What's the difference between a sterile rez and a beneficial rez?

G

gangadoctor

New Member
hi guys, the question is in the title ^^

i think i'd prefer running a sterile res - sounds simpler - but i'm not really sure of which nutrients to buy as none of the labels refer to the solutions as sterile or beneficial.

i've been looking at the advanced nutrients range but need some to actually which of their' products are compatible with a sterile res and which are more suited to a beneficial rez??
 
Running sterile is exactly what the name implies. you add a water chiller or change out Ice bottles every 12 hours in the res to keep the water on the cold side and ad Hydrogen Peroxide regularly to keep as much of the potential bacteria that can grow to a minimum. This helps to prevent some bacteria based issues. The res you want to run is full of nutrients and is a great breeding ground for algae and bacteria so many people choose to go that route to deal with it.

In the wild nothing is sterile and in fact almost everything lives in some way symbiotically with the world around it. In your own intestines are billions of bacteria that make it so the food you eat gets converted into nutrients you can actually absorb and use. Without them you would die and without you they would die. The same is true with plants. So you can add the right stuff that works to make the plants grow better but if you do that you don't want to run the chiller and throw in H2O2 otherwise you are throwing money down the drain. When done correctly the good bacteria overpower and win and the bad bacteria have no place to live just like in the wild.


For more on beneficial bacteria or what people call beanies there is a post a few lines down where I explain it all.

Introducing Benes to my DWC for the first time


And you can do both by cycling back and forth. Not many people do that. But lots of people run a sterile res system and throw in beneficial bacteria and watch them die right away and do nothing. You have to do one or the other at any one time but never go throwing a living tea into a chilled res and follow with H2O2.
 
thanks VI. i think i've been doing it wrong for a while then... i'm so frightened of pathogens that i always put my nutes in with a little h202 and a little clearex and some payoff. i also always add sm90. the notes i use are the range from dutchpro. i think i need help. i'm going to read your introduction and see what answers i can get.

thank you
 
hi weaslecracker... i've read a number of articles on this subject and i would love to try the tea but the only problem is i'm in the uk and can't get hold of things like ;

Anchient forest
AquaShield
Molasses
GreatWhite

i have Roots Excellerator.

maybe someone can suffuse some alternatives i can get in the uk?

i do however have b52 and voodoo juice if that helps?

i know i shouldn't be using h202 with beanies but am i ok to use pythoff?
 
I don't grow hydro so I won't talk like I'm an expert on this subject. I looked up pythoff - cool name - at least as long as it doesn't actually piss you off in which case I suppose it wouldn't be cool. It's advertised as a sterilizing agent- so obviously- to answer your question- no, if you are like the Cap'n and choosing live.


I can't get ancient forest or great white either. Another apparently good one is Recharge. Can't get that either. I do have Subculture M,and B, which I 'think' are good.
A source of bennies (not beanies that's a typo from VI) shouldn't be hard to find. There are lots of commercial versions. I think maybe your voodoo juice is one. I'm too lazy to google it myself. I mostly use worm crap from my compost pile. Then I toss in anything else I can think of that might be good, and some molasses, or honey if I'm out and bubble it for a day or two.
I'm pretty sure you guys have molasses too. Maybe you call it treacle? I think the two links provided should lead you into lots of tea making info if you want to do that. Or google up some commercial bennies.
 
thanks, yes that what i'm in the process of doing.

i've been brewing a tea for 24 hrs now and will be introducing it into my system tomorrow. my plan is to pour the solution directly into the roots of the plants in the net pots. my system holds 140 litres of water and i'm not really sure how much i need to pour into it and how often?

i'm also not sure when i need to introduce my normal nutes and at what dosage?

any advice would be appreciated.
 
i only have the one system and it's rdwc so i have to do one or the other.

the other question is what should the water temperature be with the bacteria as i've read somewhere that a water chiller isn't needed?
 
coffee said:
i only have the one system and it's rdwc so i have to do one or the other.

the other question is what should the water temperature be with the bacteria as i've read somewhere that a water chiller isn't needed?
Click to expand...

25 C, or 77 in imperialist system. Don't forget PLENTY of aeration.

V
 
That's why I told you one or the other. The only point of a chiller is to keep the bacteria count down. If you are ruining a living res you do not run a chiller.

