DWC Root Slime Cure aka How to Breed Beneficial Microbes

I have tryed to source the ZHO powder, Ancient Forest and mycogrow powder but cant buy it localy.The only product my local stocks in the way of benifical bacteria is product called 420 PREMIUM BACTERIA made in South Australia wondering if this would have any of the required tea ingerdents in it?

I want to make up a 1000 litre tank with canna nutes , is there any way I can keep this happy and healthy for 8 weeks without adding tea every week?

cheers champ

I want to say that the thread that lead me to this one was equally important to me in terms of fighting slime that I already had. Root Slime Don't Bother Me. Along with the tea, the actions described in that thread are important if you have the slime like I did. You have to rinse the heck out of them. I got my slime fairly early and figured I was going to kill the plants or get rid of the slime by rinsing the roots out over the sink. I ended up not hurting them one bit and they recovered completely in 10 days after starting the tea treatment.

Question for Heisenberg:

Am I to assume that if I manage to keep the slime out of the system on my next run, is the tea something that I should continue to use as preventative or are there other things to use when the slime doesn't exist?

Cheers!

I can not find a list of microbes contained within the 420 product. It says nothing about containing fungi, and in my opinion you need trichoderma fungi to fight disease. If the 420 is all you can get then go for it, it should offer some improvement. I personally would try the mycogrow powder at fungi.com. It's cheap and very complete.

We ship to customers throughout the world every day, by a variety of shipping carriers and methods. Transit times will vary by geographical location and type of service requested. Packages of 10 lbs or less can often be shipped economically via United States Postal Air Mail, with a transit time of approximately 1-3 weeks depending on destination.

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A couple OZ should last you quite a while. The mycogrow soluble is what you want.

As for leaving a huge res for 8 weeks...that is a big risk even if you did not have slime. I recommend changing water no sooner than 7 days and no longer than 14. But if you must leave it then things should be allright IF you take care of the slime problem first. Once your plants have developed a healthy robust root system (as they normally do once they are in bud) they should fight disease on their own. The bacteria in the the tea will die off within a week or two, but the mycorrhizal fungi will feed off the roots and live until harvest.

If you never change the res you will have problems with PH and the nute balance, but that is beyond the scope of this thread.

Im going to give this 420 a go for now and see how it plays out.Say I dont get rid of the slime and i connected via a ball/float type valve the 1000l res to my 40l brain would the trickle of water/nutes that leaks in threw the valve give the slime a path from the brain up into the res,so in short can this f--cken slime swim up stream?

I do wish to make this tea do you where online i could purchase all three bits at the one store?

Thanks again

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found this seems to have some fungi







[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]PREMIUM BENEFICIAL BACTERIA
[/FONT]

[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]

[/FONT]420 Beneficial Bacteria is cultured under laboratory conditions and suspended in sugar, making it extremely easy to use without troublesome brewing.


420 contain over 28 beneficial bacteria and fungi as found in rich Australian farm and rainforest soils.


Each form of beneficial bacteria feed rapidly on available solid matter and minerals, breaking them down to ionic (plant useable) forms. This process makes available all vitamins and hormones which directly increase plant vigour and stress related recovery.





420 Beneficial Bacteria out competes pathogens by multiplying at much greater speeds than pathogenic bacteria and starving them out of contention. When used as a preventative once weekly in hydroponic systems, recommended quantities of 420 Beneficial Bacteria have proven to eliminate practically all chance of bacterial infection. Pythium, Phytophora, Rizoctonia and other root related disease are now no longer a problem with correct usage of 420 Beneficial Bacteria.








420 Beneficial Bacteria


Contains 28 different species of bacterium and enzymes

Yea give it a try, I suspect you will see a huge improvement. I do recommend activating the microbes in a tea style brew prior to adding them to the res. You have one of the worst cases of slime I have ever seen, so the enzymes in the product make me nervous. Enzymes are known to cause the slime to explode. If it takes the microbes a few hours to 'wake up' it might be enough time for the slime to gain a superior foothold. Brewing a tea outside the res to wake up the bennies should reduce the risk of the enzymes feeding the slime because when enzymes are present alongside microbes, they don't cause problems. If you find the 420 isn't enough, get the powder from fungi.com, it is the only product you really need to buy.

So for now, get some molasses and brew up a tea using just the 420 product. In your case I think 24hrs is enough brew time. Once the entire system is inoculated with bennies, you shouldn't see slime in the brain bucket. Without bennies, it's almost certain that you will.

