I find this interesting.
I'm not all that familiar with organic-hydro but I think I would take a similar approach using both mineral elements and organic nutrients. The theory being that the organics feed the Mycorrhizae/Trichoderma while they process minerals for the plants. I read something somewhere that high phosphorus levels can kill some species of beneficials but High Phosphorus levels aren't necessary as the benificials are highly efficient at processing/delivering phosphorus to the plants. As I understand it organic hydro-growers do partial change outs to keep the beneficials going and rarely or never use Hypochlorite or H2O3 sanitizers in their reservoirs lest they kill the benificials. I was wondering if biological filters such as those used for aquariums/fish ponds could be used to keep down bad bacteria. There doesn't seem to be a lot of quality technical information out there on this subject other than hyped up sales pitches put out by organic nutrient manufacturers. I also read somewhere that E.C.meters don't even work. I'm sure organics have some advantages, but they have some of the same disadvantages I tossed out with the dirt. Did I throw out the baby with the bath water?
~Ken~
P.S. I think foxfarms has the most awesome graphic artwork.

Hey Hardclay!
Thanks for stopping by to read this thread. I'm one of those people who thinks mother natures does it best. I have been a Aquarium and pond keeper for years so using Microbial in hydroponics caught my attention especially when it came to fighting off pathogenic microbial infestations. All of the research on other forums I have read say that a certain brew put together and given the correct carbo-load (food) for the microbial will prevent and actually cure cases of Pythium/white or brown slime also known as the root rot fungus even in non-organic systems. From my understanding is that certain chemical salts will put various strains of the beneficial fungus into hibernation but that can be hard to do and those levels might actually be toxic to plants. This is not a proven fact and a lot of sources contradict each other. What I personally think is that since these beneficial fungi live and feed off the carbohydrates the roots give off that they actually do not go dormant but its the beneficial bacteria that die off and stop producing the enzymes that promote growth and the break down of organic material and dead roots in non-organic hydro systems. Since the good bacteria have no food they need to be replaced on a regular basis. Since these beneficial microbes much like the Trichoderma fungi attack Pythium and other bad microbes will on turn promote good plant growth Using them in non-organic system or finding a way to keep them alive might be the answer to a good stable system with out the use of bleach or H2O2 and this is my goal. Keep in mind though that since these microbes have to colonize something they might clog pumps. I have read that root mass being an issue and not necessarily gunk from microbes. I'm thinking bioballs or another porous material in the reservoir will give them a place to live and grow when given the correct carboload to keep them growing, kind of like a biological filter in aquariums and ponds. So basically what I'm doing is testing a recipe that I found off another hydro forum to see if it actually works. This thread had a huge response and a lot of people who tried it and swear that it works. This method not only helped to kill and prevent pythium but also stimulated root growth. As we all know very healthy roots means a super happy plant and awesome tasting food. Once I'm able to confirm this method I will post it ASAP. I encourage people to chat and share any knowledge they have with beneficial microbes. Hopefully we can clear up a method of hydro that is not totally understood and shunned off when it comes to non-organic hydro.

There is so much wrong here that I need to re-read it all to understand what the question is in the fist place.

Second, I need to break down the 37 sentence paragraphs into basic sentience's (questions) before I can even consider there being a question.

P.S Try to break up the paragraphs into 3-4 sentence blocks so people can easily determine the difference between them.

Pot, meet kettle. Let's go play baseball at my home. It's made of glass.

jmoore, please be careful in your attempts to get bad microbes to grow. You could inadvertently grow something bad for you and make yourself sick. I hope it's a fairly well controlled environment and you use decent ppe.

Joe, if you are referring to me, can you elaborate?
I think I do a good job at breaking up paragraphs and not running them together (even sentences), in order to make it easier for people to understand. Did I somehow not do that somewhere? I'm not perfect, and I can (and do) make mistakes, but I wont know what they are unless I see what I did wrong (that's why I ask questions).

Baseball is cool, but it's Football season right now here. In fact the Superbowl is just weeks away. Any room for football in your home? I'm more of a football fan myself (and Hockey).

Just To let you know,
Bio filters are a great way to keep things living. Again I'm not sure exactly what the question is though. I can give links to details on bio filters, but they breed anything you give it (good or bad).

I have to wonder if you'll really be more at risk to picking up pathogens using organic hydro than you would growing organically in soil. People have done that for ever and it usually isn't much of a problem.

Would it be because it is a closed system?

Not to be nit-picky but that long single paragraph was somewhat difficult.

Ok sorry. I responded to hardclay early in the morning and was in a rush out the door to get to work. Sorry about that and I will make every attempt to make my self clearer in the future.

