Roots turned brown overnight (SOLVED: kelp in Floralicious Plus)

Ive got her in my tent now! A little bit of a slow grower. Just takes her time. She’s starting to smell like breakfast sausage :hotdog:

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Res changes are Sundays, so this is probably 100ppm or so down from when I did the change.

The words “rolling boil” trouble me slightly. I’ve had a few odd plants that are extremely sensitive to too much turbulence in the water. The mayberry plants I have now are exactly like that. I had to dial the pump down to reduce the disturbance. There’s a fine balance between enough O2 and too violent of turbulence. I prefer a “simmer”

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I agree, I’ve had plants that don’t like getting their roots jostled with all these bubbles.

Let me remember who it is that just uses the T on the end of their airline. One stream of bubbles is plenty for them. Is it @BIGJ

Root rot has a smell, too.

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That’s interesting…I go entirely the other way with it. I use nano air stones to get extremely fine bubbles. My philosophy is that we’re after dissolved O2 to promote feeder root growth. Large bubbles just aren’t efficient at delivering that. The more feeder roots your plant has, the more efficiently is can consume and process nutes.

Happy roots, happy plants :blush:

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I cant get the splitter trick to work for me well. I think he must have a more powerful pump and the air volume is much larger.

I also like the itty bitty bubbles. Until the buckets full of roots then it’s whatever air I can push in there!

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OK maybe ‘rolling boil’ was a little strong… it’s definitely more of a simmer, but still, I don’t think lack of O2 is the problem.
A couple other things.
There is no smell (other than the smell of weed) coming from within the tent or reservoirs.
The brown roots are not slimy, and if I rub the brown areas with my fingers I’m left with brown liquid on them… no root material.
Also… this happened overnight. Within 18 hours my roots in 4 different isolated DWC buckets went from clean white to the dirty brown you see in the picture. Does root rot happen that quickly? And is it not unlikely that all 4 would develop the exact same problem at the exact same time?
Lastly… even though the roots look sick (in a bad way), the plants still look healthy and strong.
I’ve ordered some Hydroguard and plan to introduce it’s beneficial bacteria into the system with the goal of treating/preventing root rot.

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Considering your input it’s a true shame you don’t. Let the kids with IG, and come have fun here.

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Yes it likes to happen that quickly and if you use the same water and rotate rezes it’s very likely. It still sneaks up on me sometimes and I don’t fuck about with it. I suspect based on your root growth, it’s been lurking and decided today is the day.

I’m going to question your tap water too. Tell me all about it. Is it city? What’s your starting PPM? I use an RV filter for my well water. Sometimes the hydro bugs sneak in from the pipes. A lot of guys will use RO in hydro, but Im not made of money.

It could also be nutrients “falling out” of the water. If you mix your rez out of order it can happen. I do not have experience with this, it’s easy to avoid.

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These roots look to me like new growth above the waterline. It’s likely the affected roots below are dead or dying and the plant is making new to replace them. Which makes me think this has been working up to it for a week or so.

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For the initial water, I used tap water with a starting PPM of around 225.
For this last water change, I used RO water.
Any experience or advice on Hydroguard?

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It’s great stuff if you have the budget, especially in the summer.

I hate that your problems came up after you switched to RO. I’ll have to let the growers that use RO speak on that.

I saw this in cartys auto thread.

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I can see Carty being crazy with air.

Come look at these roots @Gho13 Do you run RO?

Another couple things to mention.
While the plants were in the initial water, there were a couple mishaps.

  1. I waited about 6 days before testing the pH and it was way too high (around 7)… I added pH down to get it back to the 5.8 range.
  2. I’m using cheap backflow valves and 1 day noticed that several of the airlines had slipped off the valves, so many of the reservoirs were getting zero air for an unknown amount of time. I’ve since secured them better with zip ties.
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Neither of those concern me. If you hadn’t corrected it, then I would be wildly concerned.

@HolyAngel @Indicana_Jones come see these roots.

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Yikes. That’s literally what happened to me this past run. I was looking back at my thread and veg was gangbusters. Then I let the res run dry and the water left in the buckets roasted then everything turned brown and gross. I also had some new white growth trying to bust out. Not sure what ever happened with that. But that was the beginning of my pH problems for the remained of the grow.

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Are you using the floraseries trio? Grow/bloom/micro? Or are you using the floranova series?
I think the micro can stain the roots brown and I know the floranova stuff will for sure.

Is ph rising quickly overnight? Like more than 0.5ph change in 12hrs?
If it’s rising quickly overnight it could be root rot or bacteria buildup in the water. Normally the res water would smell bad, like dirty feet, pretty quick.

Healthy roots kinda smell like carrots.

I didn’t have any luck with hydroguard or any other beneficial bacteria with my tap water. Maybe it works with RO water or something. I had to go sterile with calcium hypochlorite in the res. Pool shock can work but gotta make sure it’s the cal hypo version and not the other kinds. Ymmv.

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Yes I’m using the grow/bloom/micro trio.
pH rose from 5.8 to 6.1 in 48h
Reservoir has no bad odor

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It should work but the best way to go is nano bubbles. Super fine air stones . The finer the bubbles the more dissolved oxygen you will have in the water. Course bubbles done disperse the oxygen very well but it keeps the water moving and keeps it from getting stagnant :v:

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