Drooping, hydro question

hello anyone who cares to read this, you might have seen me around the boards; im currently growing 2 violator kush which both turned out to be female today is 15th day for flowering 12/12 started dec 1st. they are under a 250w hps roughly 10-14 inches off the tops seems to be the temp they respond to best. This is my first hydro so i thought (not always right mind you) an aerogarden would be a great device to learn it (ROFL) so i purchased a Space Saver 6. anyways getting to the problem, drooping like wtf. My one violator kush seems to be almost a sativa phenotype while my other looks 100% indica the difference between them is hugeeee even in leaf colour. So the bigger sativa looking one sometimes drooped a little just on the leaf tips but the smaller one looked perfectly fine so i didnt think anything of it. Upped there nutes they responded very well. But saturday night i came home drunk and the pump wasnt working but it was on. Waiting until i sobered out and on sunday the gf helped me carefully removed them ripping some roots that tangled there way around the pump and now its fucked, i mean i cleaned it completly and i still wont work. I had a very strong air pump that i was going to use for a 60L DWC im building for next time and thought that would be best although its strong as hell. It makes the water bubble like its boiling. I leaves started drooping worse after this of course and today they look like shit. i guess its time to walmart to get a weak little pump and airstone or transfer them to a dwc even tho there roots are so fucking tangled. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

you got the right idea bro.. go make yourself a nice dwc container or two, should cost ya less than 50 bux, and if you got the money buy a decent light too. hand water for a couple days till they hit the res and you should be good.

heres your problem tho, your roots are drying out fast, and they dont like light.. they need to be feed every hour at least if you want them to survive... id get crackin fast

or you could go to the hydro place, get a light and some soil and do it that way

thanks for taking the time to respond i do appreciate it. im a little unclear on some things u said i think it mightve been my amazing communication skills. they wont dry out because theyre still sitting in the water which is either bubbling like fuck or still i cant decide which is worse for the plant until it get moving. as for a light i stated i do have a 250Watt hps i dont have the temperature control to go any higher then that man. its a small scale micro i cant get a new light. as for light getting to the roots theyre completly covered. and like i said theyre almost 2 feet tall so there roots stretch down over a foot i wont have a problem putting them right into a enw rez thell be able to touch fine. Now i wish Flo that i could just put them into a new dwc but theyre roots are horribly tangled wouldnt it be better just to try and make the aerogarden work for me so i dont send them into shock during flowering?

ahh yes, ok... just woke up and wasnt reading to well lol...

light is good,
stagnant water is death to plants


now when you say they are tangled, are they tangled in together? so it is like one rootball or are they tangled in the aerogarden?

can you take them out of the aerogarden without shock?

if you can i honestly would put them into a larger dwc, but i would ghetto rig one so that the plants are held up by the stems so that the roots go directly into a solution, and dont have to grow down into the res again cuz that would cause stress.

a 2 ft tall plant in an aerogarden, to me, just seems to big like it will outgrow the res and problems like salinity and ph could arise quite quickly.

now if you can get them out of the aerogarden unstressed without ripping the roots, but the roots are tangled together, (which i think is what i am reading) this is what i would do

go to home depot and get an orange 5 gallon bucket with lid

or if you have a hydro store get the black buckets with the dwc tops.

then get 2 nice 2 outlet air pumps, or 1 badass 4 outlet pump. 4-4 foot sections of tubing, and 4 large airstones.

if you can get the black buckets, great, if you can only get the oragnge, then duct tape the shit out of em so no light gets in.

now what i would do is get the largest net cup i could find, or the 8 inch dwc tops, and a large 6x6 rockwool block.

cut a hole in the lid of the bucket to fit the net cup (must be larger than 6 inches to fit rockwool cube), or just use the dwc top if you can get it.. then go ahead and cut out about half of the middle of the net cup so it looks like you have a circle within a circle if that makes sense... in other words if your net cup is 6 inches wide, cut out a 3 inch circle in the middle.. the larger the better cuz your roots will go thru here.

then once i have a large enough hole to fit the roots thru, i would cut the rockwool cube in half, place the two stems of the plants in the rockwool (roots hanging much lower) and duct tape the rockwool back together..i would then duct tape the bottom of the rockwool so that no spash up absorbs into the bottom of the rockwool and it stays dry.

basically what this is doing is creating a base to sit on top of the net cup that you cut a hole in so it (your plants) wont fall into the res, and letting the roots hang low so that they dont have to grow through any type of medium. then i would just add nutes, add pump and youre set..

i hope this makes sense, i am still a little groggy but if you understand what i am saying you can ghetto rig a single 5 gallon dwc system to accomodate your ladies without stressing them out. it should cost you about 30 bux depending on the pumps you get and take less than 20 mins to make if you have the right tools

hope this makes sense..

FLo

hey man thanks for all your help. in case your interested i bought a 20 gal res i think it was, im ghetto rigging it so the top of the aerogarden just sits into the top of the dwc instead of untangling them and potentially stressed. at least this way the setup is very similar to the aerogarden and i dont have to fuck them too much i know exactly what your saying. i got a nice 20gph pump with 2 outlets and 2 12" airstones so i think that should do the trick, im gonna start to construct it right now and get them transferred over during this light cycle hopefully. the indica phenotype is looking storng still but the sativa looking one is drooping like mad so we'll see if this helps. thanks for all your helps again + rep

no prob man glad i could help.. take some pics when you can so we can all see your progress!

i just took some nug pics before with the drooping and my setup, building it right now and then ill take some after pictures with the dwc in place

and its all said and done with phew, took just about an hour to get everything done and i mean building the dwc and then getting right nute and ph levels it looks great flo u are the fucking man i hope i can get some pics posted to show u what i did u just may very well have saved my 2 gorgous babies so i thank you

good deal brotha, glad i could help! cant wait for the pics