BendBrewer said:

I want to say that the thread that lead me to this one was equally important to me in terms of fighting slime that I already had. Root Slime Don't Bother Me. Along with the tea, the actions described in that thread are important if you have the slime like I did. You have to rinse the heck out of them. I got my slime fairly early and figured I was going to kill the plants or get rid of the slime by rinsing the roots out over the sink. I ended up not hurting them one bit and they recovered completely in 10 days after starting the tea treatment.

Question for Heisenberg:

Am I to assume that if I manage to keep the slime out of the system on my next run, is the tea something that I should continue to use as preventative or are there other things to use when the slime doesn't exist?

Cheers!

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The tea is the best preventative, but once the slime is gone you can get pretty lazy about adding it. You still want to be diligent with cuttings and veg, but I have found you can go as long as two weeks once the plants are in flower. By then the fungi have formed an extensive network and assuming you do nothing to kill them off, you can just inoculate each time you change out the res. Of course you may still want to inoculate often to get the other benefits, but you wont have to worry about disease.


If someone wants to read my instruction for initial cleanup of the slime, check here.

Found an excellent article about trichoderma here. In particular I found this part interesting.

If the system is using synthetic growing media such as rockwool, rather than composted bark, coco fiber or similar substrates, then initially the system is a relatively poor environment for microbial life to take hold and microbe numbers and population diversity have been found to be very low. However once the plants are growing, exudates from the roots and sloughed off root material begin to provide organic substances for microorganisms to grow and population numbers build over time. A substantial part of the food source used by micro flora is derived from plant roots, resulting in high numbers of micro organisms on the surface of plant roots consuming organic compounds such as carbohydrates, mucilage and dead cell material which accumulates over time.

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This backs up what I learned about using the tea with clones. If you are using a bubble cloner or other type of water system, daily inoculations are recommended, add housing such as lava rocks, and change the water every 48 hours.

It goes on to say

While Trichoderma has been shown to establish and proliferate on a range of soilless substrates, there is some evidence that colonization may be greater on certain growing mediums. When coconut fibre (Coir) and rockwool were compared after inoculation with T. harzianum it was found that colonization was greater in the coco fiber, with spread through the rockwool substrate being less dense. It was also found that colonization of Trichoderma was highest at the site of inoculation suggesting that the initial introduction of Trichoderma into a growing medium should be at multiple sites or well mixed through the substrate before planting

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And this

with hydroponics it’s essential to not overload the nutrient solution and system with large volumes of organic matter or additives – in doing so the rapid explosion in many forms of microbial life can rob all oxygen from the root zone creating a situation where roots are suffocated and pathogens flourish under anaerobic conditions.

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This is one of the reasons why we brew the microbes in the tea and do not feed them in the res, and why we must make sure the tea is super oxygenated.

Finally, the article offers some answers about the whole "Do synthetic ferts kill bennies" debate.

The range of EC typically used in hydroponics, is actually quite narrow compared to the salinity levels in some soils and the rise in osmotic potential that occurs as soil dries out, so Trichoderma is unlikely to be affected by hydroponic EC levels. Trichoderma `eat’ organic matter cellulose and chitin from fungi cells, so unless for some reason the EC is affecting these sources of food, it should have no real influence on the Trichoderma itself. Trichoderma is known to survive and thrive in a diverse range of environments in the presence of toxins, heavy metals and certain chemicals, so EC is unlikely to have any significant effects. Even EC levels high enough to stunt and damage plant growth should have no influence on Trichoderma.

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This is talking about trichoderma which are more hearty than mycos, but the basic logic still applies.

It's a great article, I suggest you all give it a read.

Heisenberg said:

Yea give it a try, I suspect you will see a huge improvement. I do recommend activating the microbes in a tea style brew prior to adding them to the res. You have one of the worst cases of slime I have ever seen, so the enzymes in the product make me nervous. Enzymes are known to cause the slime to explode. If it takes the microbes a few hours to 'wake up' it might be enough time for the slime to gain a superior foothold. Brewing a tea outside the res to wake up the bennies should reduce the risk of the enzymes feeding the slime because when enzymes are present alongside microbes, they don't cause problems. If you find the 420 isn't enough, get the powder from fungi.com, it is the only product you really need to buy.

So for now, get some molasses and brew up a tea using just the 420 product. In your case I think 24hrs is enough brew time. Once the entire system is inoculated with bennies, you shouldn't see slime in the brain bucket. Without bennies, it's almost certain that you will.

