Yeah, cost is far less. This tiny jug (8oz) of stuff I have will treat several swimming pools 
The Mega Crop is supposed to have enzymes in it. I just checked the roots again, and it might be wishful thinking, but its starting to look like the brown is retreating. At least in the darkest areas its looking lighter.
Hopefully, the enzymes are eating the dead roots.
Unfortunately, I think you are right about that. Im still trying to figure out where to mount the filters and a holding tank, route the pipes, AND not cause a major ruckus with the wifey. She has these strange notions about me running pipes across the corner of the living room and down the hall ceiling just for my silly plants 
I will highly recomment you to go buy a 3 part nutrient, as it makes absolute no sence in my mind.
That you have build the most optimal feeding system for plants, that is known to man kind and you feed it Mc Donalds.
I know Mega crop is popular between many new growers, itās easy and it will give results.
But you will be better of with a 3 part series, where you can adjust your feed to match your plants need.
Either way, sounds good that your seeing improvement on the roots. The misscoloration prolly wonāt go away, but as long itās not getting slimy and spreading. I would not worry a whole lot!
Have you thought about just putting it elsewhere and carrying the water to the res? I know it sounds silly, but thatās what I did the entire last run and itās really not that bad. It took a while to fill the bucket so Iād just turn on the RO system and go do some other chores for a bit.
As nice as a float valve and auto-fill can be, this would get you through the run.
This is the one I picked up last winter when I was having to use my softened water. (My non-softened spigots are shut off during the winter to avoid the freeze.)
Well, the filter itself can fit in the cupboard under the sink, then you can have a filtered water tap on the counter next to the sink (might please the wife). If you donāt use much water a day/week then filling a bucket in the sink and manually transporting it to a small holding tank near your plants would not be too arduous although RO water is prone to bacteria growing in it (no chlorine) so have an air bubbler in your holding tank to keep it fresh. Then you could have something like an autopot valve fed from a small tank keeping your levels up.
No pipework needed and you get a filtered water tap in your kitchen. If you need to run pipework then RO is fed through 1/4" plastic tubing which is much less intrusive than mains pipework.
This one was one of the first results. Itās Ā£67, 4 stage, and comes with a tap. Doesnāt supply as much water per day as the one linked above but who actually needs 150 gallons per day?
EDIT :
And here is a 1/4" float valve available separately.
Not sure which country you are in so results are from UK and US.
Sorry, in a rush and will answer other replies later - but - this caught my eye.
Were you using RO water when you had you brown crap issues on the last grow?
At the moment, my roots are looking pretty darn good, so I think I will be ok waiting a while to start the RO thing. Unless I just jinxed myself by saying that 
It occurs to me to wonder - if my well water does have the algae in it - why hasnt it come back? Ive done two rez top offs since I stopped the copper, but the roots continue to look better - or at least no worse - every day. Id guess I have around 80% fuzzies at the moment.
Or - do I still have algae - but - my new light discipline in the rez, and chamber, as well as the lower root temps, eliminating air leaks, etc., is all combining to keep it under control?
Lots more comments, replies, etc laterā¦
I hadnāt thought about that, but no I wasnāt. Being forgetful (and lazy) I made a mistake across runs that didnāt make sense until you said thatā¦
First DWC run was in the winter so I couldnāt use my outside hose. I had what I thought to be root rot during that run, so I picked up the RO system and used that to treat the softened water from my inside faucet. This seemed to save the crop.
Next run was my first HPA and started in the summer. I started with RO but waiting for buckets to fill was taking too long, so I ended up jumping back to the water from the hose. (It wasnāt until later I found out that my hose is also softened water.) Had brown crap on the roots during the end of the run.
This time around Iām plumbing in the RO system direct to the res, so weāll see if I lose the brown crap once again.
Good catch though, when putting the breadcrumbs together across the multiple runs it seems when I was using RO things were going well.
One thing I did have an issue with that I will have to revisit is pH. With RO water and very low nutrient levels there isnāt much to buffer the water, so a drop or two of pH up/down was swinging the # wildly. Iāll have to get that dialed in this time around for sure.
I pre-buffer my RO water. I pull the PH down to around 4.0, then add PH up to raise that to the PH I want then add nutrients.
Much more stable. Generally only need to do it once when first filling the tank.
As you say, pure water is pretty wild with the PH fluctuations.
Sorry for the slow replies to all of you. Been busy with holiday stuff and/or stoned to the gills and in bed - fighting some kidney stones.
Well crap. It seems I did jinx myself. The brown is back and growing stronger. Temps in the rez and chamber have never been over 69F, so I can only assume this is some form of algae coming back from the water.
