY too high in ppm's, topping out at like 950ish. Next grow topped at around 900, but this grow I havent gone over 620ppm and plan to top out no more than 650ppm. What correlation does ec/ppm have with live or sterile res? Would a sterile/live res allow me to run higher ppm?

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

Depends on the strain I would assume? Most of the stuff we've grown seems to be able to take 1250PPM to the face.

I run my res around 1250PPM almost straight through using 'the recipe'. Even with AutoPots the only time I've got lockout is cause I decided to double up on the PK boost and well yeah...that wasn't fantastic.

 

[Moe.Red]

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?

That's a great question. I wish it were an easy answer. I'll do my best to use laymen's terms.

There are 2 separate things here, bacteria and fungus.

Bacteria grow exponentially. They double in number over and over.

Here is an interesting way to think about it. Let's say you are in the uppermost bleachers in Busch Stadium, home of the Cardinals, the best team in baseball. There is a faucet leaking down at the pitcher's mound, that leaks exponentially. Meaning minute 1, you get 1 gallon. Minute 2, you get 2 gallons (plus the 1 you already had, so 3 total at this point.) Let's say for sake of argument, the end result is it takes 1 hour to fill up and get your shoes wet all the way at the top.

When was the stadium half full?

At 59 minutes.

Human brains are not built to understand a doubling function. That probably made your record skip to think about it.

That's how bacteria work. The question is what is the doubling time, and what is the lifetime of a microbe? They are all different, but 20 minutes to an hour to split and make a copy of themselves is pretty typical.

The problem is boom and bust cycles based on available food, but we will save that for another post.

In terms of how long to build a colony necessary for protection? We could do worse than look at the aquarium hobby for guidance.

When you first fill up your new fish tank and put your fish in there, there is no established colony. Fish start to poop, which is ammonia.

Ammonia is converted to Nitrite by one form of nitrifying bacteria. Then another bacteria converts nitrite to nitrate.

The time it takes to build a colony sufficient to measure zero ammonia and nitrite in the water continually, even with fish poop being added, is generally about 45 days. Once that colony is in place, you are golden, add more fish. There are so many now that doubling, and filling that stadium happens quickly based on available food. More fish poop, more bacteria, less ammonia. It's magic.

The bacteria we add for plants are very similar to nitrosomonas and nitrobacter species that are responsible for the aquarium nitrogen cycle I just described. You can watch those colonies develop with simple test strips you get at petsmart.

So, about 30 - 45 days to develop a bacteria colony in your res if you do it right. This is why you want to start before the plants go in, and you want to treat seedlings as soon as they pop.

Man, this is a long post, so I'm gonna quit here and just say fungi behave differently and I can go into that if you want, but for them you need roots. If done correctly, they grow right along with the roots at about the same rate as the roots.


Oh, and yes once established you can move a colony around whereever you want. Just move some item that has a colony on it. I use fish filter media. Bio Balls is another good one to use.

 

[Moe.Red]

My first two runs, I went WAY too high in ppm's, topping out at like 950ish. Next grow topped at around 900, but this grow I havent gone over 620ppm and plan to top out no more than 650ppm. What correlation does ec/ppm have with live or sterile res? Would a sterile/live res allow me to run higher ppm?

I don't think there is a correlation.

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

Incredible info! Thank you Moe. Time line makes a lot of sense. I noticed about a month after switch to a live res things really changed in there. Went from opaque to clear and smelled completely different.

Going to look into Bio Balls. Hopefully being able to transfer over colonies is going to help keep everything more consistent.

 

[smokedareefer]

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)

If and when you'd like a sample just let me know. I've bean telling my wife for years that we shouldn't be able to do what we do.

 

[Zombierider]

That's a great question. I wish it were an easy answer. I'll do my best to use laymen's terms.

There are 2 separate things here, bacteria and fungus.

Bacteria grow exponentially. They double in number over and over.

Here is an interesting way to think about it. Let's say you are in the uppermost bleachers in Busch Stadium, home of the Cardinals, the best team in baseball. There is a faucet leaking down at the pitcher's mound, that leaks exponentially. Meaning minute 1, you get 1 gallon. Minute 2, you get 2 gallons (plus the 1 you already had, so 3 total at this point.) Let's say for sake of argument, the end result is it takes 1 hour to fill up and get your shoes wet all the way at the top.

When was the stadium half full?

At 59 minutes.

Human brains are not built to understand a doubling function. That probably made your record skip to think about it.

That's how bacteria work. The question is what is the doubling time, and what is the lifetime of a microbe? They are all different, but 20 minutes to an hour to split and make a copy of themselves is pretty typical.

The problem is boom and bust cycles based on available food, but we will save that for another post.

In terms of how long to build a colony necessary for protection? We could do worse than look at the aquarium hobby for guidance.

