Root issue or dirty medium causing this?

A clone, you can see the roots hitting the water start to brown. Rinses right off.


Another clone, rinsed shot and a before shot. I get this every time I start a new plant. After awhile it goes away.

Had it with growstones and now hydroton.

I changed the water Thursday night but still getting brown on only the roots in water.

What temp is your water?

That's funny.. I get the same thing whenever I use "clear" tubing to run the air stone...it collects algae super fast...so when I switched to black tubing..I never had the problem again....Cheech is got a good question..temp of water may be a factor.... sorry also noticed in my other grow that had this issue (may not be relivent)...but when I smoked "cigarettes" in the grow room the Air pump would suck up the second hand smoke and pump it into the water...(but my airpump was crap)...just a thought.

Water temp is 72F. But I had this issue about a month ago with two plants that are in flower now with 64F water. Those two plants no longer have this brown stuff.

Its not slimey its just dirty mineral like crud.

Is any light getting into the water per chance?

actont said:

Is any light getting into the water per chance?

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I dont think so. I have holes drilled on the sides of the bucket pretty flush with the tubing(have to really pull to get the tubing in/out) And the tops have enough hydroton to get to the top of the net pot slots and then some. And on top of that I got white pot covers. So I would say no light is getting in. Unless from the clear tubing.

firsttimeARE said:

I dont think so. I have holes drilled on the sides of the bucket pretty flush with the tubing(have to really pull to get the tubing in/out) And the tops have enough hydroton to get to the top of the net pot slots and then some. And on top of that I got white pot covers. So I would say no light is getting in. Unless from the clear tubing.

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Can't hurt to replace with black tubing. I just bought 25' for $5 USD on Amazon. Its even cheaper in bulk.

Put some aquashield in there 3 days ago. The one that I did that to had whiter roots. So I gave the other the same dosage last night.

Looks like its from the hydroton. Did you give it a good wash before using?

I haven't added anything but vinegar and fox farm to my reservoir. I had a problem on first fill before I put duct tape around my buckets. No issues since. Heres a root shot of my first hydro attempt.

joe blow greenthumb said:

Looks like its from the hydroton. Did you give it a good wash before using?

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I put the hydroton in the netpot and rinsed water thru it into the bucket below. Probably about 5 gallons worth. Looks like hydroton to me also. The crud on the roots looks granular like dirt like.

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These are the roots of some Afghan Kush in flower(10 days). When it was first starting off it looked like these roots of my clones in this thread.

Hey there. Mine are doing the same thing which is how I found this thread. I think its the hydroton even though I rinsed. I have two afghan/yumbolt. I know my temps are up but the two pineapple k got an extra rinse on the hydroton the ay didnt get and I'm having o problem with them. The roots are through though so not sure how to go about cleaning it out or will it just go away and ill rinse better next time?

Some nutes like floranova can stain roots.

First question, does the res or the roots smell like a stale pond would?

What are your EC and PH readings telling you? Are they going up, down?

Please list all nutes and additives you have been and are using.

Regarding nutes and additives, are you running any bennies in your nute solution?


As someone has pointed out, you are running clear air line tubing... This can act almost like fibre optic cable and bounces light into your res.
Where the airline enters the bucket, start taping it up using black tape and work your way back towards the pump and cover maybe 1ft of the line in black tape.
Short of that, get it swapped out for black line ASAP.

I'm not saying it is, but the last time I saw something like that, on my plants, it turned out to be rot. I can't stress enough how many things can LOOK like rot so don't start panicking. Just watch your res temps, PH and EC closely!
My rooted clones started to look just like that.. The end of the root tips would turn brown followed more or less by the whole root mass quite quickly.

Keep a real close eye on it because if it is root rot (Pythium) then it can get out of hand in as little as 24 hours.

Some people aren't fond of this but if you're unsure, get some H202 and clean your tubs, air lines, airstones etc and even give the roots a dunking / soaking in a separate weak H202 solution while you clean and sterilize all your equipment.
If it turns out to be rot, I suggest cutting out all feed and just giving them water mixed with a weak H202 solution with some regenaroot and wiltguard. These two products are like a first aid kit for plants IMO. Pulled my girl through even after cutting the roots back to the point she had to root over again.

As I say, don't worry, it might be something as simple as staining but by all means keep a good eye on it.

My one looks worse, I did h202 also tried aqua shield. I'm using Supernatural bloom aqua and ultimate thrive to about 700 ppm. My ph is good but temp is a little high. No smell at all and girl is looking great actually. I'm going to try to empty out hydroton and replace with growstones this water change and i'll soak the roots in weak h202. When I soaked them last time they whitened right up but a night in the bucket brown again. I can also see sediment on the bottom of the bucket, that's why i'm thinking it's the hydroton. I'm interested to see what original poster has going on with theirs.

I forgot to add all my others are looking great, it is just this one so i'm thinking it's not temperature related?

Just wanted to say that I had three of my plants in buckets (can see in my sig) and then ripped them out because of some nutrient or algae or something causing overpopulation and shoving my pH up to like 8+ repeatedly all day every day. They had that coloration on them. A couple roots wouldn't rinse off after awhile (you're in hydro so maybe it's diluted a bit more?) but I ended up cutting off a couple roots that were just looking sad and like that stuff was almost bad for them.

Transplanted them a couple days ago and after being in soil the red roots turned dark brown but out of those dark brown chunks, are bright white new shoots. SO I'm not sure if it's bad or not.

But fwiw, some of my roots that had that didn't turn out well. However the causes might not be the same here.

Mine were in dirt and we washed them so it may be from that it the color looks like the hydroton we just washed off our last two dirt to put in buckets so we will se if it happens with those. They have grow stones so we shouldn't get the discoloration fingers crossed

They're doing fine. Still getting a PH drop on all my buckets. But i've been reading it has to do with ratios of different types of nitrogen.

But it still happens in flower. To be honest I just let my buckets do their thing for a week from filling a res to 1.2EC at 5.8PH and next day its 5.7PH with EC dropping. By the end of the week adding tap water add backs my PH is like 4.2 and nutes are like .4EC.

I've never experienced this PH drop. Usually I would get .1 a day rise, sometimes none, with these new dynagro nutes all my buckets are getting a drop. Veg and flower. So not too sure on the nitrogen ratios of ammoniac and uric or whatever they're called messing with the PH.

The plants appear healthy, aside from my own neglect with letting the PH drop. The ones pictured have huge roots masses. Tan where the roots are often exposed to air, but the roots in the water are white.