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Can't tell if you have root rot or the brown slime algae, come on in ?!
- Thread starter richyrich
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Hey Snype, thanks for the insight. Pull up a chair and brainstorm along.
I've experienced chlorine and chloramine resistant microbes. I haven't met anything personally I couldn't kill with Physan20. Fingers crossed I never do. The issue I'm inclined to think is going on here is an issue of air born spores and cysts from a mutant strain of pythium re-infecting time after time. That's why it will not go away after it made its first appearance after they all had 10+ years of successful growing beforehand.
If you were to fully sterilize a grow room and had perfectly clean water, all it would take is for spores to go airborn when that orange ballast in doneits pic above kicks on in the perfect room and finds its way into the rez or RO water storage. That ballast has been in an infected room circulated spore filled air to cool itself down. How many of us clean our ballasts guts? How about all the other similar things in our grow rooms? A wipe down of bleach or Physan20 will have little affect on mutant spores and cysts like this. They have to be dealt with another way.
We can't see spores and cysts with our eyes; they are microscopic. And they are usually built like armored trucks. That's why the spores and cyst live thru the bleach and Physan20.
Control is a going to be one facet of a multifaceted attack plan for doneit.
I've experienced chlorine and chloramine resistant microbes. I haven't met anything personally I couldn't kill with Physan20. Fingers crossed I never do. The issue I'm inclined to think is going on here is an issue of air born spores and cysts from a mutant strain of pythium re-infecting time after time. That's why it will not go away after it made its first appearance after they all had 10+ years of successful growing beforehand.
If you were to fully sterilize a grow room and had perfectly clean water, all it would take is for spores to go airborn when that orange ballast in doneits pic above kicks on in the perfect room and finds its way into the rez or RO water storage. That ballast has been in an infected room circulated spore filled air to cool itself down. How many of us clean our ballasts guts? How about all the other similar things in our grow rooms? A wipe down of bleach or Physan20 will have little affect on mutant spores and cysts like this. They have to be dealt with another way.
We can't see spores and cysts with our eyes; they are microscopic. And they are usually built like armored trucks. That's why the spores and cyst live thru the bleach and Physan20.
Control is a going to be one facet of a multifaceted attack plan for doneit.
I think his problems can be solved and always could but I also think that he may have to change the method of growing to combat the problem if your methods don't work. I've always thought that when I was originally helping him but at that time his people were set in there growing methods. I don't know if its an airborne problem and there's no way that I can tell that but it's at least a water quality problem. Now if his whole area is infected with this, I have cuts directly from this place and if it was airborne, it never created a problem with my grow. I just don't know what is going on because I'm not there. I think your tea method is a good idea and if it works, it's going to have to become part of his process for growing because it sounds like more of a bandaid approach. Hey I could be wrong. I know that I wasn't able to kill my problems because it was in my tap water. Those RO filters don't catch them because they are microscopic like you say. I'm interested to see how it goes.
My method of approach was to do some testing and then that would lead to an answer and better method of approach. The problem was that I don't believe that his grow method would be right for the antibiotic test. Because his system wasn't saturated or somehow sprayed 24 hours a day, it would not be a good way to try and fix the problem with that product. In another method of growing like Aeroponics or RDWC, it is easier to treat the problem as opposed to other growing methods using media. Like he said it was working for a few but then stopped. The medium and roots and water has to be saturated 24 hours a day.
There's so many easy tests that he can run to find at least 1 source of his problem. One would be to take a clean 5 Gallon Bucket of his water source and do testing with different concentrations of Chorine Via Clorox Bleach. You have multiple buckets all in a clean room. You can put a cover on it as well so nothing airborne gets in. You can compare your results to bottled water under the same conditions. When the Chlorine in the bleach is fighting the problem, you see the numbers going down in your chlorine meter. There is loads of information to gain from those numbers and data. You have a clean source of bottled water to compare it too and you can also see if you have a resistant strain of whatever the problem is by analyzing the data of numbers in different concentrations of tests up to about 4 PPM of CL. This test could take a little while to perform and it all has to be done in a timely scheduled manner. Even every hour sometimes to record all the data. This was all suggested beforehand. I've done this type of testing many times before and have learned loads of information. It's how I was able to determine that I had a chlorine resistant problem and had to use a different method to combat my problem. I don't use Antibiotics with plants but I noticed if I can keep the slime at bay by cleaning my cloner with Erythromycin and cloning with bottled water, once the plant had a healthy root structure and was in perfect health, the pathogen wasn't able to take over when they got transferred to the hydro systems with infected tap water.
