hey Galactic, thanks a ton for your compliment! glad to have you here. to answer your question, i added nothing to jump start my 'bennies'. they are everywhere around us, in the air. they multiply slowly, and cannot take hold with out a good enviornment for them to proliferate. so all i'm doing is giving them 'ideal' conditions to take hold of and multiply. my res has 2 small fans mounted on the lid. one pulls air out of the res, the other blows air directly at the waterfall return line. this gives the bennies an easy way in. then they find the lava rocks in the net cups, where oxygen and circulating water give them 'ideal' places to colonize. they live and multiply there covering the entire root zone. this action forms a protection system against bacerial disease. Bacillus Subtilis GB03 is a Beneficial Bacterium with activity against water-borne fungal root pathogens which are keeping the 'bad guys' at bay. BigToke has already explained this best:
Put back into your plant-production system a set of organisms that will work for you, instead of against you.
Good Guys, Bad Guys
so , i hope this has helped to answer your questions about the 'Bio" side of RDWC systems. the 2 stickies by BigToke at the top of the hydro section, contain tons of knowledge for all hydro growers. bio or not...
update, my girls are taking in nutes rapidly. 500ppm nute solution yesterday is now at 350ppm. only took 16 hours for that.
thats all for now, keep the comments and questions coming, can get a little lonely here. i know, its not exactly the newest, coolest from of hydro out now. however, i feel, it is by far the best. and many, many hydro growers could use the knowledge found in these systems...
thanks,
cm
Put back into your plant-production system a set of organisms that will work for you, instead of against you.
- Most people have the attitude that microbes are all harmful, but in fact, most organisms in soil or in solution are beneficial for plant growth. Modern agriculture developed the view that all disease-causing and pest organisms need to be killed, and so the kill-everything-but-the-plant attitude came about. Unaware that healthy soil or solution in fact should contain more beneficial bacterium, and so a program to wipe out life in soil and solution was initiated. But more and more toxic chemicals have had to be used as the diseases and pests develop resistance with the ever-increasing use of killing agents.
- Why don’t the beneficial organisms develop resistance to the toxic chemicals being used? Because almost by definition, disease organisms and pests have a boom-and-bust life cycle, so when one pest organism survives the chemical onslaught, hundreds, or thousands, or billions of offspring are produced. Beneficial organisms rarely employ that kind of growth strategy, but instead reproduce only a few times a year, with perhaps only a few offspring produced each time. Thus, when you use toxic chemicals to control diseases, but in fact kill most of the beneficial organisms in the soil or solution, it takes a long time for the beneficials to return. Thus the likelihood that they will develop resistance is significantly less than that for any disease or pest organism.
- Modern agriculture has set the stage for non-stop, never-ending reliance on chemicals. That’s great if you want to sell chemicals, not so great if you need to have drinkable water.
- Do we have to go this route? What we need in production agriculture is to help the beneficials more than the diseases and pests. We need to tip the balance in favor of the good guys. What conditions favor the good guys? Do we really need to know all the names of all the organisms in soil or solution, or do we just need to know which conditions favor the beneficials and which favor the diseases?
Good Guys, Bad Guys
- Consider that when the bad guys find a plant, they use nutrients that the plant already immobilized. How ya like them apples!!!
- Growing in a Recirculating DWC Bio-Bucket System of Hydroponics, the pathogens do not function to hold significant nutrients, because the good-guy bacterium compete with disease-causers, and prevent diseases and pests from being able to find or infect roots. The beneficial bacterium immobilizes a great deal of nutrients in their biomass, so that N, P, K, etc. Predators, such as fusarlum, pythium, rhizoctonia, phytopthera, sclerotinla; etc. feeds on dead pieces of root mass, pests and disease-causing organisms well inhibits the plants uptake of mobile nutrients. If the beneficial bacterium is properly managed (given a place to live) then they well aid in mobility of nutrients in the solution such as nitrogen (N) and potassium (K) should remain in the root zone to benefit the crop and yield. The beneficial bacterium keeps your solutions free from disease-causing organisms, thus creating a better echo-water environment, making nutrients more readily available for the plant mainly in the root zone.
- Soils and solutions are supposed to abound with numerous organisms. Each individual beneficial bacterium is so small that it takes a powerful microscope to see them. But while the bacterium are extremely small, they make up in numbers what they lack in size. There are more individual beneficial bacterium in a teaspoon of healthy mountain spring, or a drop of healthy ran water than there are people in New York City. The beneficial species of bacteria protect plant roots and shoots from disease organisms, keeping nutrients in the root zone clean and healthy thus preventing leaching, making more mobile nutrients available to plants at the rates plants require.
- Lack of oxygen allows anaerobic organisms to grow. Some anaerobic organisms produce some of the most phytotoxic materials we know about—alcohol, phenols, terpenes, tannins. But even beyond that, when anaerobic conditions occur, nitrogen is lost as ammonia, and sulfur is lost as hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs. Your nose will tell you when anaerobic conditions have developed to a major level. Vinegar, sour milk, vomit and decaying flesh smells are other indicators that anaerobic conditions have occurred. The pH of the medium will be lowered by production of these organic acids. Fertility is reduced, the normal denizens of the root system cannot tolerate anaerobic conditions, and they go to sleep, giving the disease-causing organisms carte blanche in the root system. With no one to compete with them, the diseases take over.
- Maintaining aerobic conditions is critical for the growth of plants. Loss of oxygen means N, P, K, etc., are lost. Toxic chemicals are produced. We need to help beneficial biology survive, grow and out compete diseases and pests in hydroponic solutions.
- Just like the human body, plants depend on microbes to keep the proper balance of nutrients available for uptake. Beneficial organisms protect us against common diseases, just as the right organisms protect plant surfaces. An imbalance in your diet or in your hormones can change the conditions on your skin and your digestive system with ulcers, acne, ringworm or cancer as possible outcomes. The presence of the wrong set of microbes, and conditions that allow them to out-compete their normal opposition, can cause enormous economic loss.
- We can try to kill all the diseases and pests, but we also kill the very organisms needed to protect against those diseases and pests. The bad guys come back faster than the good guys because of the very nature of the pathogen lifestyle. And once we’ve killed nearly everything in the soil or in solution, sterility is very difficult to maintain. Because of diseases that find ways to disperse into places that allow their growth and development. Maintenance of sterile conditions is a nightmare, requiring ever more toxic, more dangerous and expensive chemical use.
so , i hope this has helped to answer your questions about the 'Bio" side of RDWC systems. the 2 stickies by BigToke at the top of the hydro section, contain tons of knowledge for all hydro growers. bio or not...
update, my girls are taking in nutes rapidly. 500ppm nute solution yesterday is now at 350ppm. only took 16 hours for that.
thats all for now, keep the comments and questions coming, can get a little lonely here. i know, its not exactly the newest, coolest from of hydro out now. however, i feel, it is by far the best. and many, many hydro growers could use the knowledge found in these systems...
thanks,
cm
Last edited:
