Something wicked this way comes

[Earlmarne]

Hey Gbro......To lose a crop is blasphemy and I`m so sorry for your loss....I got taught looooooong ago about root rot protection against higher bottom container temps by the Krazy Ass Kanadian Klown Krusty to employ SM-90 @ 5ml per gal throughout the life of the grow ......Well fast forward a decade of usin the shit religiously and after switchin setups to ebb and flow buckets and then finally coco DTW for the last 7-8 yrs of HARD croppin , I got fungus gnats once.......and it was because I `d run out of SM-90 and it was back ordered ....bottom line.....

Nutrilife submitted the shit to Cali for OMRI and they denied their application for an "Organic root rot preventive as well as rootborn insect preventive" , so the only way they could advertise the product in all the hydro shops was a surfactant/wetting agent and it sat on the shelves dead and all but forgotten about except by the old heads that`ve learned the benefits long before the Cali decision.....that said....

What SM-90 does is encapsulate the larvae and eggs of ALL root born critters and they smother , but the trick is to innoculate the media with nutrient solution and SM-90 BEFORE the plants are transplanted to remove all doubt of anything growing in the rootzone......

SM-90 will not kill adults so prevention is worth a lb of cure....Older member here used SM-90 to attack root aphids and all but eradicated em but they kept comin back and it was because they reproduce so fast , so chemicals hadta be introduced to finish the job.....now.....

Waterfarms.....yeah that`s a blast from the past my old Bro Heath Robinson made famous with his modifications and bustin gpw`s with.....seems if memory serves they had a venturi tube that recirculated bottom container juice by pushing it up the tube and into the upper container....but....

When daisy chained and connected to multiple units , Heath bored out the drains and increased flow dramatically, kinda sorta the same as the undercurrent setup does......anyways.....

SM-90 FTW.....bet on it....Getchas some.....Happy Memorial Day guys and......

Peace......DHF............

Good info DHF, thank you.
I will have to pick some up. Im currently running the de as a top coat of my medium. And once weekle neem foliar.
Nice to have some none nuclear approaches.
I am feeling my decisions to start over due to the aphids right now pretty tuff. I feel embarrassed as hell walking into the shops and paying their prices for the products offered.

 

[gmanwho]

Interesting.
Ive recently started adding pondzyme to my rez.
One thing i miss from running coco is bi weekly ewc teas and how the girls loved them.
Ive been scared to dump my teas in this new system. I hate soil indoors.
Id love to hear more about your use of teas in the ppk when you have time.
I was buying ewc from the shop but am toying with the idea of a worm bin. I followed a ruff heisenberg recipe.
Couple handfulls of ewc, teaspoon of maxicrop, teaspoon of myco, whatever bottled enzymes on hand and a teaspoon of mollases. My fear in mollases and the pumps not playing well

If u check out my ppk thread land of a thousand colas in the hydro forum i get into it more. as for molassess i use dried molasses crystals. Supper cheap an 2 tablespoons does 25 gallons, it barely thickens or taints the water. u can find over at customhydronutrients dot com. hes got some great pk foliars as well with salicylic acid.

i also have hybrid ppk systems where i turned the rez into a act type environment so the rez actually becomes the brewer an every watering is like a ewc an other bb tea. That system is graded so the feed lines drain. i also have another dtw ppk system as well i was messing with.



i like to experiment. part of my seeking is i was getting such low brix levels and i wanted to push myself to create a better product, expecially a better tasting product..... create a helthier plant an the oils will come with it. lets continue this over there. i need to update it...

 

[Earlmarne]

So ive been backing off ec getting ready to flip this room. Freaking girls are drinking like crazy. Got down to 1.3 ec and in a week they started tacoing due to my ph rising to 6.8 over this last week even with 5.8 input.
Best i can figure is that im feeding to low so im bringing them up to 1.4. I want to be light on the ec as much as possible come 12/12 so as not to delay flowering.
3 plant per container has also forced me to gradually bump up timing of feeds. Im at 20 seconds on every 20 minuts. Roots are coming down into the bucket pretty good on all of them. Got a bunch of bennies in the rez to try and keep em healthy

 

[newguy41410]

HELP! I had a clogged tailpiece on one of my PPK sites and it led to the clogged roots in the tailpiece going anaerobic with root rot! I fixed the clog but the plant doesn't seem to be recovering and I'm assuming its the root rot.

