using bleach

i've been sold on evergreen since my root aphid prob but it's the only pyrethrin concentrate i can find @ here. there's a bunch of other ones (some alot cheaper) i'd prob use one of the cheaper ones if you can find it. also, cheap paint sprayers are realy good for spraying. they make much smaller drops so it hits everything. hth

1itsme said:

i've been sold on evergreen since my root aphid prob but it's the only pyrethrin concentrate i can find @ here. there's a bunch of other ones (some alot cheaper) i'd prob use one of the cheaper ones if you can find it. also, cheap paint sprayers are realy good for spraying. they make much smaller drops so it hits everything. hth

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Yah, I already have some evergreen. I also have a battery operated sprayer that holds bout a gallon. It works pretty good. Lately I've been doing drenches though and this is so much easier to me.

and I checked my pool shock and it is 48% cal hypo

EDIT: I like the azaguard cuz it is systemic. It just takes several applications and is only effective against larvae. I like to wait a week between applications.

I have over a hundred sticky traps out to catch adults. Most of them are older and close to being pitched though.

I put several traps out every couple of days to track how much better things are getting. The last couple have been out for two days and only like one gnat on each.

I am going to do one more azaguard drench in the next couple of days. If there are any gnats left then I might do an evergreen drench next week.

While working with my plants today I took a glimpse at the air stones and the one stone had a little bit of brown algae on it... OK, so DM Zone, SM-90 and the diluted CaClO2 isn't holding it back? idk... So I went ahead and mixed up a new gallon of CaClO2, this time using 3g rather than 2g and I dosed at 1oz/g + 2oz extra for good measure. Turned off air pump for a few minutes so the stones would get fully saturated.

I gotta keep an eye on this.

hmmm, hope you get it under control. What temp is your rez runnin? What kind of nutes you runnin?


7 days since initial pool shock treatment of two oz. of solution per 50 gallons and still clean here. Temps as high as 74f regularly 70-72f

If the levels of calhypo you are running do not get it under control I would suggest maybe going away from dwc to f&d

I know how frustrating this is for you.

joe macclennan said:

hmmm, hope you get it under control. What temp is your rez runnin? What kind of nutes you runnin?


7 days since initial pool shock treatment of two oz. of solution per 50 gallons and still clean here. Temps as high as 74f regularly 70-72f

If the levels of calhypo you are running do not get it under control I would suggest maybe going away from dwc to f&d

I know how frustrating this is for you.

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65f +-1F. GH FloraNova Grow - Brand new bottle of it, too. I'm thinking that these brown algae spores are floating around in the air and getting sucked in through the air pump. When I was using liquid NaClO2 (bleach) at 1ml/g it took care that slime no prob. I don't really care if there is a tiny bit of this slime shit on an air stone, but I need to keep an eye on it that it doesn't grow/spread beyond what I see now.

I can't switch to F&D right now, but maybe in the future when I do my next grow setup. We're moving out of this apt in September, so don't have the time or really the $ to switch things up.

This cyanobacteria shit doesn't care about temperature or light... Still not sure what it feeds off of. Would like to get a sample of it growing some day so I can have it identified by a professional.

Well now I have a bit of brown algae starting. First time for this. Kinda looks like bits of tobacco floating on top and sticking to sides of rez. I doubled my dose of bleach to 4oz/hypochlorite solution per 50 gallons. Rez temps 74f. Only have it starting in 1 rez. but dosed em all anyway as they are all side by side.

On the upside last batch of clones have roots after 7 days first time I have had roots this fast in a while. Must be doin somethin right.

Happy happy happy.

did a drench with 2ml/azaguard/evergreen/gallon tonite of around 10% of flower for the gnats.