My first test after the bleach was the Erythromycin. You can see in the first pictures the dreaded slime:
I was dealing with this slime for a while trying to fix it somehow. I lost many crops over this slime. The slime multiplies so fast that it sort of suffocates the stem. Roots were impossible to get in the cloners. Impossible. I dumped a whole bottle of Physan20 in my cloner. It did nothing at all. The slime just multiplies like it normally did. Every crop got worse and worse. Then after I took those pictures above, I added my Erythromycin treatments and couldn't believe what happen:
When I took the first pics of the slime, it was everywhere. All over brand new air stones, stuck all over the manifold and in the manifold. It would only take 24 hours for the slime to multiply at alarming rates. After the first day of the treatments, the slime still came. It took a few days for the Erythromycin to knock them dead. I had 4 or 5 EZ cloners that did not work anymore because of the slime. I used to have to buy new ones all the time just to be able to try to have a good crop. Once I saw what it did to my clones, I cleaned all my cloners for 5 or 7 days with the Erythromycin and they all worked like they were brand new again. I never saw the slime again but I use bottled water in the cloners now as well.
I was able to figure this out by going back to my old city where I grew for 10 years with no problems. I pulled my hair our for months before this. I drove a couple hours away and took a jar of my old tap water from a previous city and compared it to the tap water that I was using now. I was doing all these chlorine tests before this so I happen to compare both samples of water with a chlorine meter. I had no idea what I was going to learn. My old location water where I had no problems tested at 2 ppm of Chlorine and my current water with where I had all the problems tested at 0.1 or 0.2 PPM Chlorine. From that point I knew I was on to something. Many tests were performed. I almost gave up growing before I checked the water. I had no idea to even look into the water. I checked everything else. I couldn't even get a crop and was running out of money dealing with these problems. One day I just woke up and thought about the water and then found a solution.
My first test after the bleach was the Erythromycin. You can see in the first pictures the dreaded slime:
I was dealing with this slime for a while trying to fix it somehow. I lost many crops over this slime. The slime multiplies so fast that it sort of suffocates the stem. Roots were impossible to get in the cloners. Impossible. I dumped a whole bottle of Physan20 in my cloner. It did nothing at all. The slime just multiplies like it normally did. Every crop got worse and worse. Then after I took those pictures above, I added my Erythromycin treatments and couldn't believe what happen:
When I took the first pics of the slime, it was everywhere. All over brand new air stones, stuck all over the manifold and in the manifold. It would only take 24 hours for the slime to multiply at alarming rates. After the first day of the treatments, the slime still came. It took a few days for the Erythromycin to knock them dead. I had 4 or 5 EZ cloners that did not work anymore because of the slime. I used to have to buy new ones all the time just to be able to try to have a good crop. Once I saw what it did to my clones, I cleaned all my cloners for 5 or 7 days with the Erythromycin and they all worked like they were brand new again. I never saw the slime again but I use bottled water in the cloners now as well.
I was able to figure this out by going back to my old city where I grew for 10 years with no problems. I pulled my hair our for months before this. I drove a couple hours away and took a jar of my old tap water from a previous city and compared it to the tap water that I was using now. I was doing all these chlorine tests before this so I happen to compare both samples of water with a chlorine meter. I had no idea what I was going to learn. My old location water where I had no problems tested at 2 ppm of Chlorine and my current water with where I had all the problems tested at 0.1 or 0.2 PPM Chlorine. From that point I knew I was on to something. Many tests were performed. I almost gave up growing before I checked the water. I had no idea to even look into the water. I checked everything else. I couldn't even get a crop and was running out of money dealing with these problems. One day I just woke up and thought about the water and then found a solution.
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Snype... First, the cuts you received from me where not from an infected source.
I do believe the pathogen we have is immune to chlorines and that it is most certainly airborne in spore form.
The antibiotics were applied as described by you, the system fully saturates the medium 4 times a day, it worked on the initial trial but the pathogen came right back, i did not want to attempt a constant use of the antibiotic.. for obvious reasons.
The first pic i showed of the clones in cups are from my place, i brought them to my friends and the next day the brown stuff was growing on the tops of the perlite, they were not given any water/feed from the infected spot.
anyways... im glad your here and still trying to help, you know what my guys have been going threw!
I do believe the pathogen we have is immune to chlorines and that it is most certainly airborne in spore form.
