[TheGreenMachine]

Excuse the double post....

I might be clutching at straws here but thinking back a few years, from what I can remember, the only decent hydro attempt I ever did was in a heavily modified four pot wilma.
I drilled out the pots and the tray so the roots could grow down into the res. I'd rigged up two of those of those central heating header tanks and had a pump in the wilma pumping and flooming the water into the header tanks which was then pumped over the four pots and also had an overflow flooming back into the wilma tank. As I recall I had warm temps then but no rot but I was running cannazym throughout.

I am running cannazym now but that's obviously not helped but I'm thinking all that flooming created silly amounts of DO. Certainly more than a 60 LPM compressor could put out through four golf ball airstones through an aquafarm packed with roots and only holding half the volume of water it should due to the mass of roots.

Hmmm.... I'm starting to think we may be on to something here......

It would sure explain why the plants are perfectly fine when they're in the vegging tent under a small CFL. Not that much root mass until they get under the 600 then they go crazy and the PH starts to go erratic.. Hmmm.

In fact, I recall a week before I put the power plant under the 600 she hadn't got much root mass coming out of the pot and into the res so I gave her full strength rhizo and she started to go mental. I bet she wasn't using much DO in the water until then so there were no issues until after going under the 600.

Right then, if the Kush is okay she's getting the whole bottom of the res lined with huge airstone discs. I want the whole bottom of that res covered and fizzing. Then we'll see what happens.


Feeling a bit more positive - even if it might be false hope LOL


 

[2scoops]

It`s deffo rot then, i know it sounds like it and that`s where you`ll get it first how you describe, where roots enter water, does it stink like root rot, you should know the smell you`ve had it more than once. But that`s a real shitter if it is m8, devo`ed. I did read summink about root rot once upon a time and remember it saying once you`ve had it it`s one of the hardest things to get rid of, cus it`s airbourne and it just lies dormont till conditions are good enough for it to spread again, i remember the guy sayiong he wouldn`t use the same pumps or anything, maybe a bit overboard that cus if you`ve cleaned and sterilized everything that should work, i`d be suplhur bombing the room as well to make sure.

 

I don`t really use enzymes now, but i would say sensizym is the bettrt zyme product than cannazym, i think it contains 2 or 3 times more different types of enzymes than cannazym, or so i read once upon a time.

[wah wah]

Read somewhere airstones can mess with your ph...don,t use em myself.

[TheGreenMachine]

It`s deffo rot then, i know it sounds like it and that`s where you`ll get it first how you describe, where roots enter water, does it stink like root rot, you should know the smell you`ve had it more than once. But that`s a real shitter if it is m8, devo`ed. I did read summink about root rot once upon a time and remember it saying once you`ve had it it`s one of the hardest things to get rid of, cus it`s airbourne and it just lies dormont till conditions are good enough for it to spread again, i remember the guy sayiong he wouldn`t use the samepimps or anything, maybe a bit overboard that cus if you`ve cleaned and sterilized everything that should work, i`d be suplhur bombing the room as well to make sure.

 

I don`t really use enzymes now, but i would say sensizym is the bettrt zyme product than cannazym, i think it contains 2 or 3 times more different types of enzymes than cannazym, or so i read once upon a time.

 

 

Read somewhere airstones can mess with your ph...don,t use em myself.

 

 

First of all, thank you guys for all your help and suggestions. You've all been great.

@jimmi2scoops - well that's the odd thing. It doesn't smell foul in the res or in the room. I'm wondering if it's a case of it's there but conditons haven't been right for it to explode and take over - just enough to cause problems?
I can tell you this much, that res is bang full of roots. I'm surprised I can actually get any water in there let alone pump air through it.

I did a complete strip down and refit of the room at christmas. Pulled everything out I physically could. Cleaned, sterrilised, relined the walls and floor, brand new farms, pumps, stones, airlines, EC/PH meters - you name it.
Stood me over £700 and I was well chuffed when I'd done it. I thought no more rot for me for sure......

Like you say Jimmi, the stuff is everywhere just waiting for the right conditions to come along and that's the key word that makes me believe it's lack of Dissoved Oxygen giving rot the right conditions.
If I've done everything else right, that's the only thing I can think of.

 

When it comes time to put the Kush in flower in 4 - 5 weeks time I'm going to be using the air compressor off the Power Plant and runnning two air pumps and 8 large air stones in the Kush.
She'll be getting 120 Literes per minute then and if rot takes hold after that then it's fate and destined to be.

I'll also grab some sensizyme and give that a try. At the minute I'm using a product called stress zyme in conjuction with Cannazyme but I may as well be giving them water for all the good it's done lol.


