About a pound? Uncharted HPA Territory?

Rockwool sounds appealing in that I wouldn't even need the net pots or neoprenes I could just stick them into the hole, but I imagine they'd also stay too soaked in this system lol.

Bare roots are the safest bet but you could use hydroton in the netpots if stability is an issue. If the roots are a decent length when they go into the system you should be fine.

Well I had previously tried 12v pumps on the main table and threw a few Cuttings in. The 12v pumps didn't get as hot but at the lower pressure clogging was an issue. I actually had about half root with no hormones or anything in about a week. I don't know why the other half didn't root though, they stood up the whole time. I had them in there for a few weeks.

Edit: needed more context

I just use mains water in the cloner, its pretty cold initially but warms up to room temp in a good length of coiled pipe. The water pressure is 75psi no need for a pump just a solenoid and timer. Run to waste it uses about a gallon a day.
If your droopy girls havent picked up yet and the rooters are still soaked, try wrapping the netpots in black tape so only the bottom is open to the mist.

Heh heh, we'll I admit I was wrong before. In my design I placed the misters between the plants, taking a closer look I realized that I'm a klutz and placed them directly under the plants. I'm in the process of repiping it now. You were right. The mist blew a hole in the bottom of a rooter LOL.

hehe, well at least its an easyish one to fix. I always run mist horizontal between sites never upwards.

My eyes seem to be deceiving me. I can't get an accurate reading on chlorine to save my life. My ORP is at 600 but I'm getting test strip readings of 20+ppm total and 10+ppm free. I'm not sure on the liquid OTO test if it's 3-5ppm free or 5-10 (it doesn't go higher). This only happens the longer I run the res (I'm at a week tomorrow) and a week is my goal for changes.

Usually, if your chlorine is too high it can wash out the test strip (no chlorine reading) but you'll also get an inaccurate pH reading (I'm not, but I believe it turns something like royal blue). So my chlorine can't be that high because my pH is accurate. There was one other sign too I think, and I forget what it was now - but it didn't show up on my test strip.

The reason I'm so curious is because chlorine toxicity may manifest in similar symptoms I'm experiencing (leaf chlorosis, except I think the veins stay green and mine aren't). Except they're not all experiencing these signs. Some died without experiencing any chlorosis. I took a dead one and squeezed the water out of the rapid rooter and got a 0ppm reading for free and total with the test strip. I know these things can't be working right though for the aforementioned reasons.

I know that UV can degrade chlorine now, and so I've turned it off. It's the reason people use CYA (I think that's it) in outdoor pools, to "protect" the chlorine from UV. As a result though, you have to run much higher levels to maintain a decent ORP. It turns into a chlorine salt, which may be giving me my false readings? I've turned off the UV for now.

I've found I was wrong in another thread too on maintaining a sterile environment, more research shows that UV can also degrade Fe and Mn. I'm not experiencing any symptoms of this though.

The symptoms experienced are:
some just wilted and died, this is consistent with over watering. It may have accelerated when I dropped humidity from 60 to 40% but I'm not sure because it could have just been the fault of the over watering continuing to progress.

The yellowing and leaf death appear on the bottom leaves first and then progress up the plant one by one (sometimes two leaves at a time). I honestly have to say the only explanation I can come up is with over watering. If it was chlorine or other nutrients all of the plants would be experiencing symptoms (they're all clones)

None the less, I finally put some tape around a few of the rooters and I even transplanted one to a 50/50 perlite and vermiculite mix and am watering with the reservoir water to see how it responds (I know, one control isn't very good data). A couple of the rooters just dried out though..figure that one out? I've ran the mist with the lid off and it's just FULL of mist..like everywhere, so I don't get that.

Chlorine is really the only viable option. If you use anything else you need a colorimeter so you can add back Fe and Mn. Ozone and UV both cause precipitation. Nothing else "stays" in the water long enough to hit the roots besides H2O2 but that would be expensive as balls to try and maintain, and it may cause precipitation too.

I think you could lower pH to 4, heat to like 125 and but then you need to lower the temp back down for watering..but there's no residual protection. UV doesn't offer residual protection either - but it has to be used with H2O2 cause it's not strong enough to kill all viruses by itself, but then it turns it into OH anyways which turns right back into water at our pH. I have yet to read one scientific paper on successful use of beneficial bacteria in hydro. I know it can be done, and has, but once you get something bad you're screwed - it's a roll of the dice.