The antibiotics were applied as described by you, the system fully saturates the medium 4 times a day, it worked on the initial trial but the pathogen came right back, i did not want to attempt a constant use of the antibiotic.. for obvious reasons.
The first pic i showed of the clones in cups are from my place, i brought them to my friends and the next day the brown stuff was growing on the tops of the perlite, they were not given any water/feed from the infected spot.
anyways... im glad your here and still trying to help, you know what my guys have been going threw!
I see now about the clones. As far as saturated 4 times a day, that would have never been enough. It needed to be for 24 hours per day like in RDWC or Aeroponics. That really sucks about your problems. I really hope you find a way to get rid of it.
1. How exactly are those rooms divided. I'm sure they exchange the same air, do they?
A: they are separate rooms with doors, they do share the same air system
2. Is there an A/C vent, heating vent, or any other vent directly into any part of the entire grow room (mother, veg and bloom)?
A: yes, they are all plumbed off of one furnace/central air
3. How old is the charcoal filter?
A:Couple yrs old, it is cleaned on a regular basis
4. How old is the bulb in the inline UV filter? Have you checked to see if the bulb still works?
A: yes it works, regularly maintained
.
5. How old is the RO Unit itself? How many stages is it? List what each stage is?
A: Its a 5 stage, hasent been used in a couple yrs, most likely he will get a new one.
6. When is the last time you changed just the RO membrane in the unit?
A: In a timely manner, were pretty good about system maintenance
7. When is the last time you changed the other filters?
A: When necessary
8. When is the last time you broke down the entire RO unit, bleached it, and re-assembled?
A: Not in use
9. Do you have booster pump for the RO unit?
A: not needed
10. Where do you store the RO water until you have enough for you rez or later use?
A: 100 gallon REZ
11. Have you ever tried an ozone generator to treat the grow room air?
A: Yes, in the past... the smell made me a bit nervous so use was discontinued
12. Have you ever tried a free standing inline fan (eg. vortex, etc.) attached to a UV Sterilizing unit for air?
A: NO, but have looked into it
13. Which way did you have the fan going with the charcoal filter when treating just the air; blowing into or out of the filter?
A: Pulling threw the filter
A: they are separate rooms with doors, they do share the same air system
2. Is there an A/C vent, heating vent, or any other vent directly into any part of the entire grow room (mother, veg and bloom)?
A: yes, they are all plumbed off of one furnace/central air
3. How old is the charcoal filter?
A:Couple yrs old, it is cleaned on a regular basis
4. How old is the bulb in the inline UV filter? Have you checked to see if the bulb still works?
A: yes it works, regularly maintained
.
5. How old is the RO Unit itself? How many stages is it? List what each stage is?
A: Its a 5 stage, hasent been used in a couple yrs, most likely he will get a new one.
6. When is the last time you changed just the RO membrane in the unit?
A: In a timely manner, were pretty good about system maintenance
7. When is the last time you changed the other filters?
A: When necessary
8. When is the last time you broke down the entire RO unit, bleached it, and re-assembled?
A: Not in use
9. Do you have booster pump for the RO unit?
A: not needed
10. Where do you store the RO water until you have enough for you rez or later use?
A: 100 gallon REZ
11. Have you ever tried an ozone generator to treat the grow room air?
A: Yes, in the past... the smell made me a bit nervous so use was discontinued
12. Have you ever tried a free standing inline fan (eg. vortex, etc.) attached to a UV Sterilizing unit for air?
A: NO, but have looked into it
13. Which way did you have the fan going with the charcoal filter when treating just the air; blowing into or out of the filter?
A: Pulling threw the filter
I dont believe i will ever be able to rid the spots of the pathogen completely.
I think the only solution is to find something that will hold the pathogen off and work in conjunction with the plant.
Something that is stronger than the pathogen that will not allow it to take over.
I think the only solution is to find something that will hold the pathogen off and work in conjunction with the plant.
Something that is stronger than the pathogen that will not allow it to take over.
I'm quite sure it can be solved too. I know I could set him up in Coco Drain to Waste right now and kiss the problem good bye. I did exactly that in 2008, though I couldn't stay away from the typical and media-less hydro. Btw, coco is technically a hydro growing method with impressive yields. But, I think a lot of us see it as similar to soil growing and not hydro.
Doneits system and his buddys has worked for over ten years until the problem. We all know we would be resistant to change so quick if in the same shoes. We are going to attempt to fix the problem as it stands. Thats why I have directed him to pick his nastiest most infected room. If not, we keep on trying and adjusting along the way.
