What is this clinging to my grow bed roots?

[halemart]

Recently I pulled out some strawberries out of my grow beds, and I looked and found that all of the roots were coated brown.    I am wondering is this typical for a new AP system?    I am thinking my plants are starving for oxygen because of this build up on the roots, was wondering if others have seen this, and what they do to cope with this.

 

Mart

[TCLynx]

How bout pictures

[halemart]

Pictures of a weed I pulled from the top bin where the strawberries were, roots match what the strawberries looked like.

You can tell where there is new white growth.

 

The bed is about 7 months old.

 

 

 

 

[TCLynx]

doesn't look like a problem to me.

Unless the plants were looking really bad or if the roots stink like they are rotting when you pull them out, they look fine to me.

Just looks like some bio-slime and perhaps some fish poo clinging to them.

[halemart]

Thanks TC,

 

The tomatoes I have in the same growbed are really taking off.   I was not sure what "normal" was for the root systems.

 

Mart

[TCLynx]

I'm used to seeing a mix of white and tan and brown roots on most plants when pulled from a gravel bed.  Most of it is just bio-slime and particles clinging to the bio-slime.

[Chris McMahon]

Do you have worms in the grow bed?

[Ryan Chatterson]

From my experience...Bright white roots are healthy roots (in my rafts, gravel beds, drip beds...all of them) and those plants show the fastest growth where darker brown roots are usually seen on the less healthy, slower growing plants. When the roots become covered with bacteria (Heterotrophic, nitrifying), decaying fish waste, etc it interfears with nutrient uptake with an end result of stunted growth, root rot and eventually death.

I would check your bed and see how much crap has built up in it over the 7 months of operation. Could have had a mass worm die off or something weird resulting in an accumulation of solids in the gb.

[matthew ferrell]

Take a look at these brown roots.  In our case it doesn't seem to matter, or it actually helps, its still up for debate.  That being said, what you see on mine is not acceptable on plants in a recirculating system.  I agree with Lynx on this one, things are looking fine.

[TCLynx]

I base it on how the plants are doing.  I've had some plants with perfect looking roots but the plants still looked stunted and I've had other plants that were absolutely beasts growing gangbusters and their roots didn't look all that good to me at all.

[halemart]

Ok,

 

We are getting different results with this so the results vary.

 

It might also be the type of plants we are using.    I am getting good results with my grow beds for the first year, but I am open to hear different ideas.    Murray in his video "Aquaponic Secrets"   showed all kinds of muck in his 4 year old bed and was getting great results.    Yet, in his commercial setups he did for his customers he would use filtration for the roots.     Perhaps it helps to speed the time of growth?    If I was running doing this commercial I know I would want as many plants as possible in the shortest amount of time.

 

Would be interesting to do a side by side test.  hmmm I think Murray did get better results with his filtered tank as I recall about 2/3 of the way thru the video.

 

 

 

[halemart]

Hi,

 

I have red wiggler worms in all of my grow beds.   Some of them have higher populations than the others.   This tank that I show the picture from has the fewest worms as I can tell.    Hard to get a population count, I just know in some beds I can scrape up worms every time I dig, others less so.

Chris McMahon said:

Do you have worms in the grow bed?

[halemart]

Thanks Matthew for your input,

 

What variety of lettuce are you growing there?    Do you have any fish in your raft setup?

Would be nice to have a photo of what it looks like on top to get an idea of how healthy your plants are.

 

I know that TC has awesome looking plants.

matthew ferrell said:

Take a look at these brown roots.  In our case it doesn't seem to matter, or it actually helps, its still up for debate.  That being said, what you see on mine is not acceptable on plants
 in a recirculating system.  I agree with Lynx on this one, things are looking fine.