Killing Brown Slime Aka Cyanobacteria In A Uc Or Rdwc System With Microbes.

[Capulator]

It seems that this topic should be addressed as many people are having problems with brown slime aka root rot aka brown algae aka cyanobacteria.

I ran a customized RDWC system for a couple of years so I am fairly well versed in live and sterile. I started off sterile and switched everything to live eventually, and in the end ended up going to chow beds for ease of use and reliability, something that anyone reading this may want to consider if they depend on their crop for medicinal use, or if they are a caregiver. Losing entire crops sucks.

If you find yourself getting "slimed", you need to take action immediately. I gleaned most of my info when I first got slimed a few years ago from richyrich, a member of another site (not sure if he is here too but if he is: mad props goes out to him). You can find him by searching slime haters club on the net. I suggest you do that now, and read all the info there. When you are ready to make the tea, instead of using great white, zho, aquashield, RE, etc.. all you need is the OG BIOWAR root pack for your microbe source

@1T of root pack per gallon of tea.

1) sterilize
2) add back tea and go easy on the nutes util you see new growth.
3) keep fingers crossed.

I was able to finish many successful runs this way, and never got slimed again after my fist episode, and running a live res after that. By live res I mean no sterilizing agents. Relying on the abundance of good bacteria to out compete the bad cyanobacteria.

One thing you should never do: MIX SUBSTRATES!!

What I mean by that is do not put a 6" rockwool block in a net pot of hydroton. If you are gonna use hydroton, root in an easy cloner and go straight to all hydroton. I recommend straight chow in the net pot (50/50 coco/hydroton or coco/perlite). I got the least amount of crown problems this way. With rockwool aka rotwool I was generally doomed to get the dreaded elephants foot and overnight my trees would die. :(

Good luck!

Cap

 

[mojavegreen]

chow beds

what's that?

 

[Wavegem]

Cap was your water level ever touching the rock wool, net pot or did it saturate from the roots up taking?
50/50 mix in the net pot solved all my crown issues. I absolutely love this method and still use it today. Actually if you don't have your system setup you can put the net pots in garage bags and top feed everyday till the go in. Roots everywhere

 

[Capulator]

@mojavegreen chow is a term for a mixture of coco and hydroton as it looks like dog food when you mix it. However, I believe the term chow can also can be used for coco/perlite. If it can't be used that way, then I am doing it anyway.

Beds are large planting areas. As opposed to singular pots, I use 3x6 geo pots in a 3x6 tray, and I fill the "beds" with "chow"....and that's how you get "chow beds"


@Wavegem my water level was never touching the rockwool. Once I switched to the chow in my net pots I never had a problem again. Had this realization because I was running chow and RW in my MPB as an experiment and all the RW crashed. Chow lived.

 

[bigdaddyg8]

what do you mean by sterilize or how is this done

It seems that this topic should be addressed as many people are having problems with brown slime aka root rot aka brown algae aka cyanobacteria.

I ran a customized RDWC system for a couple of years so I am fairly well versed in live and sterile. I started off sterile and switched everything to live eventually, and in the end ended up going to chow beds for ease of use and reliability, something that anyone reading this may want to consider if they depend on their crop for medicinal use, or if they are a caregiver. Losing entire crops sucks.

If you find yourself getting "slimed", you need to take action immediately. I gleaned most of my info when I first got slimed a few years ago from richyrich, a member of another site (not sure if he is here too but if he is: mad props goes out to him). You can find him by searching slime haters club on the net. I suggest you do that now, and read all the info there. When you are ready to make the tea, instead of using great white, zho, aquashield, RE, etc.. all you need is the OG BIOWAR root pack for your microbe source

@1T of root pack per gallon of tea.

1) sterilize
2) add back tea and go easy on the nutes util you see new growth.
3) keep fingers crossed.

I was able to finish many successful runs this way, and never got slimed again after my fist episode, and running a live res after that. By live res I mean no sterilizing agents. Relying on the abundance of good bacteria to out compete the bad cyanobacteria.

One thing you should never do: MIX SUBSTRATES!!

What I mean by that is do not put a 6" rockwool block in a net pot of hydroton. If you are gonna use hydroton, root in an easy cloner and go straight to all hydroton. I recommend straight chow in the net pot (50/50 coco/hydroton or coco/perlite). I got the least amount of crown problems this way. With rockwool aka rotwool I was generally doomed to get the dreaded elephants foot and overnight my trees would die. :(

Good luck!

Cap

hey cap , what would you recommend to sterilize with ?

 

[Capulator]

what do you mean by sterilize or how is this done

hey cap , what would you recommend to sterilize with ?

Bleach is what I always used. A lot of it. Physan is good but you have to be very careful with it. If you run it with plants it can seriously poison them. You have to be very careful and not run it in the system for more than an hour or so. I know I have read 6 hours, but to me even an hour seems excessive. It's 3mL/25 gallons if you run it in a system, do not go with the directions on the label.

For bleach I would dump a couple bottles in a 100 gallons and let her run for the night. Then, double rinse.

 

[bigdaddyg8]

Bleach is what I always used. A lot of it. Physan is good but you have to be very careful with it. If you run it with plants it can seriously poison them. You have to be very careful and not run it in the system for more than an hour or so. I know I have read 6 hours, but to me even an hour seems excessive. It's 3mL/25 gallons if you run it in a system, do not go with the directions on the label.

For bleach I would dump a couple bottles in a 100 gallons and let her run for the night. Then, double rinse.

are you saying 6 quarts of bleach to a hundred gallons of water circulating over night ?

i am running a 6 site uc . ( here comes the dumb ass question ) sterilize with the plant's in or out of the uc ? that sounds like a strong bleach solution ?
thanks !

 

[Capulator]

I would sterilize with that in between runs @bigdaddyg8. with plants in that would probably kill them.

 

[HiGro]

Im running a DWC system with 5gal Buckets and I'm on week 3 of Veg. Im introducing Micro-Brew to the system.

I use H2O2 to clean everything Buckets, Airstones, Ect.. when i do my weekly res change i dry everything off.

I use a diluted H2O2 solution .5ml in a 1 litre spray bottle and Ill spray my roots with this solution, to keep them moist with and to prevent cyano.

So my question is "Should i stop spraying my roots during Res change?"

 

[Capulator]

You are killing all the microbes with H2O2 @HiGro

 

[ohthatguy8]

@Capulator i don't want to detour the thread but..... How do you prepare your chow? I use straight hydroton now and I throw it all away between cycles. I guess what I'm asking is I've read you need to activate coco but I didn't read enough to know what it meant. So how do you do it ?

 

[HiGro]

Thanks Cap. thats what i thought.

But as for the cleaning, is it still ok to clean and dry everything?

With the H2O2

 

[Capulator]

@Capulator i don't want to detour the thread but..... How do you prepare your chow? I use straight hydroton now and I throw it all away between cycles. I guess what I'm asking is I've read you need to activate coco but I didn't read enough to know what it meant. So how do you do it ?

I love derailing!

When I ran chow I reused it. I would just empty the pots outside on a piece of plywood, shake it off to get the majority of the roots and replant in to it. Seemed like my plants did better with each run. As far as preparing... just flush the shit out of it if you didn't use a good coco.

 

[Capulator]

Thanks Cap. thats what i thought.

But as for the cleaning, is it still ok to clean and dry everything?

With the H2O2

definitely.