Foamy Reservoir? Uncontrollable Ph? Brown Slime? Help!

Hi,
I'm running three 5 gal bubble buckets that hold 5 gals of water using a mix of 50/50 pyth/coir/moss and hydroton for the substrate. The past few days I have tried flushing the whole system with pH corrected the water. Then flushing the soil till the water stabilizes at a pH of 5.6. This I have done three times. Every time I flush it the pH is fine till ~24 hours later when I check it and it's sky rocketed to 7.8-8.6. The other thing I have noticed is brown slime growing on my root-mass. It's covering the roots in patches one plant has slowed a lot entirely in root growth while the other is still growing in places and has a healthier root system; they have not even formed root balls yet and I'm at 3 weeks in flowering. Yesterday I decided to go out and buy Iguana Juice and replaced my FloraBlend vegan plant booster about 3/4 of the way and replaced with pH corrected water again at 5.6 etc etc. Today I went and looked in the reservoir when I was testing the pH (which was at 6.8 ) I noticed foam up the walls and floating on top of the reservoir. The leaves which don't get direct light have also been yellowing entirely then browning on the tips which progresses down the leaf till it falls off. Rinsing and pH correcting hasn't really slowed it down that much. Please let me know what you think this is? I haven't had a problem like this before. I run organic and inoculate the reservoir with Myco Madness. I run at ~1650ppm as well because everything I am growing is Indica; gotta love the CBDs!

Ok you need to stop adding any extra additives and lower the PPM way down. When usin bubble buckets just use the cup and hydroton no dirt or anything else because you have root rot from the organic material your using, moss. For treatment of root rot you would use a 35 % food grade Hydrogen Peroxide at a 1 oz per gallon ratio. For prevention of root rot try to not over water & you can use 35% hydrogen peroxide at a 2 teaspoon per gallon ratio to help add oxygen to the water & kill harmful bacteria. Hydrogen peroxide completely breaks down in 24 hours. Any damage to the root system will not only hurt your yield but it will make your plants more susceptible to diseases that can destroy your entire crop. You need to switch to synthetics when ur usin hydro. Don't worry about all this "organic" and "synthetic" its whatever especially after you flush the plant. Depending on what stage ur plant is in your gonna wanna just add half strength of just the grow or just the bloom nutrients. Change the water every 24 hours.

um maybe go back to dirt....


but all joking aside peroxide is indeed a miracle substance for mj in a major way, not a hydro grower so i really shouldn't even be posting, but instead of cleaning materials with bleach or rubbing alcohol- use peroxide from here on out, no harmful toxins lingering in the air or on your pots walls etc i've also heard it used with great success in hydroponic grows (refer to post above mine) best part is the only bi-product is oxygen)) gl gl

If I were to replant them in hydroton do you think that would fix the problem? This is the first time I have tried using a coco/moss mixture. I figured that I would just water 2-3 times a week and let it bubble. I checked and all the nutes I am using are "coco-safe". However, if I lower my ppm by how much should it be lowered by? I just heard such good things about coco that I decided to give it a shot since people say it works good in hydro too. I've had nothing but problems with it from the start though.

Also I'm running organic because I don't like inorganic ferts the difference between bud/food with grown organic ferts is palpable. Just an opinion but I think that organic bud is way more pungent and has different textures than synthetic grown bud. Also having a live micro-herd in your reservoir helps with root structure immensely if you have the right microbes growing.

Also never transplanted from coco before does it fair well, or am I going to end up with 2 dead ladies if I try. Because that sounds like something I wouldn't want lol. Also where would I come across 35% h2o2, I went to the grocery store and could only find 3%!

FlyingOrangeDutchman said:

Also never transplanted from coco before does it fair well, or am I going to end up with 2 dead ladies if I try. Because that sounds like something I wouldn't want lol. Also where would I come across 35% h2o2, I went to the grocery store and could only find 3%!

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Local would be awesome I live in Denver btw.

hey i transplanted my Kushberry and OG Kush plants from coco to a waterfarm and i can honestly say that it was a NIGHTMARE! The coco (in terms of physical properties) function kind of like soil. So when I tried transplanting it, not only would it not fit into my new system but since the coco broke apart and it took a lot of my roots with it. I was afraid that my plants wouldn't survive but they did. I'm not saying that it's not possible, I'm just saying it's a nightmare to transplant into a system other than another pot with more coco. If you put in in an ebb and flow system, that's one thing, but a dwc, bubble bucket, waterfarm, aero, etc. will all be a bitch to get a coco potted plant transplanted into without damaging your root system.

