Re: [compost_tea] Question about dissolved oxygen and air stones

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 13:53:30 -0500

Remember, it is the little critters we are dealing with, and they use up oxygen at the bottom of the tank just as fast as they use it up at the top of the tank.

If you just bubble the surface, you are going to be making some really stinky liquids down there at the bottom of the tank.

If you just have big bubbles, the exchange rate is not adequate to diffuse the air into the liquid at the rate the bacteria are using it up.

Balance the uptake of oxygen by the microbes, throughout the tank where the organisms are using it, with the movement of oxyegn into the tank through air bubbles released at teh bottom of the tank, or mixed into the water to the bottom of the tank.

We add food into the tea, to grow the organisms, and therefore, we will have the protein films on the surfaces of bubbles and on the atmosphere-water interface. Exchange of oxygen just at the top of the tank is not going to be adequate to counter the use of oxygen by the microbes at any significant depth.

The question of the upward movement of air bubbles is important. If you have very tiny bubbles, that stay suspended in the water, and you have larger bubbles that move upward rapidly, you can shatter most of your fungi on those grinding surfaces.

Therefore, you DO NOT WANT very fine bubbles that stay suspended in the water. You have to use a serious amount of pressure to produce those bubbles, and may get into the too-high pressure zone where supersaturation becomes a problem, and kills the microorganisms. You may kill your fungi when the fine bubbles combine, and move more rapidly than the very fine bubbles, shattering the hyphae.

Be careful of the claims by companies that say tiny bubbles are a good thing. They aren't. I agree with the comments by the engineers on that point completely.

But how big should the bubbles be? You and your oxygen probe should be able to figure that out.

Don't want to go to all that work? The compost tea brewers that can show that the aerobic organisms stay alive and GROW in their tea brewers have done all that work for you. Buy their machines.

Don't buy machines, and don't buy tea from people using those machines, if they can't show you DATA about ACTIVE, living, growing bacteria and fungi and protozoa in their machines! The data should be on their web sites!

Remember - bacteria, fungi, and protozoa.

If a tea seller says there are lots of fungi in soil, laugh at them. Maybe lots of fungi in the old growth forest two, or twenty or two thousand miles away, but not your lawn, not your garden, not your crop fields, unless you can SEE the fungal strands growing in your soil.

Most people have killed their fungi by using pesticides, fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, and inorganic fertilizer. They need to put fungi back in their soil, or they will never achieve the benefits they should be able to get from healthy soil.

Can a bacterial tea help? Sure, But you are only getting step one, in a twelve step program. Why would you spend money on something that only gives you one-twelfth of the neeeded addition? When the whole program can be obtained at a lower price than the bacterial tea machines are selling theirs!


Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com

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Received on Sat Nov 01 2003 - 14:22:30 EST

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