The day after I said that, the roots started to look like they had less fuzzies and by the next day it was a dramatic drop. Its very noticeable in the close up root pics. By eye, the roots are now a nice uniform yellow to very light tan - but with far fewer fuzzies. They do not look bad at all by eye, and no smell or slimy - but the fuzzies are going away.
Up top, the plant still looks great and is growing nicely.
So, adding an RO system in now on the front burner.
In the mean time, I am back to copper at about 0.5 PPM.
One interesting note - Ive increased the EC from 0.8 to 1.5 and the TDS meter still says the runoff is much lower than the feed water. In fact, the difference is getting larger, rather than smaller as I raise the EC. Im now wondering if this has something to do with the fuzzies going away?
Got to run - more later and answers to earlier replies when I canā¦
LOL McDonalds! For some reason that struck me as a very funny comment. Partly because my wife made a similar comment to me about my shopping and cooking just last week!! She is kind of a health food nut and Im more the sloppy bacon cheeseburger (with extra bacon) kind of guy.
Ive actually been thinking - way in the back of my mind - about switching to something like that, but not for the reasons you suggest 
I would do it more out of curiosity than any real need. Im almost 100% happy with the Mega Crop. Other than needing to add CalMag (which may be more due to the LED lights) it does a great job for me. I have had well above average yields on all my grows with it so far, so I dont see any need or lack that a different nute would help much. Certainly not anything that would offset the ease of use and cost. Its dirt cheap compared to most any pre-mixed stuff and my plants seem to love it.
Im trying not to worry about this too much. Im actually fairly confident I would get a decent harvest even if I did nothing to fight the brown. Ive had this same crap in all my earlier grows - soil and hydro - and I still got close to 2 gm/watt.
Whats really ticking me off about the brown is its killing off my fuzzy hairs! The whole point of this HPA experiment was to get those darn fuzzy hairs. I dont āneedā more yield or faster grows. I ave more than enough meds to last me as it is. I want my fuzzy roots!!<<insert whiny voice here
Thats been the only real option from the beginning. There is no easy way to run tap water to my grow room and no common walls with water pipes in them and no way my wife will put up with tubes running down hallways My current plan is to rig up a Tee on the shower head and put the whole RO assembly in the tub to fill buckets. Wont have to get a shut off valve or anything other than the filters and some fittings. I can store it out of site the rest of the time other than when topping off the rez once a week or so. I can put up with carrying the 7 to 10 gallons I would need at current flow rates. Thats basically what I do now - fill buckets in the tub and carry them to the rez.
LOL that made me laugh because I was thinking I really want a 300 gallon/day setup!
Im assuming the ratings on these are probably a bit optimistic as far as flow rate. Plus. my water pressure is on the low side - probably not much over 40 PSI and under that some days.
But, even if I got the full 150 gal/day, thats still only 6.25 gallons per hour. It would take me close to two hours to fill the rez before I can even start adding nutes, PH etc. That makes for a long drawn out process. For starters, thats what Im going to have to do though. It looks like the sweet spot for RO filters is around 100 Gal/day. I can pick up one of those for about $25 on Amazon. Then I can add a second and/or a third one down the road a bit or when I cant stand the waiting any more
The way this system works, I cant really hook it up so it automatically tops off the rez from a holding tank. One of the main goals of this set up was to run drain to waste. and to be able to have the rez be set-and-forget. The goal being no constant monitoring or adjustments needed. If I had the RO water on a float valve, I would also need someway to dispense nutes and adjust PH at the same time.
The way it works now, I fill and adjust the rez, then forget about it (other than adjusting my drifting PH) until its time to re-fill. That way the plants always see the same exact nutes at the exact same EC, and (hopefully) the same PH at all times.
I never have to worry about drifting EC or the plant causing a PH drift or the nutes getting used up in a way to imbalance the nutes in a re-circulating rez. I have 100% control of the rez water and not the plants. Im really liking that part of this system.
That pushes me even more towards trying RO to fight this crap and backs up @MicroDoser suggestions.
What are you using for PH UP? Ive just started looking for something cheaper/DIY than store bought PH UP.
So far, the vast majority recommend using the same stuff thats in the GH PH UP - potassium carbonate and potassium silicate.
Do you have a rough idea of how much PH up/down you need to add to a given amount of RO water as a buffer? I have most of an 8 oz bottle of PH UP left and wonder how long that will last.
Right now, Im using somewhere around 60-70 ml of my DIY sulfuric acid PH Down to treat 15 galls of rez well water the first time around, and maybe 1/4 that much the second day to bring it back down and maybe 10 ML the third day. It climbs slow enough after that to last until its top off time.
I currently use the Canna PH up (potassium hydroxide 20%) and PH down (phosphoric acid 83% IIRC) in a 100l tank. As I use an auto doser I am not 100% on the total amounts it uses but I put something like 300ml of PH Up into the dosing bucket (diluted to 5l to stop it eating pumps/tubes etc) and that lasts more than a couple of cycles, well over 6 months.