When you first fill up your new fish tank and put your fish in there, there is no established colony. Fish start to poop, which is ammonia.

Ammonia is converted to Nitrite by one form of nitrifying bacteria. Then another bacteria converts nitrite to nitrate.

The time it takes to build a colony sufficient to measure zero ammonia and nitrite in the water continually, even with fish poop being added, is generally about 45 days. Once that colony is in place, you are golden, add more fish. There are so many now that doubling, and filling that stadium happens quickly based on available food. More fish poop, more bacteria, less ammonia. It's magic.

The bacteria we add for plants are very similar to nitrosomonas and nitrobacter species that are responsible for the aquarium nitrogen cycle I just described. You can watch those colonies develop with simple test strips you get at petsmart.

So, about 30 - 45 days to develop a bacteria colony in your res if you do it right. This is why you want to start before the plants go in, and you want to treat seedlings as soon as they pop.

Man, this is a long post, so I'm gonna quit here and just say fungi behave differently and I can go into that if you want, but for them you need roots. If done correctly, they grow right along with the roots at about the same rate as the roots.


Oh, and yes once established you can move a colony around whereever you want. Just move some item that has a colony on it. I use fish filter media. Bio Balls is another good one to use.

What's up bro! My bad man, I could not find this thread and totally spaced on responding to this. Better late than never though...right? FYI I will probably have more questions than conclusions but bear with me lol. 😁

Anyway, thanks for this response, makes me have several questions but i won't ask you all of em...now haha.

Firstly, the idea of transferring an existing colony of microbes with fish filter media is fricken awesome. So, would this negate the need to re-up on more microbes, since you could maintain a colony and just transfer it to each new batch of seedlings? How long could you keep a colony of microbes alive for? At some point I would be trying to name the colony, something like "Cannabis-Land".

Secondly, yes, I WOULD like to know more about fungi, especially the stuff in the Great White (which just came in the mail today). I see that it contains Trichoderma, which @Dirtbag mentioned somewhere as being what we're looking for in non-organic dtw coco grows, together with the bacteria "bacillus".

So, I figure if I inoculate seedlings with it on their root plugs, and start adding it to my nutrient's day 1, then it'll take around 30-45 days for a colony to become established in my root zone. Super excited to try this out. Should I just add the dose listed on the bottle for hydro res, 1tsp per 10 gals?

My LAST question: Since you mention it takes 30-45 days to build a colony "in your res", do the colonies transfer to the coco and roots, or is the colony just in the reservoir? Since I am growing in drain to waste, I empty and clean out my reservoir every week or so, so no colonies surviving that me thinks.

Oh and I think I saw somewhere that you fly fish, I've been fly fishing for past 3 years ever since flu, and ive been throwing lines in ever since. When I find it I will post a shot of my last Brown I caught in Colorado. Peace!

 

[Zombierider]

Colorado has some SICK fly fishing as im sure you know.

 

[Moe.Red]

What's up bro! My bad man, I could not find this thread and totally spaced on responding to this. Better late than never though...right? FYI I will probably have more questions than conclusions but bear with me lol. 😁

Anyway, thanks for this response, makes me have several questions but i won't ask you all of em...now haha.

Firstly, the idea of transferring an existing colony of microbes with fish filter media is fricken awesome. So, would this negate the need to re-up on more microbes, since you could maintain a colony and just transfer it to each new batch of seedlings? How long could you keep a colony of microbes alive for? At some point I would be trying to name the colony, something like "Cannabis-Land".

Secondly, yes, I WOULD like to know more about fungi, especially the stuff in the Great White (which just came in the mail today). I see that it contains Trichoderma, which @Dirtbag mentioned somewhere as being what we're looking for in non-organic dtw coco grows, together with the bacteria "bacillus".

So, I figure if I inoculate seedlings with it on their root plugs, and start adding it to my nutrient's day 1, then it'll take around 30-45 days for a colony to become established in my root zone. Super excited to try this out. Should I just add the dose listed on the bottle for hydro res, 1tsp per 10 gals?

My LAST question: Since you mention it takes 30-45 days to build a colony "in your res", do the colonies transfer to the coco and roots, or is the colony just in the reservoir? Since I am growing in drain to waste, I empty and clean out my reservoir every week or so, so no colonies surviving that me thinks.

Oh and I think I saw somewhere that you fly fish, I've been fly fishing for past 3 years ever since flu, and ive been throwing lines in ever since. When I find it I will post a shot of my last Brown I caught in Colorado. Peace!

Hey Zombie, sorry I missed this. I get too many alerts, and I can't keep up with them all sometimes. I log on and my heart has 50 waiting on me, gets overwhelming sometimes.

Yes, you can transfer a colony and not need to add more biologics from a bottle. That said, this is better with bacteria than fungi. If you want the fungi, you really need to do a proper root dip.

