What's new
By:
GrowWeedEasy.com
You're browsing as a guest. Sign up to join the conversation, share your grows, and get help from thousands of fellow growers — it's free and takes less than a minute.

Hydroguard

B

Bartholomew

New member
Hi,

So I got myself a bottle of hydroguard because I noticed brown slime/algae in my hydro buckets.

I know hydroguard works well against root rot, pythium etc but does it work against algae?
Does it break down algae?
Does it fix an existing minor algae problem or strictly after sterilizing the whole system?

thanks
 
Algae means light leaks in your buckets. Fix that and then clean out your system. Hydroguard/GFF only works by out competing other pathogens for the same environment.
 
That doesn’t really answer my questions.
Just cleaned whole system by scrubbing with hypochlorous acid solution. Mixed a new batch of nutrients with hydroguard.
Now, is there any chance for brown algae to grow if there are no light leaks and temps are fine?
 
Net pot light leaks are patched but there are holes on the sides of the bucket that are covered by lid. Oxypot single dwc module 5 gallon.
 
Hydroguard doesn’t guerentee anything. What gbauto is saying is that alge and the bacteria in hydroguard have nothing to do with each other.
Hydroguard is a benificial bacteria made to out compete non-benificial bacteria. That’s it. It’s not a magic cure all. Yes, you can still get alge growth and yes you can still get root rot.
Your environment is more important than any single additive to your nutrients.
Water temp, light leaks, DO content, and other environmental triggers will cause problems with or with out hydroguard included.
 
Hmm.

My water temp is 19-20C.
Only light that I can see getting in is the faint glow through the air hose. Can that be a trigger? My hydro store guy said that light glowing a bit through the air hose shouldn’t be a problem.
As for DO content, I have 60L/min pump divided by 5 buckets. That makes 12L/min of air per bucket. Every bucket has one large airstone. Buckets are 19L or 5 gallon.
 
The clear air tubes could potentially be an issue. Can you cover them? Sounds like you have dealt with alge before here. That leads me to believe that the small glow from the clear air tubes is causing an issue. If all other potential sources have already been carefully inspected.
 
Then it really must be that. Darn.
I’ve searched for black air tubes offline but nothing. Taping would help a little I guess but the tubes would still carry light along them. Hmm, I could tape the tubes to the side of the bucket and tape the holes over on the side of the bucket.
What I was really hoping for was that the hydroguard would out compete the algae even with the minor light leak, but since hydroguard doesn’t kill algae directly then that’s not an option.

Yeah i’ve done 3 water changes. In the last 4 weeks since starting and before getting hydroguard.
While the oxypots seem to be built sturdy and with quality, it has some really poor design flaws. For example the checking hole on the lid may or may not have very small light leaks. Taped that up.
The netting on the net pots start right from the top which means no amount of clay pebbles or hydroton will ever fix the light leaks there. Solution would be to replace net pots with ones that have the netting lower. Or insert a second net pot with a lower netting inside the original net pot. Taped that up.
 
If you cover the hole and part of the tube that leads up to it, that should suffice. Yes, the viewport is another source of light hitting your water. You need to keep light from reaching the water. No, light will not bend around the inside of the tubes, they can bend when reflected... but that’s not what is happening here.
 
I don’t really know about the grapefruit seed extract. Contact the manufacturer and ask if it’s ok to use in conjunction with live benificial bacteria cultures.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top