White fungus in my s/h

[Autumn Child]

I found one of my s/h cymb develope "fiber-like" white fungus. Is this harmful for the plant? I cannot find a fungicide in local stores. Please advice.

[Ray]

Let me throw out a couple of thoughts:

Do the "fibers" appear to stand up on the top of the surface of the medium? If so, it might be LECA manufacturing residues, not a fungus.

Fungus will only grow if there is decomposing organic matter, which could be old medium that wasn't removes sufficiently, and/or old roots succumbing to the new environment.

Concerning a fungicide, surely you can get some chlorine bleach at a store, can't you? Mix at about 10 ml/L and drench the pot.

[Autumn Child]

thanks for the advice ray. The white fiber seems to be standing out of the leca ball like furry white hair. They also seem to form a web between the leca balls. I just repotted the plant that i just bought two weeks ago, so there is probably not alot of decaying matter.

When you mean chlorine bleach is it detergent? will it do any harm to the plant?

[Ray]

No, not detergent.

Household chlorine bleach is typically a 5.25% solution (in the US anyway) of sodium hypochlorite - NaOCl. Diluted one ounce per gallon (1:128) it will not harm plants, but is a good fungicide and algaecide. 1:100 is probably OK, too.

I would recommend drenching, waiting 30 minutes, and then water thoroughly to rinse the pots, as NaCl is one of the breakdown products, but again, at the recommended dilution, even that should not be an issue.

[Autumn Child]

Thanks for the advice. I also heard using garlic water containing garlic that has been boiled in it can also be effective to kill fungus and bacteria. Is this true?

[Ray]

Don't know about garlic, but I'll bet you're seeing minerals being extracted from the medium, not a fungus.

How did you prepare it for use?

[Autumn Child]

I was reading about how to eliminate other orchid pest and happen to come across a website talking about boiling a garlic in one litre water for an hour then cooling and filtering the garlic water. The source said that it will kill fungus as well as some bacteria.

[Zoi2]

Autumn, Is this what your s/h leca looks like?
http://highrisehydro.files.wordpress...lt_residue.jpg
Joann

[Autumn Child]

No, not like that. Mine is more hairy. The fibre length can be the same as the radius of the ball (half the diameter of the ball). The fibre also connect between the ball and when I pull one out the other follow, so the strands are very strong. Now i don't see the problem anymore. I will wait and see if this happens again. I will definitely take pictures and post it in this thread.