As far as your 35% hydrogen peroxide goes, I know my hydro store has it in 35% form but I too was only able to find the 3% at my grocery store. Check there first.

I jusdt finished transplanting both the Mazar and the Purple Alaskan Ice and yes I had a similar nightmarish experience. However, since I live in appt. I had to do this inside of a 45 gal tote inside of my shower, it was pretty messy to say the least. One lost 1/4 of its roots the other kept pretty much all of its root mass. The coir was difficult to get off each plant took ~15 minutes of carefully spraying the coco off of the rockwool with a high pressure shower head. I ended up going with a little less than two tsp a gal of 30% hydrogen peroxide. I also soaked the clean rockwool with exposed roots in a slightly stronger h2o2 solution to clean the roots and make sure the cube was saturated.

As nutes I'm running...
10ml of Iguana Juice
5ml of Humic Acid
5ml of Guano

The next five days I'm going to be brewing 5gal of tea using MycoMadness and Mighty Crobes to inoculate. I'm going to switch out the res water with the tea then add the same nutes after the five days is up. Does that sound like a good plan to re-establish a healthy root system.

Read the stuff you can find about Physan 20- it has helped me with the brown slime which as you say, just showed up one time. Peroxide is helpful, as has been mentioned.

Did you replant in hydroton? There is no reason to use any soil with BBs. Let us know how they recover.

When coco is used for hydro, it is normally in some sort of drip system. It's not a very good medium for DWC.

You are on the right track with myco madness, and also it's a good idea to brew it outside the res first when you are prone to slime. Otherwise the 'food' in the myco madness that wakes up the microbes will first wake up the slime. If you brew it outside the res, the food gets eaten up and the microbes become active. See the link in my sig for further reading.

Drop all the organics and start using h202 29% is what most shops have. Use 7 to 10 ml per gal
And for extreme cases use uncented bleach at 7 drops per gal both you add every three day.
Dwc and organic dont mix well! Combined with high water temp spells disaster!

Am i the only one who noticed he puts 5 gal in his 5 gal DWC bucket? Your water level is too high and causing the root rot.

And how does organic material cause root rot?

Dont bubble organics. You get the foam which raises your ph

Heisenberg said:

When coco is used for hydro, it is normally in some sort of drip system. It's not a very good medium for DWC.

You are on the right track with myco madness, and also it's a good idea to brew it outside the res first when you are prone to slime. Otherwise the 'food' in the myco madness that wakes up the microbes will first wake up the slime. If you brew it outside the res, the food gets eaten up and the microbes become active. See the link in my sig for further reading.

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I actually got the idea from your thread! The tea I'm brewing is in a 5gal bottle of RO water. At the end of the 5days I plan on cleaning the reservoir really good again then switching it out the water for the tea (since its grown with just molasses). Then adding the nutes in a gal of pH corrected water. Speaking of which do the nutes I'm using after cutting them down by more than half still contribute to the problem? I'm running my res right now with pH of 5.6 and..

As nutes I'm running...
10ml of Iguana Juice
5ml of Humic Acid
5ml of Guano
10ml of h2o2

The only reason I ask is because I cleaned my res last night with 20ml gal of h2o2 and switched the substrate out with hydroton and this morning I still noticed small bubbles clinging to edges of the bucket on the surface of the res water. That and probably the most agitating is the pH is again at 7.8. For the hydroton I did what I always do I rinsed it very very good and then planted it. The two things that can be causing this I can think of is either A. slime isn't dead and is somehow making a comeback in h2o2 nutrient water, or B. I forgot to soak the 6in rockwool cubes in pH corrected water before transplanting them, or C. apparently hydroton needs to be soaked over night in pH 5.6 water because it will raise pH. I personally don't know how it could be the last one as in my 5 years of growing hydro with hydroton I have never had a similar problem.



My plan of action for right now is to soak the net pots with the plants in a solution of 10ml h2o2 a gal and 5.4 ph corrected water 30min 2x today to if it makes a difference. If the water while soaking changes significantly in pH I guess I found my problem. I'm also going to just go and add another 10ml a gal of h2o2 diluted in pH corrected water to my reservoir as I REALLLLLY don't want to change it for the 6th time in 7 days. If you think I'm heading in the right direction still please let me know or if you can narrow my problems down to A. B. or C. or all three even it would help so I know how many battles I should be fighting lol.

