I’m curious if anyone has found any actual case studies on the use of beneficial nematodes in growing medium combined with the use of hocl? Found one study that showed at a 1:10 ratio it killed all specifies of nematodes which is obviously much higher ratio than what’s ever going into my reservoirs , but nothing from nematode providers specifically states any potential harm.
Citation would help.
Edit: Guessing you read this or something referencing it…
So how much is going in your reservoir?
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Not sure how I missed this, but I run a standard 0.028% hocl at a dilution rate of 2ml per gallon, ~1:1890 ratio if that math is correct. Seems like the dilution rate is low enough that it could possibly kill of any beneficial nematodes but I don’t have a way to test this.
So unfortunately last year one of the growers brought in the flora flex full tilt line. He was apparently told to use the root drip EVERY batch feeding. In his mind that meant 7 days a week you’re flushing on coco…. Those plants suffered so fucking bad, thank fuck it was only a table with 18 plants but sheeeeeesh, I’ve never seen a worse case of pre flower bullshit looking plants and the rest of the 200+ plants were normal jacks feeding and looked 
All I have to suggest is only use the hocl in cases of needing to wash away or cleanse the media of build up and or certain bacteria’s and biomes. I would only use it in cases of not paying attention to your saturation and build up of salts.
Also food for thought, this was at 2.5ml per gal
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I believe I’m sort of experiencing the same thing as well in my current run so that makes sense, this was my first time running hocl full term and other sterile products and I still am battling gnats so I’m going to transition to nematodes and benes this next run and see if that corrects the issues.
I prefer predatory IPM and have used nematodes and yellow sticky traps to win battles against fungus gnats. Keeping the top of your media/soil damp for a couple days helps the nematodes stay up in the attack zone where the fly larvae hatch and feed. Then I let the media/soil dry out till I see leaf droop (to dry up kill any sick larvae), and then give a second round of deep watering with nematode water.
In cases of bad gnat larvae infestation (if you see em crawling) my first punch was usually spraying the tops of soil with standard pharmacy-bought hydrogen peroxide solution. That would rupture many of the smaller larvae, and knock down the population before using the nematodes. You need to wait a day after peroxide before applying nematodes. Luckily regular pharmacy peroxide solution is short-acting with its oxidizer action after hitting organic matter, so using nematodes next day shouldn’t hurt them.
A bit off topic, but don’t forget the ol mosquito dunks for fungus gnats.
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