Little fuckers just won't go away. I may end up mixing some sns203 in with my nutes toward the end of rez. life. I also have some cinnamon extract bear said he heard is good to keep gnats away. Thinking about adding some of that in also.

their still not gone? those are some tough fungus gnats o.o

ok found a site that gives a dilution rate of 1-2 tsp per gal for spraying or irrigation.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=evergreen dilution rates&source=web&cd=9&cad=rja&ved=0CFgQFjAI&url=http://hawaii.gov/hdoa/labels/9472.17_2013.pdf&ei=TUjKUfSmBZHPqwHI_oCwBQ&usg=AFQjCNGuOXek1lqWQl96u6iD2oq_IWfV_A

joe macclennan said:

Well now I have a bit of brown algae starting. First time for this. Kinda looks like bits of tobacco floating on top and sticking to sides of rez. I doubled my dose of bleach to 4oz/hypochlorite solution per 50 gallons. Rez temps 74f. Only have it starting in 1 rez. but dosed em all anyway as they are all side by side.

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No worries on a higher dose of calcium hypochlorite... It's pretty safe. I'm using 4gr/ga diluted and then around 1oz of that per 4ga of nutrient solution.

https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/423734-make-2200-worth-clear-rez.html

great link steve. I remember seeing that thread but couldn't remember the details.

It is reassuring to hear others have ran much higher levels than I am now.

Recently, the highest dose I have had to do is 4 oz of the 2g/gallon solution has taken care of the worst problems I have had.

I seem to only have to add it into a fresh rez. and it lasts over a week without re-dosing.

4 oz was only necessary when rez. temps were exceeding 74f

anything below that 2 oz seemed to work.

I am soooo happy this is working well cuz I reallllllllly didn't want to fuck around with brewing teas and shit and the h202 just wasn't cutting it.

Introducing mollasses into a hydroponic system just seems like a baaaaaaaaad Idea to me.

Edit: So I did a drench tonite in flower with 2ml azaguard,2ml evergreen and 2ml cinnamon oil per gallon. ro water phd' to 5.8 I did a test of this a few days ago on a few plants with no ill effects so I went whole hawg tonite.

Awesome combination here I think.

Out of the entire drench less than 15% of the pots had any gnats come out upon drenching and let me tell ya. It was immediate. As soon as this combo hit the hydroton them little fucks came flying out. I have a sticky trap in every other pot.

got them little fuckers on the run I think.

I put several fresh traps out so we'll see how many customers I get.

Glad to help, Joe.

I just added about 30oz of 4gr/ga CaClO2 solution yesterday because of an impending rot issue, as detecting by my nose... However, right now I only have 1 plant in the system and it has no roots in the solution, so I wasn't too worried about shocking plants. I've had a tough time with balancing the moisture in the rapid rooter plugs in the net pots; Hence my rot issue. I think I learned the trick yesterday, though... I re-potted the one and only plant in the system, this time elevating the RR plug so that the top of it is above the hydroton and the bottom of the plug is about 3/4" or so from the bottom of the net pot. This way there will be a natural wicking effect... The top of the plug is exposed to air for evaporation and the bottom of the plug is being wet by the bubble splash and moisture on the hydroton. Before the plug was sitting at the bottom of the net pot with the top of the plug covered by hydroton, so the plug was soaked and stayed soaked causing slow growth - and as my olfactory was detecting - the onset of rot.
Luckily, I intervened before it got worse and I think the new setup is the answer I've been searching for all along.

All that nonsense being said, after this grow I will be switching to aeroponics @ 200PSI. My first adventure in to hydroponics was aero, using a pump and stainless mist nozzles at 130psi. The things that turn me on to that system are the greater control of root zone variables, using 5 to 10g reservoir rather than easily 20+ for dwc or NFT, not needing to use a large chiller, not having the same fluctuations in nutrients and pH, less nutrients used overall and lower PPMs, etc. If you have any doubt to the advantages of high pressure aero... Take a look at those roots! http://thehotpepper.com/topic/36616-high-pressure-aeroponics/

She seems to be responding well to this new setup already after less than 24hrs.

On another note, I picked up a series of hydroponic ebooks that are just fantastic and packed full of useful info. If you want them, drop me a PM with your e-mail. Their in PDF format.

