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What are these things in my guano tea?

dachieftan

Active member
I keep seeing these little things in my runoff/reservoir of guano tea. They have elongated white bodies and look like some fish out of water as they flop around when I take em out of water. I noticed it and fed one plant the tea w/ these things in it anyway but the Ph was off so I can't discriminate if the plant is sad b/c of these things. They are visible if your looking for em and they are pretty good swimmers. Ingredients in my tea are:
-Earth worm casting
-organic blackstrap molasses
-Nitrogen rich bat guano
-kelp meal
-liquid seaweed
-powdered mychorizae
-Phosphorus rich bat guano

I let the tea bubble for about a day and any longer these things start showing up. I notice the longer the tea sits, the more it starts to stink and the more visible these things become. The weather has been constantly cold as of late so I don't know if that effects their reproduction. Sorry for the bad quality pics but a laptop camera is the only thing i Have.
 
I don't know what they are but maybe cover the container you're bubbling in with a nylon to make sure they're not coming in from outside and start adding one less ingredient every time you brew to see if they are coming from the guano or something. Wish I could be more helpful.
 

dachieftan

Active member
I have always cover my tea with a screen to avoid any outside contamination. I suppose taking out one amendment at a time is a good place to start.
Out of curiosity though I would really like to know what these things are. Anybody else know?
 

St. Phatty

Active member

I would say, the time to worry is when stuff doesn't try to grow in your tea.

Does it change the smell of the tea - the light colored dots in the picture ?


I use sugar-water-yeast mixtures for CO2 supplementation indoors, and that means hanging buckets of sugar water, super fizzy water bubbling like 20 glasses of champagne (for 3 days), right next to the plants, near the osc. fan.

The buckets do attract fruit flies, but I guess I would be concerned if the fruit flies went away.


I find it helps to have a strainer near the garden because there's always crap to clean out of the buckets of different feed-stocks.

I find smell and sometimes sound helps me determine if the grow material is 'done' (ready to be moved outdoors).
 

Strudel

Member
Sorry did not get it?are those things animals leaving in your nut? Are you growing with hydro and those little things live in your tank? Am i undestood right?
 

Erryl.Flynn

New member
Really hard to tell as the pictures are extremely blurry but looks kind of like enchytraeids - or potworms. Could be coming from the EWC. Do you have vigorous bubbling when you're making your tea? I'm pretty weary of all guanos as I've found them to do more harm than good when I've implemented them in my AACT. Maybe try removing them from your tea as well as trying a different EWC or replacing the EWC with Ancient Forest. I've found some EWC to be of very poor quality in which the composting is not complete and thus results in questionable garden material.
 
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