Im growing out of an Aerogarden Deluxe. For the past week i had the lights on 24 hours for seedlings, then i turned it onto 20/4 a few days ago. not two days later ive got mold on all of my five plants and three have the begginings of stem rot. thank god a found a thread on RIU. This kid gave some great advice. The reason for the mold is because the sponge, rockwool, by this point has been moist for weeks. Its pointless to keep the water circulating back up to the rockwool if the roots are already in the water right? right. All this is gonna cause is extra unnecessary moisture at the base of the stem. no bueno for that pesky water dwelling mold. This plythium shit or whatever, the type of mold that effects especially young plants in hydro, dwells in your Res. It gets the good to grow when the water is either too cold or too hot. Sucks right? Fuck it. Once you get your roots down into the water, put some cardboard between the fuse and the res so the water shuts off lettign your rockwool dry out. If you dont have a fan on by now (i didnt think I needed it yet....) get one and put it right by your little buddies. initally I thought they were fallin over cause they were under nuted, so i added nutes before i pHed (dumb dumb dumb, but its cool cause it was about nute time anyways at 2 weeks and some odd days. took the pH it was at 4.5 (haha....) Eventually got it back up to 6 and called it good. Organic pH uppers and downers (powder) are a bitch because you have to weigh them in coordination with your res size, and they take a lot more than liquid chemicals. But theyre good too cause you dont smoke Mercury come harvest. Okay so what happened was I got a nice little crop of my mold in my real crop from switching to 20/4 giving time for moisture to build up and not using a fan. God damn it, I didnt think I needed one cause I had a bottle of yeast suger and water for co2. I didnt quite grasp the importance of not letting humid air sit there. I thought they liked humidity yah see. So i peeked in a few hours ago and after pHinh/nuting i saw some grey white spots on the top of the rockwool. I picked them all off asap, and did everything else I described: According to the kid on RIU if you stop the flow of water onto the rockwool, turn the fan on and empty some of the water the mold will go away.. I aint emptyin it yet cause my next empty is in like 2 days anyways.... Also read somewhere that a mix of Hydrogen Peroxide and Water in a spray will do the trick. Keep in mind my plants are little dwarves that are only about 2 weeks old, so its probably easier for me to see that kinda stuff goin on. Also, its easier for the younger and weaker plants to be susceptable to plythium mold(sp?) Damn I hope my little girls are gonna be okay!
nope Im not I was just posting about AG's susceptability to mold and how much of a bitch it is to get it out. Ive been running ho2o2 through it for several days and its still not all dead.
Just go easy on the hydrogen peroxide. It kills the good bacteria and organisms too. Run clean water thru them for a couple of days before going back to nutes.
I transplanted them to organic soil a few days back. Im just trying to kill whatevers in there...plythium mold I think?