Sorry for the lack of imperial numbers but I am not in either Liberia, Myanmar, or of courseā¦ the United States of America
I find I use far more PH up than PH down as I recirculate in a vertical NFT system and the roots of the plants slightly acidify the nutrient solution. For PH Down it uses about 30-50ml per cycle just to buffer at the start and to deal with remote tank changes (where I pump out 80% of the solution, it auto fills from the RO unit and the PH and EC are kept stable through the process by the doser).
When using the doser I find it will first dose down, this will cause a large change, which it will correct the other way and it will go through a cycle of over-correcting until it has buffered the solution enough for it to hold a PH value and be stable. This normally takes half a day. As I have said, I find it quicker and more reliable to just PH down to 4.0 then adjust back up to the value I require. After this process, I need to add much more PH Up or PH Down to make a change and it is fairly stable.
If you switch to RO then you will switch from having to reduce your PH to having to increase your PH as the default adjustment because the roots will naturally lower the PH, this will have a greater effect from the reduced buffering and you are no longer fighting the calcium in your well water and the CalMag is fairly non-reactive PH wise (canāt remember if you are run-to-waste or not). I would suggest getting the mono elements for calcium and magnesium, I found all the CalMag formulations I tried did not have enough Mg in them and too much Nā¦
I can only say, if your happy with a one part nute.
You will be uncontrollable overly exited by the results from a good nutrient product.
My last LED test I did one part nutrients, yeald was all right but fuck it, as the finished weed is one part ass as well.
(trying another one part brand, to see if itās the same poor flavor) My main bud production is made on 3 part + epsom and some folia feeding for flavor!
Im only trying to let you know how to improve your little spaceshuttle, I have been thru all of this a long time ago.
One part nutrients are crap, itās very simple. And your brown spots on your roots are not super rare space algea from your well water. And if itās not rot, as itās not slimy - Itās 99,99% sure chemical burns!
If you donāt care for help to improve your grow, just let me know and Iāll save my time and smoke a joint.
So, it sounds like it doesnt take all that much to buffer the solution. I may even need less total PH up/down than Im using now. Good news.
Yeah, Im drain to waste. What do you use for individual elements for Cal and Mg?
I appreciate the help and suggestions very much!
Im very curious about this. How did you come to that conclusion? Burns from what chemicals? The brown started before I added any pool shock or copper. It stopped spreading and the roots came back great after I treated with shock and copper. The roots came back and stayed really super fuzzy - until sometime after I stopped the copper and went back to straight tap water.
Its true, heavy pool shock and heavy copper both kill off the fuzzy hairs, but only at very hi doses. I dont see how they could be causing the brown crap.
If its not algae, then I suppose it could just be dead roots from air pruning - but I seriously doubt that is the whole story. I think there is some pruning going on, but the brown spreads into areas that are getting more than enough spray and are super fuzzy.
Anyway, dont want to start a fight here, but I am very curious how you came to that conclusion, because I just dont see it.
You are more than welcome to light one up and laugh at my silly goings on I absolutely do want and appreciate your help, tips, comments, corrections, etc etc., so please dont stop.
However, I need to warn you - I have a very bad habit of ignoring perfectly good advice and doing things my own way Please dont take that as a criticism of any of your suggestions!
My wife says I am incapable of following a simple recipe without changing it in some way. I keep telling her there is no recipe that cant stand a little improvement - especially if you are adding bacon!
Back to the nutes thing - what three part nute are you suggesting would be better? Also, what do you suggest for a cal mag substitute?
Oh - as far as taste on the final product - I dont smoke or vape or do edibles, so flavor is not one of my concerns. If my capsules knock out the pain, and let me sleep, Im happy.
I ordered a 400 GPD RO filter and housing from Ebay. I had a credit on my PayPal account I had not used and Ebay was running a $10 off coupon, so I only cost me $36 or so out of pocket. About the same as a 150 GPD unit.
If I figure if its rated at 400GPD, maybe I can actually get around 300 gallons/day. Thats about 12 gallons/hour, so that will shorten my re-fill time to under one hour most of the time.
The plan is to use @Northern_Loki filter as a pre-filter.
so just wondering if anybody has tried any fogponics or whatever you want to call it been wondering how a good ultrasonic mister or atomizer or whatnot would work as far as like nutrient delivery and allowing for maximum oxygen to the root zone i havent seen much as far as cannabis grows but i imagine theres stuff out there just wondering how it would match up to aero grow on brothers
It can be from multiple things, itās aeroponics. Moment of wrong pH, too much nutes or something.
And I can only come with a estimated guess, from your pics and descriptions and go with old experiances of my own.
From the picās my first guess was root rot, but with no slime, that is out of the question or dealt with.