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Spot on bro, I will post results

thanks

I inoculated all of my reservoirs by the first of the month. I want to wait until I get dried smoke before I post a full update, but in the mean time I will say that so far the results have been nothing short of AMAZING.

A recent problem did however came up since inoculating. The ph in all of my reservoirs is falling like a stone. I have always set my ppm to 1400 and it has now been rising fast along with the drop in ph. I know that bennies make nutes more available to roots so I suspect that my 1400 ppm is now to high, but I wanted to run this idea by you also.
Thanks for your help.

G

Goldowitz said:

I inoculated all of my reservoirs by the first of the month. I want to wait until I get dried smoke before I post a full update, but in the mean time I will say that so far the results have been nothing short of AMAZING.

A recent problem did however came up since inoculating. The ph in all of my reservoirs is falling like a stone. I have always set my ppm to 1400 and it has now been rising fast along with the drop in ph. I know that bennies make nutes more available to roots so I suspect that my 1400 ppm is now to high, but I wanted to run this idea by you also.
Thanks for your help.

G

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Sounds like the fungi are already increasing your water uptake (namely the glomus) which is leaving your system with a higher PPM (plants are consuming more water than nutes). You need to back off the PPM a bit and try to have the water uptake match the nute uptake, also known as dialing in. When you get your system closer to being dialed in, your PH should stabilize, which is to say, it should rise slowly as nutes are consumed.

Dear heisenberg


So I added the 420 premium bacteria to a fresh batch of canna nutes (tap water bubbled for a week and canna a and b) and again the slime has started to appear on the airstone and I can see the shit floating. I have ordered MYCOGROW online at fungi.com and cant wait to try it and will post results.

1)Would you agree this slime is Cyanobacteria?
ifso
2)Could it be that im trying to kill a good bacteria ?as Ive found threw extensive research that Cyanobacteria is used in lettuce as a good bacteria for root health.

3)Threw talking to my local hydroshop they seem think the water in my area is bad and have customers in my area that outsource thier water from surrounding suburbs.Would it be possible our goverment is adding this bacteria to our water? We do have a water shortage and believe our dams(domestic drinking water surplie) are being topped up from other sources.

Srgsaibot said:

Dear heisenberg
So I added the 420 premium bacteria to a fresh batch of canna nutes (tap water bubbled for a week and canna a and b) and again the slime has started to appear on the airstone and I can see the shit floating. I have ordered MYCOGROW online at fungi.com and cant wait to try it and will post results.

1)Would you agree this slime is Cyanobacteria?
ifso
2)Could it be that im trying to kill a good bacteria ?as Ive found threw extensive research that Cyanobacteria is used in lettuce as a good bacteria for root health.

3)Threw talking to my local hydroshop they seem think the water in my area is bad and have customers in my area that outsource thier water from surrounding suburbs.Would it be possible our goverment is adding this bacteria to our water? We do have a water shortage and believe our dams(domestic drinking water surplie) are being topped up from other sources.

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I can't confirm totally that you are dealing with brown slime algae without seeing it personally. It certainly looks like a tenacious case. The main clue would be if your plants stopped all root production. I am surprised you didn't at least see some improvement from the 420 product. As for the slime being cyanobacteria, this is something I have read in aquarium communities and has been confirmed by one microbiologists student. Of course I can not verify his story, but he took a sample of the slime into class and the consensus was cyanobacteria, although I suspect some are dealing with golden and brown diatoms.

I will try to find the write up. The specific type of cyanobacteria he suspected did not necessarily use photosynthesis, but could also make food by chemical conversion. It did not need light although the different light it was exposed to caused different colors, while darkness caused it to be clear.

Firstly I wonder why you bubble tap water for a week? Chlorine evaporates in as little as 6 hours when aerated, and furthermore typical amounts of chlorine in tap water normally do not harm plants or even microbes. Sounds like you are making a perfect bath for slime spores by aerating it so long without bennies. Then again, I don't know your tap water.

I always use distilled water for tea making because it has a low PPM, which leaves room for the 6ppm oxygen we need for the tea.

Some cyanobacteria can indeed be beneficial in certain situations. In fact, only about 3% of all microbes are harmful, the rest are either beneficial or benign. It would seem in your case the cyanobacteria is harmful. In any case, it is not normal to see it in a hydro setup.

