If you use rock wool cubes for growing your plants in–and let’s face it, almost anyone who starts from purchased clones will be using rock wool for the growing medium–then you should take steps for preventing algae build up.

Simply put, light plus moisture equals algae, and the rock wool cube gets both light (24 hours a day in veggie phase) and moisture making it a prime candidate for algae source of the year. I’ve seen algae come real close to killing a plant which is how I learned how dangerous it can be.

Note how black algae has made the rockwool on the plant on the left

The easy solution?  Get some black plastic (think garbage bag) and cut it into 3″ x 3″ squares then put a cut in from midway through one of the sides to the center of the square.  Place on top of rock wool cube and voila, no more algae.

Black plastic cut from garbage bag prevents light from causing algae

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Hydroponic Growing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.