I did find what I believe to be dead iron bacteria in a small amount around my drain, some water pools up right there (I should have countersunk the bulkhead fitting, oops!) It's just a small bit of white slime. That's what the iron bacteria looked like when I killed it, but I haven't pulled out my scope to check and I never cleaned the thing after I used it without any sterilization before since I figured the chlorine would do the work anyway so it could be leftovers.

The bubble cloner is on day 4 now. No roots yet.

I was going to foliar feed some EWC tea but I still smell molasses (72 hours later) and have found a slime growing on the tea bag and on the air stone..wtf? Luckily the clones are fine, but I'm going to have to mix up some other tea perhaps with some larger stones and a bigger air pump and fresh castings (they're kind of old).

Well I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one.

Its a pity you cant run drain to waste. It simplifies everything when the only thing in the water is the nutes. No need for constant sterilization or even ph/ec checks etc as nothing ever comes back to mix and mess with the res..

I'm still here. Clones were just starting to show some root bumps and got the slime. It doesn't appear to be the iron bacteria I had before but rather similar to the clear bioslime from my tea. I changed the reservoir and have been running bleach at 1-2ppm chlorine verified with test strips. I think I'm gonna cut them and start over. I added a heater to the room and fixed light leaks in the cloner, one layer of duct tape wasn't doing it. Before it was only 60 at night and 70 in the day so higher temps will promote faster rooting with chlorine to stop any bacteria. So much for tea keeping away the slime.

On the main table it occurred to me that I was running 20ppm chlorine to get to my desired orp. It appears that the citric acid interferes with the ability of the chlorine to kill bacteria and lowers the orp according to studies by the USDA.. So to get to a functional orp I was running too much chlorine. I will be switching to phosphoric acid after I run some tests to confirm that without the citric acid present in the pH down I am able to get to the right orp with a lower chlorine level. If that doesn't work we will just have to use Kentucky windage on the orp setpoint and chock it up to me buying a cheap controller.

I have done some further experimentation with Chlorine, ORP and citric acid as a component of pH down. I should also note that part of my high chlorine levels was due to an improperly calibrated meter. The calibration solution is only stable in the air for approximately an hour but it is necessary for 20 minutes of immersion within the solution in order for the read out to stabilize.

Here are the links to another thread containing my data in case you are interested:

EC and ORP
http://rollitup.org/t/pathogen-control.861821/#post-11468274

Citric acid and ORP
http://rollitup.org/t/pathogen-control.861821/#post-11469040

Additionally, the clones are on their second day in the improved bubble cloner. I've found it's sometimes necessary to add 4mL of bleach twice a day to maintain 1ppm of free chlorine. If you're using chlorine at a minimum you really need to have some free/total ppm test strips or the chemicals to do an OTO titration as sold in a pool kit.

This time I scraped the bottoms and have raised the temperature of the room 75-80 degrees using an electric heater. The water seems to be staying at 73.

The clones are all fairly large, I noticed with the stems immersed on my previous attempt that their was no ill affects of wilting to having no dome, not trimming any of the leaves, and having fairly large clones by having the stems immersed maybe a half inch or more in the water. The chlorine should keep the slime away and by better blacking everything out and raising temps I should see roots sooner as well.

In the main table I had tried to use trichlor as it had more available chlorine. The cyanuric acid in it has ill affects on the ORP compounded by the citric acid in pH down..I had to buffer with some pH up too as trichlor is acidic and my ppm free has stayed at 20..the stuff just doesn't evaporate. When I irrigated the test subject in perlite/vermiculite with this higher ppm chlorine water I have seen some leaf burn and chlorosis. When I get my instruments recalibrated and replace the tubing on my pumps to handle phosphoric acid I plan on using as pH down I will do a reservoir change.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Don't be a jackass like me and use the same container for trichlor as you used for calhypo. One is a base and one is an acid. While I rinsed the bucket out first and was lucky enough not to have an explosion (this is possible) the bucket is steadily releasing chlorine gas from the residuals, if I crack it open I have to leave the room and wait for it to be filtered out by the carbon filter. Luckily the room is sealed and the filter is way over sized. I plan on replacing this and switching back to calhypo after running water and then baking soda (basic and should eliminate the acid residual of the trichlor) through my pump with a new bucket. Both explosions and chlorine gas can easily kill you.

Here's a test clone I'm running while waiting for others to fully root in bubbler/ensure my self brewed nutes are good. Trying to keep at least links to relevant info here.

http://rollitup.org/t/is-it-better-to-make-your-own-nutrients-or-to-buy-premix-nutrients-like-foxfarm.866157/page-2#post-11513483

Hey I'm back.