It is doubtful the govt is purposely putting microbes into the water. Aside from the fact the the govt is incompetent, they wouldn't have much of anything to gain. The slime only really effects DWC grows, and DWC isn't very well suited for large gardens. This would be a huge undertaking for the govt. with soil, ebb and flow, coco, ect all being immune to the payoff. This is in fact an idea I have read elsewhere on slime threads; the idea that perhaps the govt engineered this slime to specifically target cannabis plants. There is no evidence of that, and in fact it doesn't matter because the tea takes care of it regardless.

As far as I am aware, the tea has never failed to correct a water problem like yours. For most people it is a magic bullet with very quick turn around, for some it is a struggle but eventually the slime looses out to the bennies. Fungi.com is a very fast shipper so you should have your product soon. I would recommended checking to see if your hydro store has any sort of EWC. In your case, I would want to make the best tea I could. The fungi.com will give you all the bacteria and fungi you need, but some EWC, or better yet soil amendment that contains EWC, would give you nematodes and other microbes not in the powder. For most, the powder is sufficient, but in your case I would hit it with all I could.

I must run to class for now.

Srgsaibot said:

Dear heisenberg

View attachment 1615546
So I added the 420 premium bacteria to a fresh batch of canna nutes (tap water bubbled for a week and canna a and b) and again the slime has started to appear on the airstone and I can see the shit floating. I have ordered MYCOGROW online at fungi.com and cant wait to try it and will post results.

1)Would you agree this slime is Cyanobacteria?
ifso
2)Could it be that im trying to kill a good bacteria ?as Ive found threw extensive research that Cyanobacteria is used in lettuce as a good bacteria for root health.

3)Threw talking to my local hydroshop they seem think the water in my area is bad and have customers in my area that outsource thier water from surrounding suburbs.Would it be possible our goverment is adding this bacteria to our water? We do have a water shortage and believe our dams(domestic drinking water surplie) are being topped up from other sources.

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Hi Srgsaibot,

I don't mean to interrupt your discussion but I did note a few observations. First, the jars shown above looks horrible. LOL... my slime issue never looked like that, and it doesn't seem to mirror other pics posted in this thread. Regardless, it seems like an intense infestation.

I couldn't really tell from your last few posts, but a major factor in making this work is activating all the bennies. This is done by adding the bacterial/fungal/EWC ingredients to distilled water, oxygenating, and providing a food source (molasses). If you are just mixing up water, nutes, and adding your 420 bacteria, the bad stuff may be overtaking the fresh bacteria in no time. As Heisenberg stated in a previous post, make sure you brew up the tea of the stuff -- some of that 420 bacteria, some Myco powder when you get it, distilled water, lots of air, some molasses, and _definitely_ some EWC if you can get it. Once the tea is brewed for 48 hours solid, THEN add some to your fresh rez of canna/water. I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but that is the key to making this tea work.

Another observation, even in the bad slime infestations I've seen so far, I have yet to see the slime fall off of the airstone and float around in chunks like in the photo above. My particular dealings with the slime have shown it to me as a sticky goop that just sticks and coagulates to itself and everything else as a solid layer, smothering everything. That makes me wonder if perhaps something else is going on, or if you are suffering from something slightly different than the dark brown slime many of us have faced.

My best guess is that whatever is in your city's bad water supply seems like the culprit to me. Standing water in dams + refresh of dam water from foreign sources ... sounds like a borderline cesspool... plus throw in the week-long bubbling (removal of chlorine, oxygenating bad native bacteria)... and there is your issue. I also doubt the govt. is involved, more likely the water supply has had these issues for a while, perhaps just kept in check by some light chlorine... which has been bubbled away. As an experiment, try using straight tap water with no prior air bubbling and take note of how quickly the slime returns in comparison to the water you previously bubbled for many days. Just a thought.

Sorry for the repeating but I hope this helps a bit. Cheers and good luck, will watch for updates.

Mr. Bond

Mr Bond,

Cheers for taking an interest in my Australian slime.I pretty much have come to the same conclusions as u and I have ordered what I need for Mr Heisenbergs tea and will brew as you stated above as I did with the 420.As you can Imagine I m doing all sorts of tests on this slime and will post results.will be too hard to out source my water needed but Im still doing tests with other sources of water.

So far I believe the slime is present in the tap water and after the clhorine disipates given theirs lots of oxygen and food it grows.does not use light to grow but light does seem to change its colour to a browny red .