I was 5 weeks into flower when the problem presented itself last week. When clogged, every time the pump would fire the water would just pool in my 3.5 gallon bucket and not drain all the way.

3.5 gallon buckets are 11 inches tall and i filled them up with perlite/turface to about the 7 inch mark. So there was enough room for 4 inches of water in case of overflow. When the pumps would fire the water level would come to about 2 inches below the rim of the bucket. And when the pumps turned off it would barely drain water; it would drain just enough water where the water level would fall to about half an inch above the medium. So my roots were basically drowning. The buckets never overflowed and flooded my room thankfully, but i let it go on for a week hoping the problem would correct itself but never did. Main reason i didn't take immediate action is because i had a SCROG net over the plant and it was 5 weeks into flower. Also because the plant didn't start showing any signs of symptoms until about a week of being clogged. After a week of drowning i decided i had no choice but to intervene. I did the PITA task of cutting the SCROG screen off and basically re-potted the entire plant into a fresh new 3.5-gallon PPK bucket. The roots had grown into the tailpiece and formed a pretty solid mass in there. I tore this "mass of tailpiece roots" that had black stinky-like-shit mold all over it and threw it away. Placed the root ball and plant in its new container and it is now draining properly whenever the pump fires.

In hindsight, i probably should have taken my time to ensure every piece of root that had black mold on it was removed but water was spilling all over my grow room, the plant was getting heavy holding it with one hand, and so i rushed the job of tearing the root mass off but im pretty sure i got MOST of the black mold shit off.

Its been about two days since the re-pot and she doesn't seem to be getting any better. if anything she seems to be slowly dying. her leaves are slowly going yellow and feel soft and very flaccid.

Here is a photo I took of her just now:

Here is a photo of her identical twin (same phenotype) who gets treated exactly the same. Only difference is this twin didn't get clogged which didn't lead to root rot:

Questions:
1.) Current Tailpiece is 1.5" diameter-sized. In 3.5 gallon buckets using chunky Xtra Large Perlite. Should I change to 3" tailpieces to avoid these clogs in the future?
2.) Or is there a better solution to preventing the roots from growing down into the tailpiece in the future?
3) I'm pretty sure I got most of the black stinky root rot that was on the roots but not entirely sure. Should I be worried that the root rot can spread via the PPK plumbing system to my other three plants???
4.) any recommended solutions to maybe "kill off" what root rot mold i may have in my tailpiece, medium, bottom bucket, or PPK system? should i maybe dump H2O2 into the affected plant in hopes of killing off as much anaerobic bacteria as possible? any other suggestions?? Can't seem to find much info on root rot in PPK (ultimately a good thing )

 

[tobedetermined]

Questions:
1.) Current Tailpiece is 1.5" diameter-sized. In 3.5 gallon buckets using chunky Xtra Large Perlite. Should I change to 3" tailpieces to avoid these clogs in the future?
2.) Or is there a better solution to preventing the roots from growing down into the tailpiece in the future?

If you grow big roots, you have to have a bigger container to house them or they will clog things. I don't use PPK but rdwc. Each plant swims in a 45L tote with 2" recirculating lines & the roots still try to escape. I have a screen at the output & in my last grow, a root had grow into the screen & had a 12" tail in the piping. The mass at the filter had reduced the flow rate by 75%. Since I had access, I just moved them but that wouldn't be practical for you.

tbd

 

[Mr Blah]

Root rot for sure.

Roots should never stay in the water in PPK. I veg in seperate PPK site for 2 months than move the plants to flower PPK room and there is roots most of the time.

Maybe check for roots every 1-2 months while vegging and flowering next time.

You might have to design a way to check the system for roots while on the screen.

Good job on the screen work.



IMO I don't think the plant will make 100% recovery but give it at least a week or two before calling it.

 

[newguy41410]

Root rot for sure.

Roots should never stay in the water in PPK. I veg in seperate PPK site for 2 months than move the plants to flower PPK room and there is roots most of the time.

Maybe check for roots every 1-2 months while vegging and flowering next time.

You might have to design a way to check the system for roots while on the screen.

Good job on the screen work.



IMO I don't think the plant will make 100% recovery but give it at least a week or two before calling it.