I lost the first crop to overwatering from rapid rooters, using chlorine as a disenfectant, and bugs.

I lost a second crop to root rot. I wish I had taken pictures of the plants, they were beautiful. Grew about a foot in a week most of them. First I had some brown/black spots and then full on stanky root zone within a day and all roots turned somewhat brown.

I cleaned with hydrogen peroxide and then innoculated with beneficial bacteria for a day before putting new plants back in

I had been just using an uncovered stock tank and even with the chiller my res was hitting 80 and I had no aeration. To fix this I bought a square reservoir and covered it with R-10 XPS and then wrapped with R-3 foam/foil self stick insulation (looks better). R-10 makes the top too. There's more to it but yeah. I set it up so that the return line from my sample pot and the return line from the chiller "spray" the water over the surface to increase aeration and have 1watt per gallon air pump. Temps are 65-66 now. I'm running the pump ~ 3 on 12 off.

I just put the new plants in Sunday night






I'm now using hydroguard, pondzyme, and ZHO in the reservoir with my nutrients. I'm a little worried at some light brown spots starting to form. I sprayed them with a mister and some of it came off. I'm not sure if it's root rot or some sort of staining or what. What do you think?

I have no clue. The system looks amazing. My roots turn a tan color, but they're happy... I'd expect your roots to stay more white in color.

Thanks, I may not have been paying close attention last time but they seemed to stay pearly white for the better part of a week and then one day I had some black spots and some brown spots and the next day everything was infected and smelled like rot.

I did get a slight bit of nutrient burn on a few mm of the leaf tips so it might be burn on the roots too. I redosed with hydroguard and ZHO and pondzyme just incase.

With aero the root chamber temp is as important than the res temp, 70F is ideal if you can manage it. 12 minutes off is a bit too long when the roots are small, with no media to provide a reserve/safety net its safer to err a little on the wet side until they get going.

70F will never happen in the root chamber. I didn't think it would be an issue as the roots are suspended in air for at least the first foot and there's a 2 degree slope for drainage. I never suspected it to be an issue as it isn't in NFT or flood and drain or dirt or anything..it's just the pool of water it seems to be a breeding ground (reservoir). That's why I insulated the res and got temps under control and added aeration/flooming.

I have heard of some plants roots forming a brown protective coating on the outside to retain moisture though. Albeit they're still wet the entire time between sprays. I would think the hydroguard would prevent any rot.

Just following along here. Nice setup.

Thanks. I tried to maximize the space I had to work with at this spot.

If I had more choice in the matter, knowing what I know now, I'd do things a bit differently.

Six foot is too damn big for a table across and it's hard to reach. Moving it sucks as I'd like to get some sort of quick lock no leak bulkhead drain tube because pulling the current one off and moving everything around is a hassle to access the far side.

It's also a pain to fit clones in once they've rooted past the net pots. I think a modular setup would be better, as well as a SOG vs a scrog - more cuttings but don't have to worry about weaving in any netting just pop in and flower.

I dream of 4 x 8 tables made of plastic (lighter) and a modular support system across to support 2x2 pieces of plastic across the top so clones could be rooted in vertical aeroponic shelving system to save space. Make sure they're all rooted well with lower power lights close overheard and low doses of nutes to keep them short and then just moved in without having to mess with the larger roots. With more head room the size could be optimized to potentially run AC/DE 600 watt HPS as I'm not sure how well these lights will do on yield, a gpw would make me ecstatic. Continuing to keep PAR at 2000 umol/s, CO2 at 1500, and 30C degree room temp.

I also dream of doing teepee style sog with bare bulbs, same kind of 2x2 support framework and the vertical growing would increase in light efficiency but I'm not sure if the light efficiency would cover the added cooling costs.

It would be awesome to have something like a toilet stub in the ground and the tables could all have accordian like tubing for the drains to connect to the stubs so they would be moveable to keep them close for light efficiency and a giant reservoir could be underground to help with cooling.

ShirkGoldbrick said:

I have heard of some plants roots forming a brown protective coating on the outside to retain moisture though. Albeit they're still wet the entire time between sprays. I would think the hydroguard would prevent any rot.

Click to expand...

If i saw anything but white healthy roots in aero i`d be looking for the cause If the chamber gets hot for any length of time i would expect to see a few issues cropping up.