Heya, just started culture with a water bath/sponge basket based system a friend gave me. It has a small water pump, a ventilator, a LED lighting system and an auto timer. Water pump and ventilator activate for 30 min, then have a 30 min pause and reactivate again.
I just setup the systems less than 3 days ago with some strawberry seeds (Mara des Bois variety) and noticed a foul odor yesterday.
There is this white brownish goo in my solution (see pictures)
I could not find the same nutrient solution online so i asked my local plant store if a similarly concentrated fertilizer for fruits would be suitable, they said yes so i bought it and used it in the solution.
I believe the problem may lie there, so if it is that, i'm looking for a way to buy the right nutrients in europe from a reliable supplier 😊
Thanks !
by rygelcoolgirl
3 Comments
Hey happy girls here growing too, so your main question is what type of ideal nutrition is recommended for this grow, you got Terra Aquatica from France it is very good product ( Anciently GHE ) you need only the base it will unlock good growth patterns
Boosters seems a lack of time sometimes so you need to make your own with the base and see if with boosters you can get better growth but honestly you’ll get the best with the simple
Did you use distilled water as your Basis or tapwater?
I have a similar small system and in mine the pump is too weak to guarantee sufficent Oxygen for my plants. Bought a small Oxygen pump for Aquariums now my plants grow like crazy and the water quality IS much better.
Looks like a cyanobacterial slime. Any and all nutrients will lead to this. Avoid ‘organics’ in hydro for simplicity sake (aside from beneficial microbes). Increased aeration and agitation may help prevent their establishment. High water temperature helps promote bad growth. This likely happened because of a not-ideal warm water temperature, and the presence of abundant nutrients. If you have any part of the system open to air, cover it.
You’ll need to clean the whole system fairly well. Really well. Afterwards, you’ll want to either run a sterilizer to prevent the start of nastys growing, or beneficial microbes to out-compete slime and rots. Look into Southern GFF. It is VERY concentrated, in your small system you’d probably want to dip the tip of a toothpick into the GFF and then mix into your system. I would recommend looking into proper dosing.
Once I get the slime in my system, it is a pain to get rid of it.
After cleaning it out, I would run only tap water and no nutrients. You can mist your plants (once they are larger) with the nutrient solution (start weak, 1/8 strength, and work your way up) to provide them with food.
Once you have some plants established in there, them drinking water and the act of topping up the reservoir daily will help prevent things like this happening due to sterilizers in your tap water. That is when you can safely add back in nutrients, although if you run beneficials or sterilizers such as H2O2 or hypochlorous acid, this shouldnt pop up.