BluBerry, I am most definitely interested I believe in learning and most times it's from a mistake of sorts one of my own or others. So anything I can share that may or may not be useful I offer freely. It's good hearing about your roots the look good in the photos those will drop I also believe your right about the water level Like bonzi said let em look for it I like yo to fill mine to the bottom of the net pot then let it drink for a couple 3 days before i add water, well water is good and also good to know your ph is stable, with the ph^v i have shitwater here so I use distilled. I barely check ph anymore it's always 6 even after adding food (jack's classic+bigbud) about once a week i drain all and start over fresh, 2 days just water the i top off with jack's mix and after about 3 days just distilled w/bigbud. works nicely so far but ya here are a few pics I know dough ain't a prob but if all is chinese made then why spend more than you have to?
hope they show... the first three are the roots some bubbles and the stone and what it's feeding, the other two is the one plant that had the brown slime I took it out of there and went over to the shower and put the handheld on half massage and washed those bitches out!! then washed out the can took a pair of scissors and cut the roots off and left about two inches hanging out of the bottom, and now two weeks later the new ones came saw kicked ass. (no more superthrive in hydroanything for me) that can is the one with the visine bottle "airstone" ummm just lost my train of thought bbl dude they will stretch!!