Transplant Problem please help

Im so confused,sad and angry

Did you pull a plant out of the hydroton to check or just peak or? What do they look like? Can you get a pic or two or three?

Also - whats your current flood timing again?

Everything in those pics you posted looks close enough to me - except the last one of the sad plant. It pretty much has to be root damage of some sort, but you need to get a good look to tell for sure.

I forget - have you been running a sterile rez or using benificial bacteria or? If the roots dont look nice and white, I think you will need to start using some chlorine in the system - but you need to get a good look at the roots.

Id pick the worst one and just dump it out. Its not recovering anyway, so you may as well. What ever its roots look like is probably what they all look like to one degree or another. When one root mass gets sick, they all do if they are sharing the same water.

If you are gentle, you may even be able to put it back in the hydroton without tooooo much extra shock. Thats assuming you can cure what ever is wrong with them.

Good luck man! I know this kind of thing sucks.

Heres the pic of the last ones roots not doing so good. Ill post the rest shortly

Heres a couple more

You have some signs of new white roots trying to get started, but you also have a lot of brown crud on most of them. Perfectly healthy roots look pure white. The browner they are the worse off they are. Most of it doesnt look super dark, but there are some areas I can see in the first two pics that are pretty dark, and a small area in the last one. That last pic looks the best to me - is that one better off?

In any case, I think you need to start treating with chlorine. Id start right at 5PPM for at least a week. You will need to refresh the chlorine every three to four days at most. I would just dump the res and re-do it with fresh chlorine for the first round, then you can just top off and add more chlorine after 3 days or so. Check the smell when you first mix it up. You should be able to smell it when its fresh and there will be no smell after it leaves the solution.

There are two or three recent threads about using pool shock, chlorine. Look through them for more tips on use and dosing.

I have to warn you - getting rid of bacterial infections in roots is not easy. Hopefully you can at least knock it back enough to get through this grow.

Good luck!

Oh - I would also poor some of the fresh mix with the chlorine in it over the top of your pots. You need to treat the hydroton and roots that sit up out of the flood zone too.

I just did a res change 2 days ago. Do you still suggest complete change and add nutes and 5ppm chlorine?

Also by the way I removed larger plants with darker roots with 8” plants from cloner with descent looking roots. I was obviously not to happy. Also I have my mini split guy coming to fix central air because my temps were swinging towards 81degrees. Thanks for everything larry

Update, I ordered and used 7ml of hydrogaurd in my 40gallon resovoir on top of what I had been using. I will do my research on the shock/chlorine in the meantime.

I think you will find the hydroguard useless. It works for some people as a prophylactic - if conditions are good to begin with. I have never seen it fix an established infection. Even heavy chlorine often times wont kill all the bacteria once it really gets established. Root rot is some bad ass crap.

In the future, if you want to try beneficial bacteria, there is another product that has the same basic ingredients, but its about 1000 times more concentrated and a lot cheaper.


That small bottle contains more beneficial bacteria than many many many many gallons of hydroguard. But - as I said, I have never seen it fix an established infection. Sure didnt work for me. I tried it after hydro guard failed, then switched to chlorine and managed to finish the grow - barely.

The problem you face is that by the time you add enough chlorine to kill off all the bad bacteria, you will also have damaged the roots.

Im recommending dumping the rez partly so you can clean it, any filters, air stones, etc before you re-fill it. It shouldnt take too long to do that and it will give you some bit of head start on getting rid of the crap - or at least slowing it down.

If you go with 5 PPM, that wont hurt the roots much at all, and it will at least slow the spread of the crap even if it doessnt stop it growing.

Actually, if it was my grow, Id hit it with 10 PPM for two or three days, then change the rez and drop back to 5 PPM.

Update: I ended up starting over with new clones and a cover over the top and a chiller set at 66 degrees. I put them in as 5” clones and they grew awesome white roots for first 2 weeks and were growing great then some started wilting and leaves started to shrible. Then now yet again im about to start over.
Temps were 84 degrees untill last few days I did some research and set it to 72.
Ppms were 770
:Nutes were cultured solutions and hudrogaurd 2ml per gal
Ph 6.0-6.3
Co2 500-1000
Flooding every 2 hours for 15 minutes and drains within 15 minutes
Sealed room
Once a day exhaust for 15 minutes
Lights: next gen megas 18/6 4ft above young plants
Tap water 250ppm from hose
Roots started browning 5 days ago and I put h202 in water yesterday

Reminder* I followed the vpd scale and ran temps of 84 with high humidity first week and a half

A question I have is if its root rot can it be caused by while there is no water in my flood table are the roots heating up to much and creating an environment for rot to happen. If so is it best to increase flood times to keep root zone cooler or would I be better off with under current system to keep water/root zone chilled as this is my third run and my third dealings with root rot at 3 weeks.