Healer

My roots keep turning brown every crop. Does this look like pythium? What else could it be? It's ebb and flow, reservoir temperature stays between 60 and 70, GH nutrients around 1000 PPM, weekly reservoir changes, tried hygrozyme and if anything that made them turn brown faster. I tried sterilizing my hydroton with bleach between crops. It seems like during vegging and the first part of flowering they are putting out enough new roots so the plants don't suffer too much but by the end of flowering there is almost no whiteness left in the roots, just brown and stringy, with the hydroton just dropping away after harvest instead of needing to be worked out of roots. I'm sure they'd yield more and better buds with healthier roots. Any ideas?

Here is my vegging tray.


Here you can see the evil brownness starting. This is a clone which has been rooting for about a month. New white roots will keep pushing the brown rotten parts away and they fall off as long as I keep it vegging.


Here a brown root coming out of the bottom of a pot with a mother plant in it.


This sediment builds up pretty rapidly in my trays, not sure whether it's normal from bits of hydroton.


I also have lots of what I believe to be springtails in both flowering and vegging reservoirs. I can kill them by adding a bit of Murphy's oil soap to the nutrient solution, flooding trays and then changing reservoir, but plants don't really like that and the bugs come right back within a couple of weeks. Most of what I've read about them indicates that they are a beneficial soil insect, eating dead roots, but not much about them in hydro.

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GreenDragon2k

I'd say get rid of them bugs first. Try azatrol - a highly concentrated neem oil extract. Its reminiscent of root rot there, And I suspect that the bacteria may be breeding on them bugs or being spread by them.

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"Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction. " ~ Bob Marley

Healer

Thanks. How much azatrol should I put into the reservoirs? Should I leave it there or change the reservoir after flooding?

GreenDragon2k

I would just soak the hydroton with a mixture of it directly, let the rest leach into the reservoir... I'd probably change the reservoir after a couple of floods. Make sure to do a couple or three applications a 5-7 days apart to kill any eggs that hatch.

__________________
"Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction. " ~ Bob Marley

Healer

You mean soak the hydroton with it between crops? At what concentration? I'm going to the hydro store today and need to know how much to buy. Is this to get rid of springtails or bacteria? If springtails, won't they just come back like they do after soap?

GreenDragon2k

its to kill the springtails. And I'm hoping the bacteria will die along with them as I suspect the springtails are its host. You can use it on the living plants roots, just be sure to dilute it to the proper concentration. Any Neem oil extract would work fine too I'd imagine. Mix it with a little soap to assist spreading. You want to do 3 applications 5-7 days apart.

__________________
"Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction. " ~ Bob Marley

waterboy

If your reservoir water temps are above 75deg it will speed up any kind of root rot. I don't have a clue about the critters. I am assuming your system is a flood and drain set-up? Good looking plants though. good luck

EMj

I am guessing your roots are brown from the Micro

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Healer

Will the azatrol instruct as to the proper concentration for this? How much is a little soap? What kind of soap? If I just treat the roots, there will be springtails in the reservoirs still, so do I need to fill all of my reservoirs with this azatrol/soap solution? And then change them all a couple of floods later? Thanks.

Healer

There's no way my roots are supposed to be weak little brown strings at harvest. I see other gardens using GH nutes without brown roots like mine.