It could be an air problem and a water problem. Both issue will be attacked. But we do know that doneit sent off for lab results and it came back pythium as I had suspected intially. I'm not certain if pythium spores/cysts are coming out of his tap as we know cyanobacteria (the slime) spores/cysts do.
I know what you mean. Its difficult to know for sure what is happening because we are not there. Thats where the pictures come in to help and my probing questions. I'm drawing on over 12 years of knowledge and experience to mentally envision his grow room and associated problems.
You could think of using a hydro tea as band aid, but even so, I advocate using hydro tea because of the symbiotic relationship the roots have with beneficial microbes. Hydro tea should be used even for non-infected rooms and systems. You get super healthy plants, super yields, amazing roots, and ward off any potential infections in the futures. All pluses in my book. Beneficial microbes belong with roots as mother nature has intended. They are in the soil everywhere around the world.
I'm confident a hydro tea will work. I have several custom microbe blends specifically tailored for different types of hydroponic media or lack of media. I'm not going to take a chance here with my original hydro tea recipe. I put that together when I first started experimenting with bene microbes in hydro. Nobody was doing hydro teas in 2007. I am going to pull out the big guns of microbes I also have tailored custom hydro tea recipes for specific root problems, for even bigger yields, for certain root bugs, etc.. I am currently researching the various types of known pythium so I may customize a new blend of microbes.
There are so many beneficial microbes out there. Way more than you can find on the label of the store bought stuff. There are also many ways to produce and multiply these microbes other than bubbling buckets, bio reactors, and the contraptions hydro/garden stores are selling for $1,000+. I plan to custom blend a hydro tea with the greatest number of the beneficial microbes for the primary suspected problem, then the second highest amount of bene microbes will be for secondary issues, third, fourth, and so on.
Very true about the RO filters not getting everything. Especially, as the RO unit itself ages, its removal rating decreases, thus more things get thru. It can go from a 99% removal rating to 70% within 6 months of heavy use such as from the needs of a grow room as opposed to it being under you kitchen sink for drinking water. The recommended change out for a RO membrane is every 2 years. It needs to be changed more frequently for our purposes.
Let me share a story that just happened about a year ago. I had shelved my RO unit long ago. Around a year ago, I pulled it out to set it up for drinking water. I don't like drinking rat poison, sodium fluoride. The outcoming suppose to be clean water smelled fishy even after I changed out every single stage filter and the RO membrane.
So, I took every single thing apart that could come apart. What I found was a funk growing in the RO membrane housing. What shocked me was that it was growing right at the point where the clean RO water comes out of the RO membrane housing. So, point is that when I was using it for my hydro needs back in time, I had tainted RO water every single time.
RO units must to be broken down completely and cleansed. And, this is where placing a UV sterilizing light as the final stage would help tons. And heres a tip, just buy a whole new RO unit off ebay instead of taking the time to clean the unit and replace all the filters and RO membrane. Buying all the new filters and RO membrane end up costing as much as a new unit unless you can purchase wholesale.
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RR,
Im not saying we would not change mediums, I have ran cubes in this same system with excellent results, hydroton also, which i happen to have a ton of from yrs ago.
Im not a fan of coco, i know it grows well, my real good bro is running it now, canna i believe.. the end quality is just not to my liking, he runs the exact same strains we do, but in my opinion and any of my people.. its not even close.
If you have ran wool, perlite, coco at one point or another you would know exactly what im talking about.
Perlite is so damn easy and forgiving.. the end product is as good or better than i have ever seen.
Also helps that my friend is the manufacturer of Perlite and i can get truck loads for peanuts! lol
I dont see what the coco would have that the perlite would not, as far as curing the pathogen?
PLZ explain
I have also eliminated the water source as a contaminant. i have bottled it up and used it elsewhere, plus not all the spots where on the same water source.
RR... Im extremely happy that you are willing to stick this out!
Im not saying we would not change mediums, I have ran cubes in this same system with excellent results, hydroton also, which i happen to have a ton of from yrs ago.
Im not a fan of coco, i know it grows well, my real good bro is running it now, canna i believe.. the end quality is just not to my liking, he runs the exact same strains we do, but in my opinion and any of my people.. its not even close.
If you have ran wool, perlite, coco at one point or another you would know exactly what im talking about.
Perlite is so damn easy and forgiving.. the end product is as good or better than i have ever seen.