@ wah wah - Yeah I've read about how airstones can affect PH. They start oversaturating the solution with dioxides making the water mor acidic but I think those are real exterme cases where people live in high co2 output environments like near factories and big cities. Also, how are your plants not drowning if you don't use airstones mate? Do you floom the solution instead?
I've got a header tank I'm thinking of rigging up for the Kush when she goes into flower. I'll pump the solution up and out of the aquafarm and floom it into the header tank where an overflow will pour it back into the aquafarm over the clay balls.
This should give me plenty of DO and circulation and an extra 15 - 20 liters of solution to make up for what's displaced by the root mass.

Funny cos I was building a second room so that I could have two plants in flower but given the cr*p I'm having I'm starting to think about not bothering.
I'm fed up to the back teeth with soil. I've done it for years and it gets to be a pain in the a*se dumping soil, buying soil etc. It's messy and I don't feel as rewarded by it as I did when I first started growing.
Mind you I don't feel rewarded now hahahaha

I dunno. I feel like giving up but I'm not that sort of person. I moan, I grumble and I feel like packing it in but even now my mind is spinning away trying to work out what to try next.. I just can't help it hahaha


Cheers guys!


 

[2scoops]

Just a simple solution now Summer is here, but have you thought about growing with coco, it`s still hydro and produces hydro type yields without the worry of root rot and if you see the plants daily as is well coco only needs to feed daily with a watering can to get those big yields. Thought i`d mention it cus i love growing with the stuff myself .

[wah wah]

Hey GM..i use a pump to pump the nutes up through the feeding tube an out around the drip ring...is that not how you use yours???

 

...been threatning to give coco a bash for ages...sick of depending on pumps an tubes to keep me grows going.

[TheGreenMachine]

Just a simple solution now Summer is here, but have you thought about growing with coco, it`s still hydro and produces hydro type yields without the worry of root rot and if you see the plants daily as is well coco only needs to feed daily with a watering can to get those big yields. Thought i`d mention it cus i love growing with the stuff myself .

 

Cheers Jimmi.

I think that's the way it's going to end up. I've just got the Kush left after the Power Plant and if my idea about upping the air stones and pumps doesn't work with the Kush then it's off to CoCo I go until winter.
Do you think I could still use the aquafarms for CoCo?

 

 

Hey GM..i use a pump to pump the nutes up through the feeding tube an out around the drip ring...is that not how you use yours???

 

...been threatning to give coco a bash for ages...sick of depending on pumps an tubes to keep me grows going.

 

I was using the dripper for a start but then once the plant got big enough I turned it off. The only reason being - ironically I was worried about rot / dampening off.
Previously I had managed to kill a seedling from dripper splash. Drops of water sat on the leaves next to the growing tip and it got very poorly. Next time round I burried the drippers just below the surface of the clay balls but I noticed that the stem of the plant was becoming damp here and there so rather than risk it, I switched the dripper off and relied on there being enough DO from the air stones.

 

[wah wah]

Well that,s why you keep getting rot imho...the water/nutes that come outta the drip ring is all surface water...full of oxygen..i,ve had full on rot twice in the past an each time it was

caused by the feeding tubes being blocked with roots..never because of high rez temps..tubes haven,t blocked for a year or 2 now an i,ve had no probs..i run 1600w in flower

an groom temps rarely drop below 30c..seriously mate get them drip rings going..dunno if it,s too late for this grow..i hope not...an just as a side note for your next grow..don,t bury rings below the surface as you won,t know if an when they get blocked..i start my seedlings off in 1in ..then 4in rw cubes..wait for roots to come through then put them in the farms..by that time their

strong enough to take a little nute splash..i also create a little space around the stem making sure the pebbles are not touching it...get them rings going mate ..I can,t stress that enough...an leave them on 24/7 ..

Edited by wah wah, 25 May 2016 - 05:00 AM.

[wah wah]

...and just to add again..for your next grow..if them drip rings are spitting out the nutes throughout your entire grow with no blockages..i (almost) guarantee you won,t get rot again..unless you have

stupidly high rez temps..the farms are designed to be used with the rings...I would also do away with the airstone..they just not needed..an can harbour bacteria...

Edited by wah wah, 25 May 2016 - 05:56 AM.

[TheGreenMachine]

Hmmm....

Well I've got the dripper on non stop with the Kush so I'm not going to turn it off now. I would have turned it off when I moved it to the flowering room like I did the PP but I'm not now.
I can still see the drippers it's just there's clay balls around the sides so they can't splash all over the stem.

With the Power Plant, I'm just going to nurse her to the end with regular top ups and PH adjustments. Not long to go now so I can cope with that.
The Kush looks unaffected. I checked it day before yesterday and the roots coming out of the pot looks nice and silky and white.