Cure for Root Rot, Brown roots/slime in hydroponics

I am not quite sure where to start this "taboo" thread; so ill just dive into it.

I have (mostly) been a sterile hydro grower. This means h2o2, bleach, chloramine (DM Zone) etc...to help fight off disease and root infection. But just this last grow i did, in a "flood and drain style", went awry. I got this orangish brown coating on my table. My roots began to turn brown. I was Basically lost the grow....

I use the zone as a preventative...it failed me. I tried 1ml/gallon of 50%h2o2 (schedule 6 poison!) but it just grew faster!!!! I tried up to 3 ml per gallon of sodium hypochlorate (6%bleach) and it did not slow the problem. this was clearly not pythium. I was confused, a little worried, and really stressed out. I went as far as dosing them with physan 20. What happened with the physan20 made me really worried as it brought out a brown slime and stuck it to my reservoir. I began doing google searches to no avail. But then, after hours, I typed in "brown slime in hydroponics after physan 20"...bingo


found this (this is my start and I suggest you read it if you can find time):
icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=55259

I was blown away. It took me 3 days to read it I learned so much. THIS IS WHY MY PH WAS SPIKING FROM 5.5 to 6.3 in 8 hours! The guy in that thread spent over 100k$ in his hydro and wasnt afraid to throw more at it to figure out this problem. Well he did figure it out BUT YOU SHOULD REALLY READ IT ALL so not to miss something important. when I finished I went looking for a beneficial tea recipe online and came across this...

rollitup.org/dwc-bubbleponics/361430-dwc-root-slime-cure-aka.html

and i couldnt believe my eyes. The most epic threads I have read online have been about marijuana, and about a problem i happen to have with my marijuana!

I knew there was not much to do about the room that was failing...But what really worried me is I began to see the same problems in my 15 SEPARATE bucket DWC units. They do not connect, i change each bucket one at a time so that I reduce contamination. I couldnt believe that It had spread to all of them!

But reading these threads over 4-5 days...It gave me hope to say the least. So I started a brew of this tea and had to wait 48 hours so I flushed with h202 and zone for 2 days. Then i flushed with phd water and added 1 cup per gallon of the tea and let it sit.

I added it 3 days ago and I have to report that the gym sock smell is GONE! GONE! The roots are white again and the plants are back to budding!!!!!!!

I have to tell my fellow MPers that this benny tea and GH 3 part alone is working wonders. Its seems to be curing the brown slime cyanobacteria!


PICS:
1 is the final root balls of pic 2 the infected room
2 is the infected room
3 was my buckets showing me that the problem was starting there
4 plants fell over after a light physan dose
5 physan pulling this slime out of nowhere! (Buckets were clean)
6 is a completed tea ready to put in
7 is now how my plants currently look, 10 days into flower.

dangit can someone move this to the appropriate forum :bong:

:rofl:

thanks hick!

any questions please feel free to ask. I know those links are a lot to tackle...

1 detail: These bennys are not needed for a normal hydro grow. Chemical nutrients like GH3 part will not benefit from the beneficial bacterial. They are being introduced solely to compete with other (bad) root zone microbes.

Very interesting read

Thanks for the links.
Didnt have time to read the whole thread this morning, why did you get the slime in the first place?

Its in the water supply. Chlorine and chloramine do not kill it. It squeezes past 1 micron RO....And Then a lack of proper maintenance. I had no idea in all these years that the back of 2 of my water pumps JUST PULLED RIGHT OFF TO CLEAN. Even tho I soaked em in bleach the crap in it eventually took hold. I cracked the back open a few days ago after I shook it and heard sludge in it. Opened it up...bingo brown slime poopie...

I too have battled this same Borg. I bought a water chiller and started using GH RapidStart and it cured my problem, my roots were whiter and more of them than ever before. I do not think that the RapidStart had as much to do with my success, I think it was the water cooler. At one point mine was so bad that a half inch mat of algae (i.e. brown stuff) would appear on my airstones in less than two days. JMO.

My res's have been 65-70 degrees...Brown Slime thrives from 55 to 80.

OG
awsome find n read man.. sounds just like the problem ive been battleing for 3-6 months...and has been driving me nuts...
only thing is my ph aint going up like that its dropping ..in 4-8 hrs it goes from 5.8-6.0 down to 5.5-5.3 which i cant figure out...

where i live we have some serious hard hard water.. so dunno..
thanx for the info though...
LH

Update!!!! JUST DID RES CHANGEOUTS ...

2 of them I decided to do zone and h2o2...the rest got the benificials

Pic1 untreated with benificials, treated with h2o2 and zone
Pic2 The plant on its last leg

Pic3 Treated with Benny's....
Pic4 She be nice...she be nice y'all


So, that's that I guess.

Thanks for the information. It helped me lot.

No problem.

I almost quit growing. :/

OG my Borg is back. Here I thought that I had it under control. I just started a new grow and it is back. I am going to go to the hydro store and start making some tea. Thanks for the info and I hope it works.

Wishing you luck bro! It's hard to get at but just wait and you will see results

My tea is brewing and I will add it tomorrow when I change out my nutes. Since this grow has just started and the slime is still minimal, should I go with the prevenative method or the full on method?

I put 1 cup of full strength tea in per 5gal DWC (~3.5 gal).

Since initial treatment, I've added 1/3 cup to each DWC 3 times. Once every 3 days. And I never add any sugar to the buckets. I only feed the Benny's in their own res.


Side note, the dang stretch set in over night! My plants stretched 2-3 inches last night alone! Woke up with a bud touching the lens luckily the light was off.
Of all the nights I :watchplant: this last one I finally got some sleep and then BAM! Stretch:rofl:

OG your ladies are shy. They don't want daddy watch them stretch. :rofl:

Sounds like the plants are recovered and really taking off

they are!

quite a few missed the stretch, and a few are recovering...but the harvest should be decent if it all keeps going like it is over the next few weeks.

thanks yall!

So the 2 that were on their last leg (being treated with h202 and zone) have been flushed and started on benificials since my last update with pics. I completely expected them to die and just about wrote them off.

Well, here's an update:

They are doing good and growing new roots. I hacked off the bottom 1/3 of those two plants because I figured it would give less stress on the root mass and all those lower branches were REALLY drooping. Nevertheless, they are still going.