Other slime tests
If left in a sealed jar of nutes it seems to die after a couple of weeks, turns into a brown sludge and sinks to bottom of the jar.
straight Bleach reduced its mass but did nothing else.no colour change
Straight OXYplus reduced its mass but did nothing else.tho does keep in check well sort of
Straight Vinegiar Seems to break it up.
When I pick a hand full up out or the water , it appears a light bronw colour and it holds a shit load of water , when water squeazed out the mass of slime is a quarter the size.

Ive checked the roots the best I can and they look healthly as do the plants.Gr0wing at a fast rate which is the most important thing here
Given this is the second cycle with the slime present with a very good first yeild Im not too worried at this point ,main reason I want to reduce this slime is to stop it bocking my ball valve to my brain tank as my girls are sucking in the water/nutes big time.

Bring on the big ass pump to chop this slime to little peaces, run the tea in between sterlizing with oxy plus each time I flush.

Dont be sorry for repeating it helped me get it straight in my stoned brain!

Just got an email, MYCOGROW soluble cant be sent to AUSTRALIA due to customs reasons.

Found a place that sells Bio Bugs going to that a try.

Good observations Mr Bond. That stuff in the jars looks horrible, and looks a lot different than the root snot we associate with brown slime. It is possible that he is dealing with something a bit different.

I associate slime such as this with a system that is kept quite dark and has had multiple sterilization attempts. I have seen the slime free float, but never to that degree. Looking at the pic of the cord, I see classic slime, and the bubbles within the slime mass suggests vigorous growth with no competition, most likely being fed by an organic source. Srgsaibot, have you stopped using the super thrive?

I've just had some of that white growth appear in some DWC buckets I have running. It is different than the brown slime, it has more mass to it and coagulates just like that pic in the jars. It covered my roots completely, but since it wasn't slimy, I thought it was a good bio-film. (no tea yet applied)

After a couple of days, the growth kept increasing and my plants started to slow in growth (at the same time I topped) so I washed the roots and sterilized with h2o2. About to create some tea now. It might be a good growth, I don't really know, other than that it completely covered my roots with a thick coagulated mass.

Heya all. Have some question regarding post inoculation slime.

I've been having trouble with slime killing my roots so I gave the tea a try. Half-handful of Worm Gold Plus, some Mycrogo soluable, and a big spoonful of brown sugar in a gallon of water with a good airpump and some airstones. Brewed for forty-eight hours and then added to my res two days ago.

Last night my roots had a decent film of clear-ish snot at the bottoms. I've read that this is normal and wasn't too worried. Today when I checked the res, the amount of slime had exploded, and now there's a light layer of frothy foam clinging to the walls. The snot is still clear-ish but so thick that it ends up being opaque. The snot is ordure neutral from what I can tell and the res itself smells kinda earthy. Is this normal?

Sorry in advance for the blurry cellphone pictures. What do you think?

Revvy said:

Heya all. Have some question regarding post inoculation slime.

I've been having trouble with slime killing my roots so I gave the tea a try. Half-handful of Worm Gold Plus, some Mycrogo soluable, and a big spoonful of brown sugar in a gallon of water with a good airpump and some airstones. Brewed for forty-eight hours and then added to my res two days ago.

Last night my roots had a decent film of clear-ish snot at the bottoms. I've read that this is normal and wasn't too worried. Today when I checked the res, the amount of slime had exploded, and now there's a light layer of frothy foam clinging to the walls. The snot is still clear-ish but so thick that it ends up being opaque. The snot is ordure neutral from what I can tell and the res itself smells kinda earthy. Is this normal?

Sorry in advance for the blurry cellphone pictures. What do you think?
View attachment 1621019View attachment 1621032

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Hi Revvy,

Your white slime looks totally gross. Its like you sneezed onto your plants roots about 1000x. Haha... just trying to make light of the situation...

Before you added in your tea, did you by clean your rez and change water/nutes to a fresh mixture? My thought is that even though you brewed the tea pretty close to the recipe and for the correct amount of time, perhaps the slime was already out of control and it quickly consumed the new bennies and any residual sugar, compounding the problem further. Did the slime look the same as the photos before you added the tea? Or was it different? (like brown slime instead of the current white)

Also, what kind of nutrients and/or additives are you using? My initial thought is that the tea definitely did not take hold for you, and it seems like it might have been overrun by other bad stuff. What confuses me is that you say the rez smells kind of earthy, and that is typically a sign of a good tea brew.

Mr. Bond