What I am working on now on the fog thread is determining A - what benefits if any are had by biologics over H2O2 or bleach, and b - what stains / species should we focus on if there is a benefit. Still early stages on that, but you can see the different bottles growing out on petri dishes. This is Orca for example:

Damn, getting interrupted at work here, I'll come back for the rest later. Cheers.

 

[Moe.Red]

Secondly, yes, I WOULD like to know more about fungi, especially the stuff in the Great White (which just came in the mail today). I see that it contains Trichoderma, which @Dirtbag mentioned somewhere as being what we're looking for in non-organic dtw coco grows, together with the bacteria "bacillus".

So, I figure if I inoculate seedlings with it on their root plugs, and start adding it to my nutrient's day 1, then it'll take around 30-45 days for a colony to become established in my root zone. Super excited to try this out. Should I just add the dose listed on the bottle for hydro res, 1tsp per 10 gals?

My LAST question: Since you mention it takes 30-45 days to build a colony "in your res", do the colonies transfer to the coco and roots, or is the colony just in the reservoir? Since I am growing in drain to waste, I empty and clean out my reservoir every week or so, so no colonies surviving that me thinks.

Oh and I think I saw somewhere that you fly fish, I've been fly fishing for past 3 years ever since flu, and ive been throwing lines in ever since. When I find it I will post a shot of my last Brown I caught in Colorado. Peace!

OK, so the 30-45 days number comes from the relatively slow growth in a res, especially with very small roots. The bacteria can only continue to double in the presence of adequate food sources. In my petri dishes, this is not an issue, as it is full of sugar (dextrose) so those colonies you see developing there are at full speed. Those pics are at a little over a week, I think 9 days now. I would call Orca established, but Max Microbe is way behind.

Think of it this way, if I had put Orca in the same petri as Max Microbe, don't you think Orca would overpower the dish and push Max out? that is what you are trying to do in the res - overpower and consume all food by good bacteria so bad do not have a chance.

I'm experimenting with adding sugars to feed and grow the colony until the plant is big enough to support them directly via exudates.

Yes, the colonies will form anywhere there is a water and oxygen source next to a food source. So in hydro, that is every surface (pipes, tubs, roots, hydroton, coco, netpots - everything) with a concentration in colony size at the roots as that is where the food comes from. You will find very few bacteria (less than 1%) free floating in water. You will not be flushing them.

If you look at some of my root pics, you will see the colonies. I can point them out if you need, or take a better pic.

Now fishing in Colorado - that's a topic I could go on for hours. So many stories. So many brook trout. So much fun. Love your spot man.

 

[Zombierider]

OK, so the 30-45 days number comes from the relatively slow growth in a res, especially with very small roots. The bacteria can only continue to double in the presence of adequate food sources. In my petri dishes, this is not an issue, as it is full of sugar (dextrose) so those colonies you see developing there are at full speed. Those pics are at a little over a week, I think 9 days now. I would call Orca established, but Max Microbe is way behind.

Think of it this way, if I had put Orca in the same petri as Max Microbe, don't you think Orca would overpower the dish and push Max out? that is what you are trying to do in the res - overpower and consume all food by good bacteria so bad do not have a chance.

I'm experimenting with adding sugars to feed and grow the colony until the plant is big enough to support them directly via exudates.

Yes, the colonies will form anywhere there is a water and oxygen source next to a food source. So in hydro, that is every surface (pipes, tubs, roots, hydroton, coco, netpots - everything) with a concentration in colony size at the roots as that is where the food comes from. You will find very few bacteria (less than 1%) free floating in water. You will not be flushing them.

If you look at some of my root pics, you will see the colonies. I can point them out if you need, or take a better pic.

Now fishing in Colorado - that's a topic I could go on for hours. So many stories. So many brook trout. So much fun. Love your spot man.

Howdy! My bad for the late replay, been riding my bike A LOT last couple days so when I get back home its: devour all food and drink, smoke massive vape bag, CRASH HARD. No food tastes better than after a 4 hour bike ride and a massive bong rip lol.

ANYWAY, this is really interesting stuff. So the roots excrete these exudates that feed these microbe colonies, so that must mean root exudates are sugars right? Maybe Im mistaken. If that is the case though, then maybe adding extra sugars to a plants food helps them make...more exudates and then so more microbes and better roots/res conditions?
And heck yeah I would actually like to see photos of the root colonies if you have them. I cant seem to find where you posted them so feel free to re-post them here! Im sure people would find it interesting aside from just me.

Anyways thanks again for the insight!

And yeah man I have been going to Colorado for years now. Those alpine streams with the lil brookies might just be the finest fishing experience one can have! I will be making a trip out there this late summer, probably will hit up western Colorado cuz it's the best of the best imo! Feel free to also post any fish youve caught, we can somehow make it relevant to growing weed lmfao.

 

[ViparSpectra]

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

Very Impressive!

👍👍👍