If you followed the recipe I use then you should have plenty of nutes for a while. But I run a continuous res. I don't dump faster than once every 4 weeks and usually go longer. So I just top off with the bacteria and some silica and some molasses product and let them go to town. Take a PPM measurement before I add them, then again after I add them. Then over the next few days i watch the res level and PPM and decide if where I was needs to be up'd. Depending on the stage it could change drastically. Adding it in bloom doubles the uptake of everything and the plants just take off so you have to immediately start adding high dose top off daily. In veg that may change.

I was using a multi-plant tote not individual site buckets. 4 plants in a res that varied between 25-30 gallons. I would have to top off with at least 5 gallons of high concentration nutes daily after I add a good tea in bloom.

Like anything in DWC you have to monitor what is happening and respond appropriately.
 
VI i've read in one of your posts you water temp is between 68 and 70f (20 to 21c). i think i'd feel more comfortable at this temperature than 25c. can you just confirm i'm alright at those temps or should i go hotter?

i couldn't follow your recipe exactly because as i've mentioned before we don't have all the ingredients here in the uk so I've had to improvise.

i have a blulab guardian monitor in my res which constantly monitors the ec and ph levels and i have cctv so i can always see the levels whilst i'm away which is great peace of mind.
 
If you want even more peace of mind, change the monitor for a controller and titrate your ph automatically while you're out

21-23C is fine, 25 Max. 18C is on the borderline of cool, mine used to go down to 16 at night and growth accelerated when I added a small fishtank heater.

V
 
Cooler is better because it reduces bacterial growth. So we can just keep dumping in more of the good stuff as much as we want and let the bad stuff die off. If you have your res in a place that gets hot then a cooler can help even in a living res but if done right the good will out power the bad. I can't remeber exactly but somewhere in the mid 70's (like 74 maybe) the conditions become very good for algae which we DO NOT WANT!!!! Algae will destroy all our work and win. So we want to keep it under that so 70 is a good margin.

I read in one of your posts that you added a UV light to the system. That should be OFF when you add beneficial bacteria.
 
thanks guys. yes i'm going to turn off the uv light n the morning.

i really do hope the beneficial system is going to work. i'm happy to try it but i've been so used to a sterile system that everything seems upside down going the other way.

so, for my own benefit, just so i've got a 'to do' list for tomorrow - this is what i'm going to do;

1. i'm going to increase the temperature of my water to 21c (70f)
2. i'm going to wash the roots of the plants one more time so they're 'clean'
3. i'm going to pour the tea directly into the net pots and let the tea filter through into their buckets at a ration of 1 cup per plant
4. i have a 140 litre res so i'm not sure if i need to add any more tea than the 7 cups?

questions;
1. should i leave the plants just with the tea for 24 hours before adding in my normal base nutes and additives? or shall i add them straight away?
2. the dutch pro feed schedule say i should be adding in 'take root' which is obviously a root additive and 'multi total' which is an enzyme... should i add these in or just the base nutes?
3. shall i put the lights on straight away or leave them off for 24 hrs too?

my water has been de chlorinated by standing for 24 hrs and i've already added ph down yesterday too.
 
1) I would wait 24 hours and check the res measurements to see what has happened. As I recall you whacked the roots of so we may not get great uptake for a bit. But in 24 hours we will know. depending on the res level and the ppm we should be able to know what to do.

Note: make sure to pH the res after you add in the bacteria which is probably brewing at about 7.0

2) Both of those will be good. If you are using their enzyme did you use that in the tea instead of Hygrozyme? It should work fine. There are many enzyme products out there and they will all tell you they are the best. I have not used them all but they all work the same enzymatically. The difference is in the other stuff in there really.

3) Lights should stay on. unless you are in bloom then you have to keep on the light schedule. but if you are in Veg just leave things on for now.

I know you are nervous about this but your attempts to run sterile were a total failure correct? So one of my favorite quotes of all time is Benjamin Franklin's definition of insanity. "Doing the same thing over expecting different results"... is not a fast path to awareness.


Never fear. Once you have this under control you can always go back to sterile. I wouldn't do it but it is supposed to be "easier"... so I am told. I don't think anything is hard about brewing a tea and never needing to pH or dump a res but once a month... but hey I am just an idiot.


I believe you read the Closet Cases journal I told you to about...He has no problems and never pH's and his stuff looks fantastic.
 
thank you. i've been running a sterile res for 12 months without a root problem. this is the first time. the main reason i'm going beneficial is because using sterile products has not eradicated the problem... and i too believe - if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always had.

you're the cleverest idiot i know lol!
 

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