Testing Beneficial Bacteria in Ebb and Flow (AK47 with Great White)

surphin said:

Since going RO have had to make any adjustments to the amount of nutes used to get the same EC/ppm?

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For the last month, I've been running the same total EC/ppm and things have been performing as expected.

Day 22 today and today will be my first 'leaching of salts' along with a normally scheduled res change. I leach salts every 3 weeks and I believe that keeping your medium clean is essential to maintaining healthy plants until harvest day.

This past week I noticed something that I also noticed on my first run with Great White. Even when using 'synthetic' nutrients, beneficials do aide in the uptake of mineral salts. I'm feeding at about 1.3 EC or 950ppm on the 442 scale and this past week I noticed a slight touch of tip burn. This is nothing I'm worried about and something I noticed at normal feeding levels during my first run with this product as well. My fix during the last test was to cut back the nutes 5-10% which is what I'll do this time too.

Again, the pH is unaffected by the beneficials and as far as plant health and growth rate goes, everything seems to be on schedule.

Update in a week.

gorgeous as always...and I agree as less nutes needed is the translation of bugs are working and provided more to tthe plant than without...great job..as always

Namaste'

Looking man. So you're adding the benies every 2-3 weeks? Do you have an idea how long they thrive in your media?

On the nute tip your absolutely right abou the bennies and other stuff in the mix equating to less nute usage...I'm running a semi-super soil (modified fox farms mix -- not quite subcool's super soil, but along similar lines without all the guano and bone meal)...humic acid, myco, bennies, etc. My nute usage has been tremendously lower than I thought it would be this time due to that.

upthearsenal said:

Looking man. So you're adding the benies every 2-3 weeks? Do you have an idea how long they thrive in your media?

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Adding them every few weeks may be unnecessary but that's what the label suggests so that's what I'm doing. It would be interesting to find out if this is overdoing it but I do leach salts with clearex for a few hours every 3 weeks so adding the beneficials back might be needed in my case. I also leach two reservoirs at a time and I'm interested to see if clearex actually helps in this process, so in 3 weeks when I'm leaching again, I'll run clearex in one and plain water in the other and post my findings.

Professional as always...Sub'd

I would think they would be destroyed by the other chemicals in the nutrient reservoir. I'm interested to see how this works as well. I'd be glad to be a guinea pig too, I have a commercial grow op that is peaking out at 24,000 watts of hydro ebb & flow power. Using Humboldt Nutrients G/M/B and all that now. If you need a "test bed", I got it!

The photo below has nothing to do with this thread other than the fact that both strains are from the same breeder. My next journal will probably be my selection process of the females I decide to keep out of this first Kali Mist run. I'm not seeing a lot of phenotype variation between the 5 females I got out of my 11 pack but I'd like to keep the best 3 and run them in the same tray in order to narrow down my future Kali Mist mom.

Below is a picture of a very fragrant Kali Mist lady at day 55 being grown in the dirt with DG nutes. She smells sweet, exotically spicy, piny with almost a candied lavender and citrus scent. I'm posting this pic just to kind of keep track of her progress. Cheers guys!

Really pretty my friend....

namaste

researchkitty said:

I would think they would be destroyed by the other chemicals in the nutrient reservoir.

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That's what I was guessing. Maybe they give a quick boost initially, then when you reapply them it's like you're introducing a whole new batch of microbes...

upthearsenal said:

That's what I was guessing. Maybe they give a quick boost initially, then when you reapply them it's like you're introducing a whole new batch of microbes...

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Ya, I've just assumed that my nutrient manufacturer says not to use it in ebb & flow hydroton for a reason. If it worked, they'd tell me to use it and love the extra $50 a grow cycle I have to pay for their nutrients........ We shall see!!

researchkitty said:

Ya, I've just assumed that my nutrient manufacturer says not to use it in ebb & flow hydroton for a reason. If it worked, they'd tell me to use it and love the extra $50 a grow cycle I have to pay for their nutrients........ We shall see!!

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The good folks over at DynaGro are actually the ones who suggested the use of Great White and the product came up in a conversation about non-NPK type additives. As far as how I use it, I fill my res then mix in my nutes, take a TDS reading and pH (usually not needed), then mix in the microbes. Stick around, we'll see if these little buggers are worth it.

homebrewer said:

The good folks over at DynaGro are actually the ones who suggested the use of Great White and the product came up in a conversation about non-NPK type additives. As far as how I use it, I fill my res then mix in my nutes, take a TDS reading and pH (usually not needed), then mix in the microbes. Stick around, we'll see if these little buggers are worth it.

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What prompted this specific add order? You know, like with Grow/Micro/Bloom you ALWAYS add Micro first to avoid nutrient lockout, a very specific and important purpose.

I'm glad to hear DynaGro are the suggesters of this idea, it means they are thinking about it too.

researchkitty said:

What prompted this specific add order?

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Not sure what prompted the order. I think DG may have suggested it but I can't be sure. I couldn't find anything on the Plant Success site and I've even contacted them before with a 'just use as directed with your regular feeding' response. Maybe the order doesn't matter? Regardless, I think adding it last is probably least harmful to the bugs.

I wish I had a microscope with a usb connection. Be neat to see it live in normal water, and then see it after the chemicals nuke it a day at a time to see if it "lives" or "dies"............ That'd probably be the best 'scientific' way to do it, I dunno...... Mr Kitty is the Physicist not me lol

I'm going to guess it's because DG's own add order emphasizes adding Protekt first which jacks the pH up near 9.6/10 until you add dyna-bloom and mag-pro which more often than not sets your solution right at 5.8. If you add protekt after other ingredients it precipitates out. So it might be too harsh on your microbes if you put them in first.

homebrewer said:

Not sure what prompted the order. I think DG may have suggested it but I can't be sure. I couldn't find anything on the Plant Success site and I've even contacted them before with a 'just use as directed with your regular feeding' response. Maybe the order doesn't matter? Regardless, I think adding it last is probably least harmful to the bugs.

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I have a nice microscope, but a usb one is on my list. They aren't that expensive.

Yea i was thinking of buying that stuff.
My store didnt have it. They said it must be new. They only have the AN pirahna tranchula and voodoo. The great white is basicly the pirahna and tranchula mixed. The voodoo juice is the microbes tho. It works very well. I used all three and got explosive roots. To pricey tho.
Voodoo and great white sound decent together. Cheaper i guess?
It says to use carboload or karboboost. I use bud candy instead.

Day 29 today and I have a bit of a complaint. In my second run with GW, I've determined that this product does work; it aids in the uptake of minerals. The downside to that is that this additional uptake of minerals is not consistent from week to week and is something that needs to be factored in when feeding your plants.

Currently I'm feeding between 850-900ppm or 1.2-1.3EC and I'm seeing some slight margin curl even at these low levels. Normally this isn't an issue and this current 'issue' isn't even a problem, just an observation. The experienced grower can account for this greater sensitivity to plant food whereas the rest of the growers out there (the other 90% of them ) will probably just burn their plants.

Again, it's a living organism that is aiding in this process and it would be hard for them to perform exactly the same from week to week. Just an observation as hydro for me is easier than dirt because it's incredibly consistent with fewer variables to deal with. Adding beneficials is like throwing in a variable that doesn't need to be there.

All-in-all, things look good and we're almost halfway done folks, thanks for following along.







..a crop of the previous picture:

Those plants are looking vey nice homebrewer! Nice work. I kow exactly what you mean about the gw nute uptake. Im not ashamed to say I burnt mine in exactly the way you described. However i also gave them too much gw prior to that and had to do a mini flush to correct the problems.