[blahplunger]

Ive been battling root rot for a little while now.Made the mistake of leaving a decomposing mother plants roots in the same system with other mother plants.Needless to say,its spread to every system now.Thanks for taking the time to read through my post...... I decided to sterilize everything one system at a time.Sterilized the main system.I ran it with bleach for a day then took it apart and cleaned everything with more bleach.Put it all back together and a few days later there was brown scum floating on the top of the res.I had been adding bleach with an auto doser as a preventative.It was a low dose every few days.Apparently it wasnt enough.A few of the roots looked stained but otherwise healthy.Im guessing that it is brown algae and not pythium but I didnt want to take any chances.So then I bought a pool test kit for chlorine and after testing the res it showed no chlorine at all.I started adding chlorine to get it up to 2 ppm.It took 4x the recommended full strength dose to bring it up to 2 ppm.The res cleared up but the roots look like they have had too much bleach and the plants are showing deficiency.It didnt make sense.The tester had to be wrong.Somehow I had way too much bleach in the res.I figured maybe either the nutes or the ph down were affecting the test.I did an experiment.I filled a gallon jug with tap water and tested the chlorine level at 2 ppm.I then added nutes and adjusted the ph.Now it was 0 ppm.So either the nutes and ph down removed the chlorine or it caused the test kit to read lower than it should.My plan now is to just run full strength bleach and hope that works even though the tester says theres no free chlorine. I dont want this to be a discussion about using h202 instead of bleach.Most commercial operations use chlorine and it is much cheaper than h202 and maybe more effective.Ive read alot of threads about using bleach.I guess what I dont understand is why the test kit is not accurate with nutes and ph down.It would have taken all the guess work out of keeping a 2ppm level in the res.That and why sterilizing the system didnt work.At this point I feel like the only option is to replace all the systems.

[BakedBandit]

Be careful with bleach and chlorine. Isn't that how mustard gas is made?

[buzzmobile]

Originally Posted by BakedBandit

Be careful with bleach and chlorine. Isn't that how mustard gas is made?

No. Chlorine Bleach

[oldbootz]

yep yep, thats why organic is better let the flame wars begin!

[Medium Pimpin']

i use pond enzymes in my aerocloners and hydro systems, never get rot anymore.
cheap and easy

[Scrappy-doo]

Probiotics bro. They will search and destroy fusarium. And help your plants be healthier and better growing/yielding.

[blahplunger]

What kind of pond enzymes,what kind of probiotics?I tried hydroguard and it didnt work.On the plus side,Ive been using bleach for a few days now and they have recovered.I believe I over reacted to brown algae and killed the roots.They have recovered now and are growing quickly.

[Vanilla Phoenix]

I would suggest using Flying Skull Z7 two part enzymes. I use it as well as others I know with great results. Keeps roots nice and white, doesn’t take much, and doesn’t effect pH.