The question I have is if any one had experience with using BushDoctors Microbew to combat bad pathogens. There is a slew of beneficial microbe products on the market that are used in organics. I have heard of people using them in non organic systems with good success. What they do is use a mix of Earth worm Castings, Aqua Shield and ZHO powder and mollases mixed up in a bucket to make a Tea. They then either keep the culture alive or bottle it and stick it in the fridge.

From what I have read is that when the live culture is introduced into the hydro system it has a very positive impact on the root system and can actually fight off root rot and slime, increase root mass and nutrient up take. I believe the Trichoderma fungi and some bacteria are responsible for the decline in the Pythium fungi which causes root rot. The key is to add live beneficial cultures into the system not dormant ones because the bad pathogens will over take them too fast.

The only down side is that since there isn't any organic material in the system to sustain a healthy beneficial culture fresh ones have to be added every 3 days or so.

Some people have a issue with clearing up the clear slime that grows on roots (aka Pythium). They sterilize,keep up with reservoir changes and keep all the parameters in healthy zones but the slime always comes back. I have had this issue before and just scrapped the plants, sterilized and started over.

I have purposely damaged roots on four plants to encourage Pythium to grow. I will be doing every thing normally to keep the plants healthy and to help avoid things growing that could impact my health. Once the slime shows up I will attempt to cure it by cleaning the roots and treating the reservoir with the tea. With my fingers crossed this will work the way some people are raving about.

Below is the original article:
______________________________________________
Why use beneficial microbes in your DWC? The benefits you hear about such as, increased nute uptake, increased root mass, ect. all refer to soil grows. In a hydro chemical only set up beneficial microbes really only serve one purpose; to displace, starve and attack harmful microbes.

In DWC the roots sit in water constantly putting them at huge risk for disease. Some people have great luck using nothing at all. Others find sterilizing products keep their roots white, but a few of us have found that even with proper res maintenance and doing everything right, we still get a slimy build up on the roots. This is when EWC tea can really make a difference.

By making a compost tea out of earthworm castings you will have a super tonic for you res that will ward off nasty gunk and build up while at the same time keeping your roots stimulated and growing. Best of all it can be made for just a couple dollars each time.

Ok so we wont be starting from scratch. You have to buy a few products. But instead of using the products directly in the res, you will be breeding them in a tea. This way, you can use a fraction of the regular dose and make your products last much longer. Plus, you will end up with a freshly active tea that is more diverse than anything you can buy on the market.

Aquashield ($12) The product composition consists of: Bacillus subtilis, Paenibacillus polymxa, Bacillus circulans, and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens. This gives you a base population of beneficial bacteria.

ZHO Powder ($10) The product composition consists of: Glomus intradices, Glomus aggregatum, Glomus etunicatum, Glomus mosseae, Trichoderma harzianum, and Trichoderma koningii. This gives you a base populartion of beneficial fungi.

Ancient Forest EWC ($14) - Soil amendment provides a high diversity of microorganisms, including more than 35,000 species of bacteria and over 5,000 species of fungi.

The recipe is really simple. Start with non-chlorinated water. I make 2 gallons at a time, but you can easily adjust the additives for whatever amount you wish to make. Now put the water into a bucket and throw in a couple air stones. The more air the better. You want the water to be almost turbulent from the bubbles. Now add 15-30ml of aquashield and about 1/4-1/2 scoop of the ZHO powder. You will be breeding these into the billions so it doesn't really matter how much you start with. Now take an old sock or pantyhose and fill it with about 2 handfuls of EWC. Tie off the sock and place it in the water above an air stone, or better yet, feed an air stone down into the sock itself. If you want, you can just throw the EWC directly into the water and strain it out later with cheesecloth. Next add about a tablespoon of molasses to wake up the microbes and give them something to eat. You could also use any sort of carboload or bud sweetener. We will only be feeding the microbes in this tea; never add food for the microbes to the res itself. It's okay if the bennies in the res starve. You will be replacing them every few days. Now let the tea bubble at room tempeture for 48 hours. It can be used after 24, but will be more active and diverse at 48. You can now store the tea in the fridge where it will stay fresh for about 10 days. Once it starts to go bad it will develop an odor. If you ever detect an odor from your tea, throw it out and make a new batch.

Initially, add about 1 cup to your res for every gallon of water, and then add 1 cup total every 3 days after. Your water might get a little cloudy but your roots will stay white and stimulated. When you use tea and practice proper res maintenance you can feel confident your roots will be healthy. By breeding the microbes this way your products should last about 5x longer.
___________________________________________________

If any one else tries it let us know how it turns out.

Thanks for being patient with my garbled mess of a post. I agree with you that bio-filters can breed good and bad. Each easy to grow if given the conditions they like.