Mr.Blah thank you for your input! You have been of great help to me especially in my transition from 2 gallon ppk to 3.5-gallon ppk. More than you know!
Anyway, i also don't think the plant will make a 100% recovery. In fact, i am beginning to think it wont make any type of recovery i am actually thinking of just chopping her down tonight.
Here's photos i took of her this morning before leaving to work. Not good at all, i feel like she is just dying. she kinda just smells like death tbh kinda earthy and woody not sure how to describe it. The leaves look so bad im not sure how it could be possible for this plant to make any type of recovery. I mean i hope i'm wrong but i;ve just about given up on this plant. Lesson learned i guess?
Yes, i definitely need to devise a system where i can check my roots without disturbing the SCROG net but i really am having a hard time thinking of something that will work
When you check your roots in transition from veg to flower are you actually pulling the plants+root balls out of the buckets to inspect? or do you just yank the roots in the tailpipe by pulling whatever has made its way through the screen?


PS Edit: I'm thinking my only choice if i want to continue PPK+SCROG is to veg as usual weaving the plants into the screen. and before i flip to flower take the screen offf? at least there wont be any buds tangling up the screen so much maybe, making it easier to remove? its certainly a bitch to remove a scrog screen when the plant has buds (had to cut the screen actually) so maybe my only choice is to manually remove the screen and inspect before going into flower?

 

[Mr Blah]

I yank the roots off the tailpipe. I never take the root mass out of the bucket anytime during growing.
Can you train to the screen after you flip so you can check before? I do not train horizontal so I don't know about this. But I do the vertical screens in my rooms and I train to a screen on day 1 of flower.

 

[redneckhippie]

thank you! but my crew is the best and they get all the credit for these beautiful plants. i don't really do much any more. i just drop by occasionally and bother everyone with bad jokes.

good eyes, blah! that's because you are looking at pumice. we have begun stuffing the tailpieces with hydroton and filling the rest with 100% pumice.

here in oregon we have a massive deposit near crater lake. it's used in cement entrainment and for agriculture and landscaping.

i haven't been using it before because it was available at landscape supply places and had a lot of the wrong size particle, fines, dirt, bugs, etc in it.

well i have found a local source of bagged pumice that is acceptably sized and washed somewhat.

i then tumble wash it again.

well, later on for now!

I've been thinking about trying pumice/lava rock in tailpiece. Before using PPK, I was leaning toward the bio-bucket. I never followed through with a complete setup, but I did use the lava rock in net pots SWC. I noticed that the beneficial bacteria grew in this arrangement, and figured it would do the same in tailpipe.

 

[delta9nxs]

first thing i want to do is apologize for abandoning this thread for so long!

looking back over it i see i have missed quite a bit but rather than try to sort it all out without knowing what is truly relevant or unresolved i will just try to answer on a few topics that maybe i've found some results for.

those in 3.5 gal buckets should be using a 2" tailpiece. the same fittings shown on the first pages of this thread are available in 2". we are still using screws on the upper end of the tailpiece but you can glue the grating in the bottom because it never needs to come off for any reason.

we are growing huge plants and vegging 8-9 weeks. right before the flip we change out the tailpiece with a fresh one. this is easily accomplished by placing the plant on a couple of inverted buckets while you change it out.

the tailpiece is filled with hydroton so it begins it's use with a higher air filled porosity than the 35-38% afp of the pumice so more room for roots to grow but the roots don't grow much after stretch so you end up with far less total root material in the tailpiece after harvest.

we are drilling 16 3/16" holes in the bottom and have switched to an indented lid on the plant reservoir to catch the gravity propelled part of the drain and divert it back into the reservoir under each plant.

this shortens the total drain time and causes much less flow through the tailpiece and therefore the roots tendency to grow down it, following moving water.

the holes also act to help aerate the lower part of the medium.

one last thought is that by propping the plant container up above the plant reservoir on a couple of 2x2's or something and then firing the pumps you can get a very accurate idea of how long to set the duration of the irrigation event.

you simply set it for the elapsed time that it takes for the gravity propelled part of the drain to begin. this guarantees a total media wash. any less is not achieving the full benefit of irrigation event and any more is redundant.

enough on tailpieces!

editing to add that we are setting the frequency of irrigation at 2 hours for the small vegging plants and three hours for the large veggers in the frames and the flowering plants.

