Can anyone help me?

[salo99]

Hi there. I'm a total newbie to hydroponics - I transplanted 8 plants from soil to an 8 pot drip system with a 10 gallon reservoir. They are under 4-foot flourescent tubes (4 of them). I cleaned the roots carefully in running water and put the plants with their plugs in hydroton. I left about an inch of the roots exposed to air, above the water, and the rest below. I ordered a tds/ph meter but don't have it yet, so in the meantime I put in 5ml per gallon each of GH floragrow, floramicro, and florabloom. Also put in some hygrozome (10ml/gallon) and some Floralicious that came with the system (I noticed that this stuff seemed to create some kind of slime around the drip feeds). Anyway, they drooped for a couple of hours after transplanting and then came back strong and grew well for the next two days. I had a problem with the ph - put in too much ph-down at first, then corrected with some NaOH I had lying around. Then I noticed that the ph kept slowly rising since applying the NaOH, so I've had to keep adding ph-down every few hours to keep the ph around 6. Anway, on Tuesday they started drooping. Two of them are still looking ok, but the rest are drooping badly. I've been keeping the drip running 16 hours straight, then 8 hours of dark, no-drip time. Might be making some obvious mistakes here, since I don't really know what I'm doing yet. Thought maybe the problem was high tds, due to all the ph correction I had to do. Any assistance appreciated - thanks.

[loatarz]

Do you have any air stones in the resevoir that the roots are in? If the roots are submerged in water without adequate oxygen in it, they'll drown. And depending on where your plants are in their life cycle (vegging or flowering) you dont need every fertilizer you can buy. Follow the instructions on the back of the bottles. Unless your plants are in full bloom which they shouldn't if you're transplanting them, the only thing they'll need is the floramicro, gro, and hardly a drop of bloom.

[loatarz]

I don't know what your budget is but you could splurge on some distilled water. Gallons of distilled water cost about 75cents each at Walmart and I grew three strains using General Hydroponic nutrients and never once checked the ph of my water and had NO problems at all. During the later stages in the plants life they'll go through about a gallon of water ever three to five days but for me it was worth it.

[salo99]

I think you're right, it does seem like they're drowning. I called the company (dwchydro.com) that makes the system a few days ago and I asked whether I needed an air pump since it seemed to me like the plants would drown. He said I didn't need one. I'm using RO water so that should be ok. Is there anything I can do about the oxygen situation without having air stones or pumps at the moment? Maybe I'll run out and get some air stones tomorrow if they're still alive.

update:I just found some 3% hydrogen peroxide so threw that in there (12ml/gallon). I think they must be drowning since it just dawned on me that the only two plants that aren't wilting are the two smallest ones, so a greater percentage of their roots are above water. I elevated the baskets of the wilting plants about two inches with some paper towels. Hopefully that will help.

[loatarz]

the only thing i can think of is to lower the water level or elevate the plants higher to leave more root growth out of the water.