Time for an up-date. This grow has been an almost non-stop series of up/down days. I have been having almost constant issues with PH rapidly climbing in the rez and the accumulator tank. I also have some sort of brown crud spreading on the roots that kills the fuzzy hairs we are after. Im pretty sure its NOT root rot. The primary suspect is some form of algae - probably mustard algae, but that is just a guess. This has resulted in some parts of the root mas being beautifully white and super fuzzy while other sections are brown with zero fuzzies.
This brown crap has gotten worse and better at different times. Ive been fighting it with the use of super strong pool shock and then copper pool chemicals that kill algae. The pool shock worked fairly well, but killed off as many fuzzy hairs as it did brown crap - maybe more fuzzies. The copper did better, but not by much.
Its also possible that I just have had bad timing settings for the ON/OFF times of the nozzles, but I think thats more of a contributing factor than the prime cause - maybe.
Anyway, Im now about 2 weeks into flower and things have settled down and are looking pretty good over all. There is still a good bit of brown, but the fuzzies are gaining ground every day. In fact, Im at risk of having the roots outgrow the root chamber! The main root mass is an inverted umbrella shape up top with a separate mat on the floor of the chamber where some shoots grew down to the bottom. The umbrella section up top is now touching the side walls of the chamber in roughly 50% of the circumference. The chamber is 24" in diameter by about 24" tall and is about 46 gallons total.
Here are a few pics to up-date things.
