Hello world. heres the issue. i had/have root rot in dwc 5 gal buckets. i gave them more air and mycos and hydroguard. this nearly fixed the problem. new growth looks great with only a slight tinge of yellow in certain places. the old growth rebounded nicely but still dark grey slimey shit in certain areas. mostly gone/ 90ish percent fixed. there are 6 plants and they are 6 weeks old. i was going to take the 4 best and transfer them to a 4 site rdwc, 10 gal a bucket setup. heres my question: would you guys either A) accept defeat on the dwc idea expecting that the rot would return/get worse during flower, take clones and put more plants in the tent (12 or so) in soil and do sog. or B) try to just finish by taking the best, transplant, bend sideways to make fit (keep in mind they are a lil over 1.5 months along and getting pretty tall and not too too bushy) under a scrog net and just hoping it fits and wont get any worse. please help, im not sure what i should do. any ideas or thoughts would be appreciated. thank you fellow stoners of the world, stay high my friends.
Pics of plants. Can't make a call without a pic if you should save them or not. You can take each plant one by one and wipe the roots down with clean paper towels and H2O2 spray to remove more of the dead material and slime. I use an empty bucket for a place holder or a walmart container with the net pot lid rested on the edge to clean off the roots into the bottom of the container. If you completely remove bad parts they will grow back. Frequent water changes twice a week instead of once a week. Increase air like you mentioned. Enzymes are great at breaking up dead plant material and slime for the bacteria in the hydroguard to consume. It speeds up the clean up process. Hygrozyme is one product, Cannazyme is another. You can also get barley based pond clarifier at a local hardware store and I'm told they are similar products. Adding a carb/sugar supplement like AN budcandy or GH floranectar could help you get a larger bloom of good bacteria to also help things along as far as cleaning up the bad roots. If you can increase the circ speed of the RDWC that may also help.
tent is 5x5 btw. 120w commercial air pump for the 6 buckets, 8 inch air fan, 16 oscillating fan, 1000 metal halide
You didn't mention if you were indoor or outdoor, but this outdoor grower would drill holes in the bucket to allow more drainage. Or I would completely take out the plant and repot it in a soil that was better amended for better drainage. They are hardy plants and can handle a transplant midway through.
You're using blue buckets not black food grade buckets. You're allowing light in the root zone. A powerful light can shoot right through those blue buckets. That's likely helping the bad growth get a foothold in the res. Paint the outside of the buckets black or cover with mylar bubble wrap careful to shut off any light leaks to the res. Roots like the dark.
no light gets in. ive used them before with no issues. plus even if light did it wouldnt matter since its blue. same reason they use those blue tubes for checking the water lines.
Guaranteed some gets in. Plants in dirt outside don't have blue light in the root zone. The blue tubes are outside of the res. They have to be see through or they would be useless. You couldn't check the level unless you can see though them. They're tinted to hopefully limit any light leaks. I don't see the need. I grew bucket DWC for years and just lifted up the lid to check the water level. You pretty much know where it's going to be if you take care of your plants daily.
I've helped out plenty of people with DWC problems here over the years. One of the things that I see often and point out are res light leaks. I see you're using black air lines which I would also recommend. Clear air lines are like a fiber optic cable into the res. I've had my battles with root rot. You can reach in that ball and carefully pull it apart trying not to damage healthy roots. Spray the slime/brown area down and wipe it off with paper towels. The dead soft roots will break off and come out with the slime. Spray them down with 2% peroxide and rinse all you can off. Change the water, Add some enzyme to it like barely based pond clarifier. Dose it with good microbes, a light NPK mix, some supplements if you use them, and some sugar/carb like budcandy to boost the microbes. You want to feed light because too high of hydro ppm kills good microbes. Keep it below about 500 until you bounce the plants back. 6.2ph is my favorite to run in DWC. I know most people recommend lower. My plants always did best at 6.2. I know you said you increased air but by how much? IMO most people don't run enough air. I used an 1100gph air pump between 4 buckets often and would use two 4" stones per bucket. Lots of air will take care of most root rot almost by itself. I would be blasting it with air. Like 200gph per bucket. If you do all those things I think your root rot will be a thing of the past in about two water changes. I like to show this picture off. I've never seen a more dense bucket root ball in my life. Even on the internet.