** I've been watching one root on the side of the net pot grow over the course of the day and so far it has elongated by a 1/4"... The leaves are also starting to pick up. Very very happy to see that repositioning the rapid rooter cube was the right thing to do and I now know how to pot the other 5 seedlings.

yep, I'm sure potting the rr's higher will help.

I have never tried hp aero. I ran low press. aero/nft aka the stinkbud system for a while. It produced amazing results for a while but I was constantly battling rootzone problems. Also the foam plugs allowed water to wick up the stem causing damping off. Running chillers and circ. pumps got to be pretty expensive. Plus I had to keep my room cooler so it cost more in ac usage. This is why I went back to trusty f&D. Turning the chillers and shit off allowed me to plug in a few more lights.

Pretty neat system overall tho and I plan on doing a test run in it sometime in the future.

The biggest problem I had with aero was getting my homemade ez cloner to produce roots consistently. Plus I had to run a chiller for it with uv sterilization. Pretty big pita just to get clones. Sometimes it worked awesome though.

yeah, i tried dwc before and had probs, then f&d... same probs. I switched to coco dtw and most of the probs went away. 5 gal res, no ph swing, less water, less nutes, less problems. I'd like to make a cloner that would save some serious time lol.

I figure that even though I will probably need to run a chiller still, I'll only be chilling 5g or so, which could be done with a frigg'n mini fridge compressor in lickity split time. I'm actually thinking that instead of chilling the res, I may just create an air circulation through the root zone and cool that air... As for keeping the res clean, I'll use CaClO2 and if need be a small pond pump to circulate the water through a UV sterilizer or use the canister filter with it's UV lamp. Overall I know I will use less electric than a DWC system like I've got now... And once I expand my grow that will require twice the water for DWC so then I'll need to use tap water, requiring RO filtration... Blah blah, why not just go to aero (drain to waste) and get far better results and use far less water and nutes? If I need to dump and replace res every week or two it'll only be a few gallons to deal with, not 20 or 40 or 60g like DWC.

The high pressure pump I am looking at is an Aquatec RO booster pump that delivers up to 200PSI @ 4amps x 12vdc... Along with Acetyl nozzles which are very resistant to clogging and cheap, around $1.50-$2/ea... And anti-drip valves that open at 180psi... BYAAAA!!! lol

Personally, I want to make a fogponics cloner. However, the fogger can add considerable heat to the water as I've already experience, but if you're using distilled or even spring water you should have no problems circulating it through a copper or brass core radiator (like for PC cooling) to keep temps in check.

with 5 gal you could put the res in a mini fridge.

1itsme said:

with 5 gal you could put the res in a mini fridge.

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Word. Or use the 1/5hp chiller I built for my DWC... Would take no time at all to keep that small amount of h2o chilled. Thick layers of insulation on the res would help. Not doing this for a few months so I have plenty of time to plan, design, and test. Need to decide on how many plants I intend to veg and flower, too.

Well things have really turned around over here. I am dosing a fresh rez once with between 2-4oz of the cal.hypo solution/50gallons and it is keeping things ship shape for 7+days

Rez. temps exceeding 75f at times.

Love hearing great news about bleach. Now how much can you spend at the nute store on all their expensive snake oils????

joe macclennan said:

Well things have really turned around over here. I am dosing a fresh rez once with between 2-4oz of the cal.hypo solution/50gallons and it is keeping things ship shape for 7+days

Rez. temps exceeding 75f at times.

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I'd probably have the same luck w/o the light leaks! New totes going in today.

sbirch said:

Love hearing great news about bleach. Now how much can you spend at the nute store on all their expensive snake oils????

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Lots of snake oils, indeed... But one that does work is Dutch Master Zone.

flyingsteve said:

I'd probably have the same luck w/o the light leaks! New totes going in today.



Lots of snake oils, indeed... But one that does work is Dutch Master Zone.

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Yep, light leaks will kill ya. I taped my totes w/metalized duct tape to keep the light out when I was doing the nft thing.