brown roots in NFT system?????

Hi, i've recently switched to NFTstyle growing, I'm 3 weeks into flower and started to notice that the plants werent eating as much and now it appears that all the roots have gone brown and look as if they are dying? I am doing this with a friend with many years of growing under his belt and he has never seen anything like this before....does anybody know whats up before its to late?? Cheers

What temperature is your reservoir water? Is there light getting to the root, tubing, reservoir?


My guess is the heat of the water might be doing it. If your water is any warmer than about 75 degrees on a regular basis then try to keep it more cool. You can freeze gallon milk jugs full of water to help regulate the temperature.

Also Aquashield can be beneficial for your roots in this kind of situation. A more drastic measure to get the rotten roots out of there and promote new root growth is to use hydrogen peroxide (read up on its use if you haven't used it before) then flush your system and refill reservoir with nute solution and add aquashield or a similar product.

your roots are rotting due to lack of oxygen. Put an airpump into your res. Then go to the hydro store and get some hygrozyme which eats dead roots. H202 will sterilize it and keep it from killing any more rootes. Just pump as much air as possible into that res and maybe lower the water level if you can. That might be the most improtan thing to keep root rot from coming back. I would use the hydrozyme first then after that change the res and keep adding h202 on a regular basis or if you cannot due to organic nutes add a hydrogaurd or keep adding hygrozyme. That is another chapter.

If he is lacking oxygen his water temperature is going to be quite important. An airstone will definitely help but is his water is too water it will not hold the oxygen.