Troubleshooting Help? Drip/dwc health. Leaves drooping.

Ok so this is my first attemp at hydroponics. Im running a drip/dwc system but so far i think i may be doing something wrong. I am growing 2 plants in soil and 2 in the hydroponics system but the ones in soil seem a whole lot healthier. In one of the hydro plants the leavers are long and skinny and curving down for some reason. In the other the leaves are also long and skinny but pointing up. I attached pictures of both hydro plants and a soil plant for comparison...these plants are coming up on 2 and a half weeks and ive been using botnicare pro grow (2tbs/gal) + botnicare pro bloom (2tbs/gal) + liquid karms growth catalyst (2tbs/gal) for my nutrient mix along with a touch of h2o2. And theyre on a 18hour cycle under a 400w hps. Can someone please offer me advice?

My opinion is its the rockwool. you need to get that stuff to dry out at some point or you are in for more trouble like stem rot.

Thanks I will definitely try to do that ASAP...do you think this could also be a sign of nutrient lockout? Or another problem having to do with ph?

Hard to say. The way I understand it is a plants root system performs better when the top 1/3 of the root system is fairly dry. My guess is thats where it gets a good amount of its oxygen. I could be wrong but I have seen the same thing when I started in hydro. Sounds like you got a dwc with top feeders. You need the top feeders till the roots hit the water. Once they do you really don't need them anymore.

The other thing is the water you use is important. Tap water has minerals and other crap that add to the total amount of salts (nutrients) in the water. Then it it needs to be stored so its chlorinated to kill algae. This will evaporate if you let it sit for a while with an air stone or run through a charcoal filter.

The minerals can be filtered out by r/o along with the rest of the crap. Then you start with clean water and when you add nutrients you know how much they are getting. If you use r/o or distilled the calcium and magnesium have been filtered out so its best to use cal mag with it.

In a hydro grow you really need a pH meter and a TDS or PPM meter to be able to supply the correct amount of nutrients and the proper pH so the plant can use the nutrients.

Thanks for the info. Do you know of a better way i can start a seed for my setup?

Sure, use rapid rooter cubes. No need to pH and they dry faster.
As they get dry they change a lighter shade of brown so you know how much moisture is in the cube, works great on clones too.
Just split the cube halfway set in your seedling or clone and put in net pot surrounded by hydroton. Use the top feeders to get her going.