It’s that wonderful time of the year again. No its not Xmas . Summer . Hot humid grow rooms with hot reservoir Temps. I had one plant die and the other start developing root rot. I pulled those plants out my 25 gallon bin immediately. Setup a 4 gallon bucket for the plant that was still alive but roots kept creating a brown sludge every 4 hours or so for almost a week i battled this. I tried diluted alcohol , h202 , chlorine, bleach. Every 4 5 hours the brown sludge would grow right back.
Yesterday I dump the reservoirs water. Brought the plant to the kitchen sink and cleaned the plant and it it’s roots the medium with dove anti bacterial soap refilled the res with very little 1 gallon if that , straight non pH tap water. (I dumped a bit of soap right around its based and flushed for 15 minutes )Just enough to keep the roots moist , allot of air . 24 hours went by . No brown crap. So I pH the water down some added mild nutrients. 36 hours in no slime.
I also hooked my 8 inch in line fan up to a window and was able to drop room temps from 83-84 degrees to 76-77 degrees. Everything is looking good. I may buy a few smaller aquarium coolers / heaters.
Anti bacterial soap and straight tap water leaving a huge air gap worked for me though. Hope this helps some one else.
Reef chiller or be diligent with adding frozen 2L bottles of water.
Crank up the bleach and do what ya gotta. IDK how big your reservoir is but a 1/4 HP chiller will cool a 100 gallon reservoir pretty well and only runs like 400 watts.
I seem to be OK now . My reservoirs aren’t sterile so I won’t grow with bleach. I have 15 gal nutrients solution in 1 and 8-10 in another , one tub is 55gallons and the other 25. The 25 gave me problems.
Im in on a basement floor so if room temps are with in reason , the reservoir is.
It’s really my fault for being lazy and not having an exchange of air going.
I may get a cooler we will see if other plants die then yeah but if I can hold out by the end of August the night air cools down allot in the north east.
I have hydrogaurd coming . I’ve always love this stuff.
Edit ya I just bought a chiller/heater.
I’m also having problems with my reservoir temps as a temporary fix is it okay for the plant to throw a frozen 2 liter bottle in every few hours to keep the temps down I gotta order a res cooler or chiller or whatever I’m new to dwc
Ya, its very tedious though but works. . Freeze a few so you can swap them out. Light on at night and a inline fan for a proper air exchange is really good way for temps to drop. My light go off 12 pm come on 6pm . I try to beat, skip the hottest part of the day.
A sterile reservoir solves many of the problems associated with hydroponics.
I’m not saying it isn’t doable, it’s just choosing to do things the hard way. If you truly feel you must run a non-sterile reservoir, you really never want temps over 70, 65 is better. Sterility gives you more wiggle room.
Keeping things on the lower range of ph helps keep roots healthy in my set up. I’m running bubblers at max power also to keep o2 levels high.
I agree 110%. I see better growth with beneficials lurking about though , like most people . You are right though sterile is easier. Its really july august that are the worse times.
I dont think people realize most the stuff they put in their reservoirs are beneficial bacterias . Hygrozyme , hydrogaurd , subculture m , b , white shark , mamoth p , microcrazy . All really really popular hydroponic additives that are aimed to do one thing. I dont understand why things like these are bought just to sterilize a persons reservoir. Cant have it both ways. People will buy 500$ of additives add bleach . It doesnt work like that.
I personally choose to understand the products I use and deal with what comes. If I kill a plant evey now and then it well worth the growth rate. I think my results speak for them selfs .
How many / much, ppm of D/O is in your reservoir? What air pump are your running?
Yeah you can but like previously stated it is very tedious and they dont stay frozen long. I dont know how you’re growing but I use dwc so I use h202 to help when my res temps are too high
Also running dwc and I use a weak pool sock solution added to the res
Im curious what your whole nutrient / additive line up?
The flora 3 part with liquid koolbloom and diamond nectar for the humic acid. Also as armor si and calmagic
I run a live organic res in my grows as well and this heat is just brutal on them… I find if I increase dissolved O2 and up the beneficials, I can mitigate the heat… If it gets too bad, I just flip on my reef chiller and cool her back down to 75 and call it a day.
This my point . you run pool shock and humic acid . humic acid changes the community structure microorganisms, increasing beneficial microorganisms, and reducing harmful microorganisms.
Its really counter productive to try to create beneficial microorganism and then dump pool shock it your res. Im not calling you out by any means . I agree with the use of humic acid.
I noticed that plants can handle higher heat levels with no root problems in growrock medium using ebb and flow. in dwc you absolutely have to keep the DO level high
There are no micro organisms in humic acid. While it does help them it doesn’t contain any. Still helps the roots uptake nutes
Paragraph 44 Humic Acid Fertilizer Improved Soil Properties and Soil Microbial Diversity of Continuous Cropping Peanut: A Three-Year Experiment | Scientific Reports
Its a building block for microbial activity.
Secondly, humic acid changes the activities of sucrase, urease, and phosphatase in the soil, and enhances the metabolism of substances in the soil. The change in enzyme activity also affects soil microbial activity. Thirdly, humic acid changes the community structure of soil microorganisms, increasing beneficial microorganisms, and reducing harmful microorganisms, which is favorable for peanut growth. Since soil is a complex environment, after adding humic acid, various factors affect each other
Point being if your using bleach and using a product to create bacteria see the problem. Its very counterproductive. Humic acid has a NKP of 004. It cant do what its meant to unless you stop using pool shock or stop using humic acid.