Preparing for my first water change in my RDWC setup (in my sig). Plants just entered their 2nd week of Veg this past weekend (now on day 22 since popped seeds entered RW cube into basket). Using AN nutes since 1st week of Veg, the inside of the res and the (6) 5-gal buckets have a brown film on the sides of the bucket under the water line. I want to be able to clean this film out while I get rid of the soup and then add new RO water and new nutes. How do I change the water and wipe out the brown film from the soup without disrupting the plants or putting them into shock of some kind? This is my first hydro grow and it's going well so far, don't want to go the other direction.... More specifically...what do I do when I lift out the nets that have the roots protruding 12" or more into the buckets? I do have extra 5 gallon (clean) buckets with an identical RDWC system I don't have setup yet....should I just transplant them into those buckets w/no water and have the roots suspend in air while I clean out the entire 7 bucket system?
Just get some other 5 gallon buckets for the time, fill them with some RO so your plants don't dry out and just use them to keep your plants while you're cleaning your rdwc. You could even throw air stones in them if you'd like, but I don't think you need to unless you were planning on keeping them in there for a few hours. It's really not that difficult. I think you're stressing out more than you have to. They'll be fine to take out for the time to clean your system.
Right on, I might as well just fill those new buckets with the RO I'm going to change it out with anyway, so the plants can sit in the new water until I get the old stuff cleaned up. The roots looked a little 'gunky' I would say, like the AN soup was leaving blobs of brown all over the new root systems and I was meaning to change it this past feeding on Saturday when they went into the 2nd week of veg. Just didn't have the time unfortunately....only enough time to make a new soup for the week. I just added individual air stones and 2 more air pumps (so 3 total now) to get the bubbles really going in the buckets, and the aeration seems to have cleaned up the roots significantly....they were almost the color of what you would see with root rot...scared me a little until I saw it was just from the color of the soup.
WHen in doubt, mix up a batch of Heisenbergs bennificial microbe tea and use as directed. It saved a crop for me http://forum.grasscity.com/hydropon...asy-beneficial-bacteria-cure-root-issues.html