Thank-you Heisenberg and all the others that have helped me hopefully save my ladies so far, mad rep to all of you!

IVIars said:

Am i the only one who noticed he puts 5 gal in his 5 gal DWC bucket? Your water level is too high and causing the root rot.

And how does organic material cause root rot?

Dont bubble organics. You get the foam which raises your ph

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I'm running 5gal in a 3x5gal bucket system so they're filled up exactly 1/3 of the way. But if I don't bubble my organics doesn't that cause bad stuff to grow? I know people run hydro setups with organic nutes and use an active microherd such as myself. I thought that air-stones are necessary to provide roots and critters oxygen, without it how would the microherd survive?

hellraizer30 said:

Drop all the organics and start using h202 29% is what most shops have. Use 7 to 10 ml per gal
And for extreme cases use uncented bleach at 7 drops per gal both you add every three day.
Dwc and organic dont mix well! Combined with high water temp spells disaster!

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So are you saying just use plain pH corrected h2o2 water and that's it? How many days would I run it like this I don't want my plants getting nute withdrawal and start frying their on leaves. I mean fat people going without food for a few days def. makes them look a little better.. idk bout bud though lol.

IDK about the nutes youre using, but with General Organics they say not to bubble it or it causes the ph to raise dramatically. Also some organics arent meant to be run with a recirc system.

Wont h2o2 kill off your microbes?

IVIars said:

IDK about the nutes youre using, but with General Organics they say not to bubble it or it causes the ph to raise dramatically. Also some organics arent meant to be run with a recirc system.

Wont h2o2 kill off your microbes?

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Oic I'll have to research the Iguana Juice I just bought. Since its addition to my nutes has been the only time I have seen foam. I figured it was from the massive amount of nutes feeding the slime. I looked under the other two plants a few seconds ago and there is no bubbles clinging to the side. Only in the middle and those are only a few mm in diameter. However, I will research more.. still deciding on whether or not to flush and clean my system again and let it run with h2o2 water for 3 days before adding the bene water.

Yes h2o2 will kill off most microbes in the water however they will still be there in enough #s to repopulate as soon as you add nutes. Unfortunately in my system the dominate microbe is the slime which will eat everything faster no matter how much inoculant I add to the reservoir. Which is why I'm waiting 4 more days before replace the rez with molasses brewed beneficial microbe rich water. Then adding a small amount of nutrients to a gal of pH correct water and mixing them in. Then after to maintain a healthy system I'm going to be putting a couple cups of it in every 2-3 days as suggested by Heisenberg thread which is pretty informative.

Hydro organics is totally possible, but very involved. Organic DWC is even more complicated and prone to failure. It takes a lot of attention to be successful; a lot of trial and error.

Soaking the medium in PH water is a matter of preference, and should not cause slime. It sounds like the coco somehow introduced the slime to your system, since you say you had no problems before. Once slime appears, it is extremely tenacious and will resist most sterilizing attempts. I have seen it thrive in a res treated with h202 and Zone. Thankfully the tea seems to work without fail. Stick to the recipe and directions.

https://www.rollitup.org/members/hellraizer30-34155.htmlhellraizer is also correct; bleach seems to kill the slime and in most cases causes no real harm to the plants. When I tried this however I found that the slime came back very quickly if for some reason bleach wasn't added to the water. I feel microbes offer a more flexible, forgiving and harmonious solution with many secondary benefits. In any case, I strongly agree with the suggestion to drop organic nutes in favor of synthetic.

FlyingOrangeDutchman said:

So are you saying just use plain pH corrected h2o2 water and that's it? How many days would I run it like this I don't want my plants getting nute withdrawal and start frying their on leaves. I mean fat people going without food for a few days def. makes them look a little better.. idk bout bud though lol.

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No get a inorganic nute line and use h202

Are you saying drop them completely or drop them for a few days all I have are organic nutes at the moment and just recently went out and bought more; which is when this began. I'm only running with 4ml humic acid and 4ml of guano atm. I just bleached my whole res thoroughly and cleaned out the pump replaced the tubing etc. etc. Will the slime come back if I use organic nutes and bleach for ~3 days?