plants DYING! expert help please - dwc, second grow

hey guys,
this is my second grow, but I seem to be having some problems this time. please help me out!

these plants grew up under a cfl in a 1 gallon dwc until they were 4 weeks old. they were looking GREAT. last weekend, i transfered them to a larger 5 gallon bucket, and put them under a 150 HPS. i tried to be delicate but a couple of the roots got damaged, nothing huge - most of the roots were still intact and looking great. a week later (today) these plants are looking worse and worse, and will surly die if i don't change something.

plants: 5 weeks old, NLxHaze
5 gallon DWC, water is 68F
advanced nutrients with SM-90
150HPS light.
PH level is at 5.8
air temp 72-78F

also the DWC bucket has multiple airstones

the only thing I dont have control over is the humidity, which is very dry right now. would very dry air be causing my plants to die like this??

ANY HELP is greatly appreciated!!!

as you can see in the pics the roots are dead, ive tried spraying water on the leaves to help the plant get water. i dont know what to do, it would be a shame to loose the plants this early on...

your roots are brown, they should be white. you have root rot or pythium. it is a disease. I would add some h202 to fresh water and run for a bit. And clean your entire res.

i dont have any h202, but i do have sm-90. i'll empty/clean the res and refill with water + sm-90... should i add a little bit of nutes? i feel like it will need something fast because the leaves are starting to turn yellow

dont add nutrient while doing it, at this point you just want your plant to survive

yeah root rot is what id say

I've also had this problem. I've never used sm90, but I do know the peroxide and plain water ( no nutes) for a few days should fix it. It does'nt look too far gone. If they live, you need to address the cause of the rot. In my case it was heat in the res. I used the same tubs as you do. The res will get up to room temps fairly quickly and mid to high seventies WILL cause pythium.
Some tips to lower water temp: Buy some metal duct tape at lowes and cover the top of the tubs to reflect heat. Place the air pump in another room if possible, the hose is cheap anyway! You'd be surprised at how much the cooler air will lower res temps. A small fan blowing on the tub will help, or better yet, computer fans blowing directly on the water.
Hope this helps.
Fred

hygrozyme or dutch master zone will keep your roots healthy.

i would use hygrozyme if you are going organic (you want to breed healthy bacteria, enzymes, etc)

zone if you are not (you want to kill all bacteria and enzymes)

h202 is available at most convienence stores. hydroguard has done wonders for me.
also it looks like you may have your net cups set too low and the medium becoming saturated and drowning the majority of the roots still not gorwn out of the rockwool yet. also are u sure about your ph? b/c I have used and use occasionally the Sm () and it can play wiht your ph depending on the nutes u r using.
also reccomend backing down on the nutes and to stop spraying them.
fred flinstone seems to be on point. if u could also lower the temps of your res that will help. i keep mine at 60. they should recover if u use the h202-the alreaddy rottin roots will not likely grow but new ones should.
get that medium dried out.

ive refilled the res with fresh water + sm-90. i also ran the roots under the sink to wash off the brown. I also only filled the res about 1/4 of the way full so the medium can dry out a little. i am seeing tiny white new roots coming out of the stem so it looks like the plants are trying to get something going. i'll let you know how they do in the next day or two.

thanks!

Your plants look to me like they are over watered and suffering from pythium/root rot. What they need are a blast of food grade h202 (35%, only available at grow stores) dilluted to 2 tsp/gallon to control/reverse the root rot symptoms. But the SM-90 is organic and h2o2 will kill off all its useful bacteria. Hygrozyme is the organic alternative to h202 but I have never personally tried it. I have heard positive and negative feedback about its effectiveness at treating root rot issues compared with FG h202. But honestly, it doesn't look like your plants are going to be around long enough to worry about the benefits of Sm-90. If it were me I would ditch the Sm-90, get some FG h202 and treat those roots.


P.S. smokeybandit: can u please change your avatar? I just cleaned my keyboard/monitor yesterday and now it's messy again, damn you!

ok, I will change it...but it may get messy again.
I run Sm90 in DWC the last 2 weeksbefore harvest. helps with the taste a bit-if u like fruity peppbles. I am trying the Citrus from Botanicare-has some mg and iron and some carbs-will let you know if I see a diff in bud size considering I cant use molasses.

smokeybandit22 said:

ok, I will change it...but it may get messy again.
I run Sm90 in DWC the last 2 weeksbefore harvest. helps with the taste a bit-if u like fruity peppbles. I am trying the Citrus from Botanicare-has some mg and iron and some carbs-will let you know if I see a diff in bud size considering I cant use molasses.

Click to expand...

Actually, I thought the last avatar was sexier. This one shows too much. Less is more IMO, so thanks! lol

can you see light through the rubber maid container .. i had a 3gal rubbermaid dwc with the same problem. i wrapped it in reflective plastic and it went away if you have light youll get algae or slime on the roots

THseaman said:

Actually, I thought the last avatar was sexier. This one shows too much. Less is more IMO, so thanks! lol

Click to expand...

yeah, u r right. I just got yelled at for it.

rezo said:

can you see light through the rubber maid container .. i had a 3gal rubbermaid dwc with the same problem. i wrapped it in reflective plastic and it went away if you have light youll get algae or slime on the roots

Click to expand...

In that pic his problem is beyond slime. That is textbook pythium. He could submit that to Jorge Cervantes and probably get a credit in the next grow bible...

smokeybandit22 said:

yeah, u r right. I just got yelled at for it.

Click to expand...

Doh! Yeah, I bet Chikeh didn't like that last one very much eh? lol

actually he said he did like it but it was innappropriate.
and I agree, textbook root rot-have cervates book-more for soil growers I think, but alot of usefull shit. that rockwool can not be getting that wet in DWC-it gets wet, its warm and humid in there=viola pythium. he should air out his res once a day for some air change.
used have alot of problems with pythium but since I started using Hydroguard, nada.

So hydroguard is the botanicare equivalent of hygrozyme right? It's a beneficial enzyme supplement that prevents damping off and other water born disease? Not too familiar with the botanicare lineup.

not sure what's in hygrozyme but the hydroguard:
Bacillus Subtillis
Bacillus Amyloiquefaciens-beneficials-for soil and hydro.
I really only use Botanicare for their supplements and not primary nutes. It will help prevent budrot but not too effective as a treatment for, IMO. more preventative maintence and alot cheaper than hygrozyme.
Im also trying a new product of theirs-seems they dont like to be even tapered off nutes and this is close to the equivilent of mollasses but for hydro or DWC. It's called Sweet and has 1.50 Mg 2.00 Sulfur-42 and 57 ppms respectively. and .1% cane sugar.
Im tellin ya, the things you can do with decent bagseeds. would never smoke anyones shit again.

rezo!! you were right, there was too much light getting in the res. I initially just refreshed the res with water and sm-90, but the plants continued to look worse and worse. I didn't consider the light in the res until i read your post. I wrapped the container in a reflective material and just kept water plus sm-90 in the res. these pics were from a few days ago, you can see the new healthy roots growing over the old dead ones. things seems to be looking up again. it's too bad I lost about 2 weeks, but it's better than starting over!

good stuff, always nice to see recovery