Help!

[CP30]

I know I have seen many threads about slime mold (cyano bacteria?), but does anyone know a method to eradicate this from some of my utric pots? Will flushing the pots constantly rid the soil of the excess nutrients? Will that hurt the plants? Will reducing the humidty have any affect (without hurting the plants)? Can this spread to other pots that share the same water tray (nutrients leaching from a rich pot into the water and being absorbed by other pots)?

Thanks in advance for any help,
Steve

 

[rattler]

what species of Utric are you dealing with?

 

[Pyro]

Slime moulds are different that cyanobacteria.

Neither should be a serious ploblem to your plants though the cyanobacs can form pretty thick mats if nutrient levels get high enough. High volume flushing works to reduce the nutrient load and might solve your problems if it is a cyanobac you are dealing with. In the future try to leach you peat before hand as this will reduce the likely hood of a bloom. I also know there was a grower experimenting with chloramphenicol as a treatment option. He was posting on the listserv about it but I have not seen him active of late.

If what you have is a true slime mound then just leave the thing be. I'll forage and move on from pot to pot and might look ugly but after a while it'll just burn out and go away.

 

[CP30]

Rattler - the affected pots are:
U praelonga, U tricolor, D dielsiana, D scoripiodes.
Thanks Pyro. I believe it IS slime mold. I am glad to hear that it should eventaully burn out. I may try flushing just in case - I do not think it will harm the plants. I will also try to isolate the affected pots into a single tray with no other pots to prevent spreading.
Half of the pots are new medium that I carefully rinsed multiple times this spring. The slime is spreading from the plugs I added from the original pots (which had slime).
(Your 'Enfant Terrible' en route is NOT affected, Pryo

)

 

[rattler]

lol tricolor will kick its arse.........i wouldnt worry bout it while im not familiar with D dielsiana the other 3 are hardy SOBs that should have no problems with a bit of that stuff for awhile

 

[Pyro]

Easy way to tell, if the thing in your pots looks kinda like this then it is a slime mold:

Odds are it'll be more sparse, like the right hand colony, and maybe even have a distinct swarm boundary.

If it is a bunch of green/blue/brown balls/mats then it is gonna be a cyanobac or just some oportunistic algae/phototroph

 

[jimscott]

In addition to flushing out nutrients, manually removing what you can, combined with more light and air circulation help.

 

[CP30]

After looking at the pics, I bet this is some sort of algae. It is a green jelly. The pots are almost always sitting in 1 - 2" of water so they stay really wet. They have had poor air circulation lately with a humidity dome in place. I have moved outside to remove the jelly, flush, and give them some fresh air.
Thanks for your help everyone.