Black roots?

[_Dude]

I put my girls into 12/12 8 days ago. So I go in to check on them today and AAAARG! I've got MALES! Fucking dicks. So I yank them (about 1/3 of my "girls" were sporting ball bags! GRRRRRrrrrrr). As I'm recovering my Hydroton I see all this black stuff on the root balls. Its mostly at the bottom of the balls, sometimes creeping up all the way to the stem, sometimes barely showing or not at all. It's not slimy, just black.

WTF is this stuff?

I saw only one other thread in the infirmary about this and it was due to Liquid Karma. I'm not using LK, just GH dry nutes (MaxiBloom for my flowering girls), in a flood and drain table with 6.5" pots. The table floods for 15 minutes three times during lights on, and once during lights off.

Need help ASAP, I want to move my mother plant into flower to take up the slack left by yanking the swinging balls, but I can't risk her perfect pearly roots until I know what this black shit is.

I've done some searches that suggest it's because of overwatering, but if that's the case then why aren't the roots growing out of the holes in the pots black too? They're all healthy looking to me. Could it have something to do with the pots? They're cheap ass nursery pots, the kind that come with plants you buy, but I haven't used them in a long time so it's hard to believe an infestation could have lived on them for that many months with nothing to feed on.

 

[_Dude]

Bump. Anyone seen the dreaded black roots before? I changed the flood times to 10 minutes 3 times a day hoping overwatering is what's doing it but I'd like to confirm.

 

[Weedninja]

Are the roots entirely black, or is it something covering them on the outside only? I had a black mold that was on my hydroton and roots in a drip system. It smelled musty. It don't think it hurt my plants any, but I did sterilize everything after my grow.

 

[_Dude]

I took them back out of the body bag to check and it's hard to say. I think I exaggerated the problem in my mind because only one of the plants had extensive blackness. One had minor blackness. The rest, four or five, showed none. All have browning roots though, so I'm pretty sure I have root rot setting in.

The black stuff kinda seemed like it was rubbing off, but it's hard to tell, I might have just been rubbing away the dead roots. The roots do smell a bit musty, maybe potatoes.

I'm going to treat with H2O2 as soon as the lights come on. I'll pour a 3% solution over the pots, and add about 2 ounces of 35% solution to the 55 gallon res. Then I'm going to add some Hydroguard because I went through my supplements and found a bottle I forgot I had. I'm not going to crawl into a 55 gallon drum to clean it but after harvest I guess I'll run a strong H2O2 mix through the system for 24 hours or so.

 

[Weedninja]

Yeah, don't f around with root rot. I would give the peroxide a few days to do it's magic before adding the Hydroguard though. Hydroguard is beneficial bacteria, so you don't want to kill them.

Let's just say that I may or may not have grown mushrooms before and if I did I would know that a 10% bleach solution will kill any bacteria, virus, or fungus that it comes into contact with. I don't know if that's practical for your situation, but if it is, make sure you rinse everything thoroughly afterward and don't use it anywhere near living plants.

 

[_Dude]

Yeah I was just thinking I might use a heavy bleach solution after the grow instead of H2O2, lol.

 

[stihgnobevoli]

you dont need a heavy solution. bleach is bleach you only need more when you are using more water. 1 capful of bleach for 5-10 gallons of water is more than enough for sterilization.