Also helps that my friend is the manufacturer of Perlite and i can get truck loads for peanuts! lol
I dont see what the coco would have that the perlite would not, as far as curing the pathogen?
PLZ explain
I have also eliminated the water source as a contaminant. i have bottled it up and used it elsewhere, plus not all the spots where on the same water source.
RR... Im extremely happy that you are willing to stick this out!
Its my initial thought that if I ever went the antibiotic route, I would use it all the way through the grow cycle; that means with plants in. I have a lot of fish antibiotics, same stuff and other kinds, that I have left over from my fish tanks. When used in fish tanks you have to dose every 5 to 7 days for a few weeks. I would incorporate the same into my reservoir management.
I could forsee spores/cysts quickly finding themselves landing in the reservoir after an antibiotic treatment is done. That is why I would run it all the way through. Its probably what happened to done it because of heavy spore/cyst infestation.
Constant saturation would be ideal.
Thats some good and valuable testing info there.
I know what you mean. The slime is wicked fast. Good lord, a whole bottle of Physan20. Just curious, where did you buy the bottle from? Did it foam up like crazy? Did you clean your cloner similar to my instructions? I'll post them below.
RichyRich's How to Sterilize Your EZ Cloner and Hydro Systems
1. Depending on what you can get, Pysan20 is tops. Second, regular unscented bleach, and third, whatever you might want to try. I only advocate Physan20 and bleach for now.
2. For sterilizing equipment, use hot hot water, your choice of one of the products of above, and antibacterial dish washing soap. The dish soap is antibacterial so it will help somewhat. It also is a surfactant and will make the scrubbing much easier. For Physan20 you will use 1mL per 5 gallons. For regular unscented bleach use 1 cup per 5 gallons. For other products you need to figure that out.
3. If you are cleaning a system with a lot of tubes (eg. ez cloner, drip systems, dwrc, drip feed, connected buckets, etc.), make sure your system is drained, then fill up your rez with one of the products, super hot water, and enough antibacterial dishwashing soap to get enough suds going. Now run the system for 4 hours.
4. For an ez cloner, take the lid off. Put all the puks in the sterilizing water. Take the pump apart. Take the red sprayers off the manifold. Soad everything in the bottome portion of the ez cloner for 2 hours then move on to step 5 below.
5. Take everything apart and scrub everything down like your life depends on it. Use a dishwashing sponge that has a scruff pad on the back side. Also get and use an old tooth brush, one of those tooth brush looking things that has brass bristles, etc.. Get into all the nooks and crannies. To clean the ez cloner puks spread the puks and clean the inside of them while dunking into the bleach soap water at the same time.
6. After scrubbing is complete, rinse everything off with hot hot water. Then put everything back together.
7. Fill up your rez or cloner again with hot hot water and one of the products above to the same ratios listed. Do not use dishsoap this time. Run the system for 2 hours.
8. Dump the rez or cloner of all the sterilizing water. Get it all out. Use a shop vac to suck out what you can't drain.
9. This is your last rinse. Only add hot hot water this round to your rez or cloner. Run it for 1 hour. Drain it all out.
10. You are now ready to start growing.
A tip or add on for RR's rinse cycle after cleaning your rez.
What i do is use a sump pump in the rez connected to the outside drain... I use a hose connected to a spickit and run the hydro system as the water comes in from the hose, the sump pump drains it at the same time..
Makes for flushing your system very easy.
Hope you guys understand or can visualize what im trying to describe.
What i do is use a sump pump in the rez connected to the outside drain... I use a hose connected to a spickit and run the hydro system as the water comes in from the hose, the sump pump drains it at the same time..
Makes for flushing your system very easy.
Hope you guys understand or can visualize what im trying to describe.
Exactly how I felt the whole time!
I also have a thread on cleaning cloners. I'm very anal with the way that I do things. I clean the inside of the manifold and replace all sprayers, neoprene , air stones and tubing on every run. The Physan20 was bought at Worms Way which is a great source. Yeah I know it foams up. I've been using it for 10+ years. Been growing for 20+ years.
I use SuperThrive only in the cloning state. Those root nubs appear within 3 days. I have full blown roots within 7 days. Other than that, I only use GenHydro Micro and GenHydro Bloom in VEG in Flower. I use no other products at all except Clorox Bleach and I get over 2 pounds a light in RDWC systems that I build with only a 9 day VEG in the Flowering rooms. I don't use anything that is living and I don't lose crops at all anymore once I tested all my formulas.