The key is dissolved oxygen. The good microbes which we want are aerobic and they love highly oxygenated water. The bad ones that we don't want are anaerobic and they die off or go dormant in the presence of high amounts of dissolved oxygen. Some times the level of dissolved oxygen doesn't matter. The amount of organic matter (dieing roots) causes the growth of bad microbes no matter what and that can be a doosey to get rid of.

I'm very familiar with Bio-filters and how they can aid with the nitrogen cycle in aquariums and ponds. I'm not sure how that would work directly in hydroponics though. I can see bad things showing up when carboloading a non organic reservoir. It makes sense why they have a culture of beneficial microbes growing separate from the hydro system.

jmoore3274
No problem, I only meant my statement to be a bit of constructive criticism, and just a piece of advice, nothing else. I meant no disrespect or any ill feelings at all, so hopefully that's how you took it. I understand what you are trying to determine with the experiment. Personally I have never tried the Bush Doctors Microbe Brew, or any beneficial's myself. Although I am looking into it, and will probably use them in the future.

You mentioned a downside of needing to re-add live benificals every 3 days. That's a point I feel can easily be fixed. The live benificals can (and do) continue to breed in the growing medium (AKA: a bio-filter). The more growing medium (mass) the more space for them to breed. If the system is not designed with a lot of growing medium for them to breed in, you can easily create a external bio-filter (to filter the nutrient solution through) in various ways. That's often done, and used in aquaponics.

In a DWC system where the main portion of the roots are submerged in the nutrient solution, and not in any growing medium. I would think the use of a bio-filter would be the best bet for the continued breading of the benificals in the system.

However, beneficial microbes will not fix damaged roots, increase nutrient uptake, or increase root mass (even in soil) to the best of my knowledge. Any claims to of such in soil are just a byproduct of the affects that the benificals have in the soil. Simply because they help break down the soil into the nutrients (the plants then can use) and help keep the numbers of bad microbes and fungi down. Thus, they just give an environment that helps promote healthy plants and roots, but don't directly do anything to the plants.

They do the same thing in a hydroponic system, although they really isn't much need to break down the soil into nutrients (except with organic nutrients), because hydroponic nutrients are already broken down. And in soil there is lots of growing medium (the soil itself) for the beneficial microbes to bread (so the more growing medium the better). In hydro they merely just help keep the bad microbes at bay that could exploit/feed on the damaged roots and decay. In the process that helps keep the root zone healthier than it would be otherwise, and the basis for all the claims. But of course results will vary greatly from person to person, and from setup and design, as well as many other factors. So good luck with the experiment.

jmoore3274
I didn't see your second post. It's true that bio filters just grow what's given to them. But if they are initially inoculated with beneficial's, that's primarily what would be growing and breeding in them. Once the benificals out number the bad microbes and fungi, it should be easy to keep that going. So it's really just a mater of making sure that's what first begins to grow. And I totally agree with the statement about dissolved oxygen helping to keep the bad things away. Typically bio-filters are designed in a way that there's a lot of oxygen (air) in them.

HH, I was just ribbing you and including me in there, too (which is why I said let's play baseball at my house, it's made of glass). You and I are pretty bad about making simple statements into novels. It wasn't meant to be real criticism. Sorry. It's hard to communicate playful banter in writing.

HH, you didn't disrespect me in any way my friend :-). You think it might be possible to get a live culture going inside the reservoir? There are still so many aspects of this that needs to be figured out.

How would directly carbo loading the reservoir with sugars affect the system? Could it be possible that there could be adverse effects with the chemical nutrients?

One other thing I haven't been able to find information about is that its rumored that chemical salts and nutrients kill beneficial bacteria. The only thing I have found is that mycorrhizae goes dormant in the presence of certain nutrients.

Here are some links to take a gander at:

http://www.mycorrhizae.com/faqs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoderma
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-176858290.html

Thanks Joe, I understand what you mean now. And yes I do have a habit of creating long posts (with a lot of paragraphs). I never start out with that intention, but it just usually seems to work out that way somehow. I was just thinking in terms of it all being in one long paragraph when I made the statement. I guess that's why I didn't understand what you meant.

jmoore3274
Again I have not really gotten into using beneficial's yet myself, but having live beneficial microbes and fungi in the reservoir shouldn't be a problem. However keeping a abundance of them thought the life of the plants is the issue (the way I see it anyway). I would be concerned with adding sugars to any systems. Besides the fact that it would make everything sticky and clog things up. As far as I know, adding sugars will also feed the bad microbes and fungi along with the good. So I think that would do much more damage than good (a wash at best), even if there are no other side effects.

Also, I have never come across anything (I remember anyway) that would suggest that any chemical salts used to make nutrients have any negative effects on the beneficial's. However too much or too little of anything can be a problem, even just to the plants themselves (with or without benificals).

