Damping off, Stem rot....Treatments?

Well IC unfortunately I am here tonight for advice rather then giving it...I did some searching and so far found only a few threads based specifically on this topic.

Tonight during my checks I noticed one plant was drooping like it was thirsty, this plant is in my recirculating deep water culture system, so immediatly I checked the feed hose to make sure it was recirculating. When lifting the lid I noticed black spots on the base of some stems, and some white fuzz as well.

I immediatley thought stem rot and began inspecting others. I see that some other plants have it as well

Maybe I planted the clones to low in the netpot when first transplanting them in, and this is what caused it....or....this strain and pheno is more suseptable then others.

I have planted clones this deep for years with no issues, and my water levels haven't changed.

I did spray the plants down real good a couple weeks ago with spinosad for thrips, they got a good soaking, maybe this helped get things going?

Also these plants are thick like broccoli, tomorrow I am going to add floor fans and start really whipping some air through the under carriage of the plants. Tomorrow I am adding lots of fans!!!

Before I take action I would like to hear what you all have to say

I normally run aquashield in my reservoir, but this round I actually just started adding it in a few days ago, boy am I glad I did that, I know aquashield is supposed to help prevent this but how is it at stopping it? I will dump the rest in tomorrow and find out!

The roots all look awesome.

My ideas are:

-Hydrogen peroxide dumped around the base of the stem, give the stem above the hydroton displaying the fungus/rot a nice rub down with it to! Maybe do this every day, or every few days?

-Alow the water levels to get real low and keep them there for a while.

-Add more aquashield after the H202 has been used up

-will a sulfur burner help?

-Ozone?

I really don't want to lose this beautiful canopy, I have lost one plant in 4 years of indoor growing, and that was due to a week vacation and mites!

Water temps: 66-69
Room lights on temp: 78F-80F
Room Lights off temp 70F
Lots of air in the rootzone!


Here are some pics of the grow a few days ago, and the stem rot

Any suggestions IC?

the way i see it you can go 2 ways...


either fight the good fight with microbes and fungi(EWC tea...ect)

or

go hardcore straight to something more effective but chemical(physan 20, phyton26, or many others)

it all depends on how urgent the situation is and how quickly you want to get rid of it....

personally i would go the organic way if you plan on flowering them soon, but if you plan on letting them veg a bit and they are a good ways from being harvested i would use some physay 20 and get ot over with asap, its not systematic so it will not be lasting in the plant(like floramite, avid...ect)

ive also heard that zinc and sulfur based sprays are good for this but have no exp with them, i use a sulfur burner for pm, and grow in promix, but if i have a prob with my mothers then thats what i do is use physan 20.....

Thanks for your input, thats the kind fo info I was looking for, you gave me alot to go on

I think I will go the physan 20 route, the plants are 2 days into a 8 week cycle, and physan 20 says this:

"biodegrades in 2 days with no residual trace"

The shit is cheap and sounds like it works well, I don't want to loose this whole crop, I feel stupid for not using aquashield all along like normal. I never had isues since my water temps are always inc heck, but i occassionally dump in some hydroguard/aquashield just in case. The one time i don't I get this. I will be treating these tomorrow.

How much do you reccomend per gallon?

This is just a foilar application?

How many treatments are normal?

What about runoff from spray if it is a foilar, cover netpots so it doesn't enter the nutrient solution?

I will still be increasing fans tomorrow and going for max air flow, I will stay up on the aquashield to. Hopefully this doesn't stunt them to bad, only one really shows the negative effects but it looks like before to long the other will be to. This sucks....

now that I think about it, the room has a very small stunted lady on the end. In the first couple weeks her feed hose turned off at one time or another and she developed root rot from not recirculating. I peeled the roots off, fixed the proble, and shes jammin right along now with fresh white roots.

This makes me think the pythium was intorduced at this time, and the problem i am seeing is more of an air flow problem under the canopy, since the roots even on the bad one look great.

Whoa that looks pretty hard core man. I'm sorry you have to deal with this problem.

Okay so first off this has happened to me in the past. I found that my water line was making contact with the jiffy cube keeping it constantly wet. Check your water line and lower it. When I lowered mine I immediately noticed my plants hardening at the base instead of the back and forth swish swashing.

my water line has been at the same height as any other run, I will lower my water first thing tomorrow. That plant had it pretty bad, the others are just starting to get it. The sample in the picture is just a branch off the stump you should see the stump

I will be lowering the nutrient level tomorrow, adding physan 20 at a very low dose tomorrow, letting that run for a hour, draining the system, filling it back up with RO water, running that for an hour, draining again, adding back a new solution to the system, blasting it with aquashield, adding floralicious+ to promote bacteria growth, adding multiple fans, going to beat up the under canopy hard, and hoping to defeat this shit

Figures first time I don't use hydroguard as an extra preventitive to the chiller, a feedhose clogs, introduces pythium to the system, and here we go!