 

[delta9nxs]

fuggin' fungus gnat's! i think we have a "final" solution for the little bastards!

we haven't had any other bugs in the room for a long time but i have seen the photo of 5-6 broad mites riding on an aphid i think it was and it scares the hell out of me!

we have had a battle with a stubborn and determined enemy but i think we've gotten the upper hand.

we tried everything known so i won't even go through it all here but i read on the uc davis site about using a combination of lemongrass oil spray that you can get at home depot and a product made by the same folks that bring you mosquito dunks called "mosquito bits".

chopped up dried corn kernels impregnated with a bacillus thur. strain. sprinkle them evenly on top of the media and kind of shake/vibrate them down into the top 1.5". you should probably give them a good watering in by wetting out the entire top of the media by hand once.

then the lemongrass oil spray lightly as often as needed until you don't see any more emerging young fliers.

the oil spray is a knockdown killer plus it apparently acts as some type of olfactory barrier for the gnats. i like the smell personally and find it quite pleasant. makes the whole place smell good.

doesn't seem to affect the plants but don't spray it directly on the leaves as it will burn them slightly.

gnats are almost gone now. we are seeing fewer everyday.

we also run the dunks in the main recirculating reservoirs.

 

[delta9nxs]

we have just harvested a 19.6 lb plant! that is 19.6 of fresh, wet, individual florets. no stem and no fans but bud leaves intact. we take them completely apart. i set a goal last year of 20 per plant so we are very close.

everyone has their own method for drying, trimming, etc for determining yield so extrapolate all you like using your own parameters.

one plant one light.

 

[Miraculous Meds]

Good to hear from you D9. Gnatrol is my go to for FG. 2 waterings a week at 7.5ml per gallon of nutrient water, hand fed, usually takes care of them for me. Then once or twice monthly at 2ml per gallon as preventative.


Great job on almost hitting goal weight! Im sure the next ones will get there.

 

[gmanwho]

good to see you are back....


been using Gnatrol myself and a few other fungal based insecticides to battle knats and other crawlers


19.6, wow. lot of material

 

[Snook]

 

[Mr Blah]

19.6 !!!! Wow!

youda man.


I too am vegging about 8 weeks but still on the 1.5" tailpipe. Not growing as much down the pipe.

Is there a significant data for drilling holes in the bottom or just clearly draining the remainder of the settling water in the bucket?



Good to see ya back around D9.

 

[gmanwho]

19.6 !!!! Wow!

youda man.


I too am vegging about 8 weeks but still on the 1.5" tailpipe. Not growing as much down the pipe.

Is there a significant data for drilling holes in the bottom or just clearly draining the remainder of the settling water in the bucket?



Good to see ya back around D9.

some time ago i started the bucket holes around the tail piece as well.

the first time was out of desperation as the plants werent draining an they where already locked in with layers of trellis. so i took my 2ft 3/8th drill bit an started popping holes into the medium and through the top bucket. made holes all around the tail piece area. knowing that it didnt need to be perfect, as long as the holes where made within the lower bucket cover. then the cover would allow the water to flow to the center an drop down the taill piece cut out.

after that all of the plant buckets i made holes. and i have a 3" wide tailpiece, and that still clogged prior. i went with 3" as i had a bunch left over from a previous construction project.

 

[McKush]

I remember aviators 4lb plant. Any pics of the 19lber in late flower D9?

 

[delta9nxs]

I remember aviators 4lb plant. Any pics of the 19lber in late flower D9?

no, i was gonna take a couple but they tore it apart before i could get there.

but it didn't look much different from other pics here of large finishing plants. it's hard to discern the difference visually between a 17 or a 19 lb plant.

i'll try to get some pics up showing a few of them. i've got a bubblegum coming down tonight that looks heavy. has hard, dense buds.

 

[delta9nxs]

good to see you are back....


been using Gnatrol myself and a few other fungal based insecticides to battle knats and other crawlers


19.6, wow. lot of material

so i read where you were having bud density issues with jack's and now i know why.

jrpeters shows 2 ways to mix.

one is the "small batch" method wherein they recommend equal parts. i have used it for years because it was fast and easy to do and it works quite well in general.

i assumed it was the same as mixing by weight but i actually weighed it out and found that the equal parts results in significantly more calcinit and therefore more nitrogen.

i changed the reservoirs around so that i'm running the 1/.66 ratio by weight on the flowering, stretching, and large vegetative plants in frames and the bud density improved dramatically.

i still use "equal parts" on all clones and small vegetative plants as it gets me more growth during that period.