Rare āno lightā algea from the well water, I think that is highly unlikely unless your well had been tested posetive.
The copper and shock treatment, well as you said it was started after the problem started.
Itās been 10 years since I grew aeroponic, but trying to think what the issue could be. It just hit me, itās chemical burns. I have had that happen from time to time, when there had been a hik-up in my reservior.
Stoner me forgetting to calibrate my Ec/pH meter, or the other stoner me thinking āDid I put 2 or 3 cups of this into the res already?ā And it was 3 and not 2, now when thouse two stoners get together.
Aeroponics will rewards you, with a swift and hard kick to ya nut sack!
Not saying thatās what happend, but it have happend to me ā¦ more then once. And the learning curb for me, was steap and itās rouch terrain while driving a F1 race car. Shit goās wrong fast and easy!
And sorry if I sometimes come off a little strong, im not trying to piss anyone off or on anyone.
I totally understand the wish to experiment and learning by doing, im just bad at bubble wrapping words. Type in stuff and I think it and then later, I can see how/why it was misunderstood.
In the end, you can do with my advice what ever you want.
You can grow with mega crop, virgin menstrual blod from a vegan transgender or what ever.
That is totaly up to the growing in my opinion, as long no vegans where hurt.
As long people are happy with what and how they are growing, thats all that is important in the end.
The nutrients I have had the best results with, have been GHE and ANās basic 3 part series. They are basicly identical, the content differense is so minimal it makes no difference in the end.
I never needed a CalMag suplement, I use a little Epsom for extra Mg.
Your water source is very likely different then mine, or if your using RO water you might need it.
But what I like with the 3 part series, is if you have a def. and you have diagnosed it correct.
You can read on the back of the bottle, what they contain and you can correct the feed.
So what I often would do was start up on basic formular 1-2-3 parts for flower (gro-micro-bloom), then figure out over time that this strain might like 1-2Ā½-3 or something totaly different.
Lockout is a bit different, but still the same. Then you need to find out what to cut back on, if itās not just a pH lockout.
IME most lockouts are pH related, unless stoner me screwed up hard mixing nutrients.
Not to sound like a fanboy or sales rep of GHE, but itās the nutrients the kind guys from NASA use.
I started using it for that reason, have tried other things and went back to GHE and/or AN.
They cost the same, only reason I use GHE now is the shop selling it have free shipping on 100$ orders.
Then shop selling AN didnāt, so either one is fine. If you deside to give a different nutrient a try, here they come down in 1L bottles. The 3 combined is not a whole lot, and I guess enough for you to get a feel for it.
The bacon of my grow is the weekly folia feeding with fish-mix, it might not smell nearly as nice applying it. But itās turned right into terpine danknes, and will give the buds a rich and full flavor. So when you make your edibles, it will smell extra nice But it also helps fixing a lot of little defās, and great for douching clones right after cutting. Gut-loading them a little, so they will stay nice and green while rooting. 1Ā½ ml to 1 liter of pH adjusted water, one small bottle will last a very long time.
Tried that, my experiance, they are very good at atomizing H20, not so much at atomizing all the nutrients.
Well they might be atomized, and then bind together as something solid.
I had massive build-up on the discs, they needed constant replacement and the plants didnāt get the right diet.
I have not tried ultrasonic fogers myself, but I have read up on it extensively. Pretty much everyone agrees with @Palindrome - it doesnt work well at all.
The problems seem to be two fold.
The main problem is that they create droplets that are just too small to work well. Most ultrasonic foggers make droplets in the 5 micron and under size range. Thats just too small to feed plants well. Its a ādry fogā that doesnt transport enough moisture to the roots. The ideal droplet size in in the 20-80 micron range with 50 microns as the ideal size.
The second problem is clogging as @Palindrome said. The plates clog up rapidly and need constant maintenance.
I am still of the opinion that there has to be a better way to generate the ideal mist environment - I just havent found it yet
I keep coming back to that point too. I just did a Google for Algae in well water, and it turns out its a common problem. From what I read, its actually more likely that you have some sort of algae in your well than not. However, brown algae isnt one of the common ones at all. One other common well water problem that came up was iron bacteria, but I doubt that it is because iron bacteria is slimy - and I have zero slime.
Im still getting the runaround on my water reports. Now they say they will have to charge me for the reports - but they wont say how much until after they gather the reports!!!
I think Im going to have to just get the water tested myself as well as trying to find someone who can test my roots to see what this crap really is.
LOL!! I am afraid I would be the same way if I tried to do a complex nute schedule. Thats one of the best parts of using Mega Crop. Its about impossible to screw it up. Plus Im lazy
hahahaha!!
No problems on my end. I have been known to be a bit abrupt myself at times - especially if im under medicated
I appreciate the tips and help!!