This is the actual plant the sample was taken from, 3 days ago, I should have noticed then, just thought she was growing oddly.....:

You could mix the Physan20 in a spray bottle at like 1 teaspoon per gallon or so, then do some highly targeted collar spraying, then after its been soaking like 30mins move the plants up a few inches or clear around the stem rot area so it stays dry. That shit loves dark and damp.

have you baught physan 20 yet? it comes with an instruction manual on how to use for diff applications, and how much to mix, if you wernt given this pamphlet then let me know and ill take pics of mine and post it up

no i have not, read directions a couple times online, appreciate your offer though

snoopytime said:

You could mix the Physan20 in a spray bottle at like 1 teaspoon per gallon or so, then do some highly targeted collar spraying, then after its been soaking like 30mins move the plants up a few inches or clear around the stem rot area so it stays dry. That shit loves dark and damp.

Click to expand...

like your idea, I did a week or so ago fill the netpos the rest of the way up with hydroton, I start kind of low for new clones, and add some later for better late flower stabilization. I am going to dig out the netpots some, along with lots fans blasting the stumps!

no rot in this picture, but you can see this shit grows like broccoli

i baught my bottle on ebay along with the mite tripple threat treatment(avid, forbid, floramite) and when i recieved my gallon of physan20 it had a pamphlet around the nec of it, with do's and donts, and how to mix for diff applications and diff plants(although they dont mention MJ, lol)

I will be grabbing some tomorrow at the store, hoping this shit works, This is very saveable, the branch in my sample was the worst plant and worst spot, the other stumps are showing signs, black lines coming up the stump. I don't want to stunt my ladies with this either....everything has been so smooth for so long something like this was bound to happen, I will never forget aquashiled again.....always there as an extra backup to a chiller, incase soemthing like a feed hose stopsand introducies a herd of this shit!

only from seed

only from seed

I only ever got stem rot from seed .
Reasons were excess light intensity ,leavin seed case n sheath in the rock wool and too higher ec on early seedlings.

My remedys were 1000w MH up high on early seedlings ,rinse seed in 5% bleach solution before germ ,remove seed case and sheath from rockwool as soon as seed up.
Start with ec no higher than 0.6. and water by flood not overhead watering


The first time i ever got it was using jiffy 7,s transplanted into rockwool cube the jiffy 7,s stayd wet by robbing water n nutes from rockwool.

PuReKnOwLeDgE said:

my water line has been at the same height as any other run, I will lower my water first thing tomorrow. That plant had it pretty bad, the others are just starting to get it. The sample in the picture is just a branch off the stump you should see the stump

I will be lowering the nutrient level tomorrow, adding physan 20 at a very low dose tomorrow, letting that run for a hour, draining the system, filling it back up with RO water, running that for an hour, draining again, adding back a new solution to the system, blasting it with aquashield, adding floralicious+ to promote bacteria growth, adding multiple fans, going to beat up the under canopy hard, and hoping to defeat this shit

Figures first time I don't use hydroguard as an extra preventitive to the chiller, a feedhose clogs, introduces pythium to the system, and here we go!

Click to expand...

we live and we learn. preventing this is way easier than dealing with this shit. happens to the best of us man. you really have to introduce that beneficial bacteria at this point to aggressively target the slime/algae. Just remember to isolate the girls in good health cos this shit spreads super fast. Once you've got that physan20 wipe down your grow area and all tools you used too. I guess we can only hope from here. Most positive vibes to you bro. peace

so is the pythium in the roots?
any root rot pictures?

you have a real dense under-brush growing.

trimming that under-brush and getting air flow around the
buckets should help.

PuReKnOwLeDgE said:

I have planted clones this deep for years with no issues, and my water levels haven't changed....... with spinosad for thrips

Click to expand...

Sounds to me like you got it from the thrips and not your methods.

I was able to hold off a case of crown rot this season (outdoors) by applying Actinovate, (Streptomyces lydicus) as directed. However, it appears that your plants have progressed past the stage at which I caught my affected three gals.

Good luck.

lw

Ive fixed this problem without the use of Fungisides. Its a little barbaric but it works & works well.
The only thing is with this damping off is it eats its way into the stem from the outside in, so i was told by a V-Old hippy to get a sharp sterile razor blade ~& scrape it out (better than cutting it out), it works if you catch it early enough, even if you have to scrape right in to the core of the stem(try not to if you can help it-) Once youver scraped it all & i mean all out & then mix a H2O2 solution of 1ml to 1Ltr (17.5% strength solution of h2o2) & apply to the wounded area to sterilise, one further application the following day just to make sure & It does go away IME, ive done this several times now & its never failed me yet. I know it sounds Barbaric but apart from Fungisides which i dont like as some are toxic to humas too, its the only thing that ive found to work & like i said work well it does. Ive had plants with 1/3rd or more of their stem scraped out & still managed to finish my crop very well, im suere i made no losses whatsoever, The only problem i see though is that your D'off seems rather advanced & you may need to turn to fungisides in this case. But for future reference check for it early & if you see the spots of it starting to appear, get scraping(better than cutting). the wound heals & it goes away, maybe aim a fan at the infected area after youve treated with the h2o2 solution, just to keep good airflow around the base of the stem, that'll help imo. G'Luck man! ;?)