When a clear snot forms on roots in a DWC, and the normal course of treatment for root disease doesn't work, you probably have something called brown slime algae, which actually isn't algae at all, but a cyanobacteria. It loves oxygen and doesn't need light to grow. It doesn't care if your res is chilled or not.
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You are not teaching us how to breed microbes, only multiply them.
Correct.
I've posted in this forum multiple times about maintaining a perfect environment, but still ending up with root rot. If this last attempt failed I was going to give up on dwc.
Been brewing a tea for 48 hours, with orca, ewc and organic honey. Had the tell-tale foam which settled down a bit after 24hrs.
When I took my plant out of the res and started to drain it I couldn't believe the amount of root matter floating around and sludge on the base. I've fully sterilised my res, left the plant roots in h202 for 4 hours, gently pulling the roots, many of which came away. There was practically nothing left vs what should have been there for my stage of growth.
I added 4 gallons RO to the res and aerated it while waiting for the aquarium heater to reach 22c. PH was 4.4, but given the tea was reading 3.6 I decided to wait till I add nutes to pH. I added the 4 cups of tea and used a pump to cover all roots above the water line, soak through the hydroton etc, and even gave the foliage a light drench from the trees water. Am now waiting (9 hours left) before reintroducing nutes.
I'm staggered by what I'm seeing so far. The brown roots are whitening slightly and I can already see small new pure white shoots coming through what was once a brown matted mess.
All this time I thought I was fighting pythium, but now I know it was cyanobacteria.
Obviously this is very early days but I'm already truly excited! It looks like your tea was the magic bullet I'd been waiting for. Will update again in 24hrs, but it looks like you've rescued my grow! And if so, I don't have enough words to express my gratitude. Thank you!
