I understand, I figured it was something like that or cleaning them when you don't even use them. I have been using this system for the last 15 years on and off and have never had the great results I always hear about, most I made per light was a pound, but mostly only harvested 10-11 oz per light. I have had an approach of always overcompensating on every factor of growing. I have huge airflow through my lights constant temps in the rooms, even fuzzy cO2, botanicare advanced h&g nutes, I always was frustrated in the end, I always had beautiful buds but not enough weight in my opinion. Which brings me to my point,
I used hygrozyme forever for rot protection, and never had much rot as far as knew. I had some brown roots in the end but I figured with all the "brown" shit I put into there reservoir(ie karma, pure blend,blah ) of course the roots would be a little brown. I ran out of hygrozyme and instead of buying more like usual I held off cuz I needed the money. I didn't notice any ill effects thereafter. Until about a month later my flowering crop was yellowing a lot more than usual, and the vegging plants and clones were stalling out and getting browner roots than usual. So after that I got real into investigating wtf was up. After deciding it was the lack of hygrozyme and high water temps (70-76), I got some Dutch master zone and started researching a chiller purchase and a setup that could cool multiple res's without any transfer of material. I went with the Ss wort chillers on a chiller in a control reservoir. That is when I first came along your thread... The DM zone worked wonders and killed the rot immediately while I went to work on cooling the res's. I have some stainless steel bottles circulating chilled water through all my reservoirs now and it is keeping temps perfect! At 64 -66 constant. I've had to replace a couple of my homemade Ss bottle rigs cuz the sealant broke loose and flooded the res with chiller water. I immediately order the wort chillers after the first crappy bottle seal burst open. My flower room looks greener and ridiculously more vigorous and healthy as can be, still with bright white roots even though they are still doused in nutes.
I think that rot has been lurking and sneaking up on me in flower over all these years. I knew about rot and people investing in chillers nut I always felt like I was in control with my hygrozyme. It was not enough alone and without anything my whole setup went to shit fast!
I thought I was a genius with the wort chillers and I thought maybe there was something I had to worry about since you ripped it all out of your system. I can't wait for my chillers to come so I can rip these Ss bottle chingaderas out before another seal blows out... Stupid diy h20 epoxy loctite.
PS. also I never got a chiller, I used an old portable ac unit with the exchanger bent into the chill res. I had a professional chiller in 2006 (1/2hp) and this system kicks its ass hard!! Cheap and way more effective. Ur just paying for a titanium heat exchanger that is nute resistant in the commercial chillers. But since I'm never gonna cross contaminate I don't care if its straight slurpee and vodka chilling my nutes. Or plain water.