Thanks for the links, and here are a few that I have collected. Although they are all from the same publication, they are from various authors (and dates). I have looked most of the authors up, and I'm pretty satisfied that the articles are creditable and not just propaganda put out by product manufactures.

Ask Erik (Although this is mostly about using organics, it discuses using microbes in a DWC system.)

Beneficial Soil Microbes
Beneficial Biology Demistified
Buying and Applying Mycorrhizal Fungi
Biological Products in Indoor Gardens
Application Parameters for Using Compost Tea
Understanding and Using Trichoderma Fungi (and if you go to the online extras section look under the May 2010 edition for the same title as this article, you can click Download a detailed "shopping list" of tips for Trichoderma fungi. That explains the differences between high and low quality Trichoderma fungi products. Same goes for other benifical's.

Anyhow, hope they can help answers some of your questions. I haven't read them all, all the way through myself yet. But I have copied them all to text documents (including the author and URL of the online article) to make it easy to print out and read when I have time (like I do with most good articles).

I'm currently 4 days into the microbe brew and 2 days into using it in hydro. I have some pics and info to share. Hopefully I will get the chance to upload the photos tonight.

Man oh man work has been busy last two weeks but I have finally gotten the chance to write about the progress of my microbial experiment.

Shortly after I purposely damaged the roots on four serrano peppers the white pythium slime showed up in a rather aggressive manner. With in 2 days the roots were totally wrecked and I thought I was going to lose the plants. The slime took over so fast it was shocking.

Few Hours after the slime showed up.

Two days later the pythium slime was so bad I had to take action to save the plants. Since my microbial tea was only 24 hours out of 48 hours into brewing I did a H2O2 soak and cleaned the res. I ran the system for 24 hours with H2O2 and water to help clean the roots.

This is what they looked like after the cleaning. Totally wrecked.

Once the microbial tea was ready I mixed up the nutrients to a PPM of 530, PH of 5.5 and lowered the res temp to 65-66 deg from 68. I added 3 cups of the tea to the nutrient water and crossed my fingers.

The next day I noticed the slime started to return. It was pretty disappointing. I decided to give it till the end of the week to wait for results and results I got. The slime's growth stalled and then turned brown. I noticed the slime hanging off the roots at the bottom was starting to break up and new roots were growing. Best of all the new roots were growing really fast and slime free. On top of that some of the roots were fuzzy and healthy.

I didn't add any more microbial tea to make sure the slime wasn't killed by the H2O2. It did start to grow back slightly and the musky smell also came back so I did a res change and new tea mix the next day.

Here are the new roots

The new nutrient mix is at 1000 PPM, PH 5.7 and res temp at 68 deg. I hope the tea continues to give positive results.

The only down side to this is the tea seems to have a very short shelf life and I had to scrap a test batch after 4 days due to bad odors. The good batch was put into the refrigerator to help ward off bad microbes. Also the nutrient water developed a "pond" smell. It wasn't bad smelling like a sick res just odd. I would think that smell is associated with the good microbes attacking and breaking down the bad microbes and dead roots.

I will keep updating every res change with photos to show any progression good or bad.

Wowwwwww. . .fantastic info guys.

Ok, I have earth worm castings. . . .

Would a small dose of "aquatic plant food" be sufficient with the EWC to create this tea you speak of? (Called "Flourish" by Seachem. comprehensive plant supplement for natural freshwater aquarium.)

I'm on the hunt for the "hydroponic" solution home made (I use unsulfured molassis, the beer, the ammonia, the epsom salts, etc.). . .was considering the miracle gro for tomatos, but everyone said not to. . .

Technodweed,
The mixture that I'm testing does not play a key in feeding the plants so to say because I use non organic nutrients. The purpose is to help cure sick roots from disease and fungus attacks. It will hopefully also be a key step in my hydro if things go well.

I do not know if the Aquatic plant food will work. I did compare its ingredients to General Hydroponics Flora series and they do differ. It also differs from miracle grow as well. Give it a shot it might work but it also might not be concentrated enough for terrestrial plants.

I know that miracle grow can burn leaves and I think I also read some where that the nutrients are not immediately available to the plants. Thus needing the be broken down by natural bacteria that is in the soil. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong about that.

On the other hand you can use this tea to help promote healthy roots and to help ward off disease. This tea also carries the beneficial microbes that are needed to break down organic matter in organic hydro set ups.

There are good recipes to give a shot on how to make homemade hydro nutrients organic or chemical based. I will try to scrounge up some links for you. Shoot look up Agua-ponics, its a hydroponic method that draws from a fish tank and converts its waste into plant food.