foam in my DWC buckets, ack!

So I finally got my 5 gal DWC buckets going and this morning I checked on them and they all had a layer of white foam on the surface. It's bright white, no brown or green. Rez temps got up to 75 at peak. Only thing in the water is GH Lucas Formula and my tapwater (yeah I know). It's fairly hard tap, but my nutes were all 920-960 ppm and 5.6 pH.

This morning the pH was 6.1 and I saw the foam. I let the lights go off and about 6 hours later I checked pH.. still 6.1, 920-960 ppm soup, still white foam. Added about 2tsp per gallon of 3% h202 just in case and all I can do is pray.

Anyone else ever get white foam in the DWC when first using it?

I have 6 buckets, a 45lpm air pump with 6 outlets, using a 4-5" inch stone in each bucket. The buckets are silver lowes buckets and light proof. Black airline tubing, 6" netpots, rinsed hydroton, etc. Do I have a light leak somewhere? 75 peak shouldn't be unacceptable.. and it certainly shouldn't cause root rot in one day when no roots are in the water. The ones on the bottom of the net pots are nice and white still.

i had a similar thing happen to me with bio grow in a resevoir. mold at top layer, didnt notice it until it start smelling like a dead person haha just dumped it out and never used it again. some nutrients are meant to be used in soil only. hope that helped u a little

Nope, using GH nutes, designed for hydro. I wouldn't expect them to naturally make a biological frenzy.

how long has this system been running? a few days or a few weeks?

A couple of days.. one day with no plants, just solution and bubbles. No lights either. I then transplanted and 12 hours of light later I had the foam.

Probably just some left over cleaning supplies that you used or maybe glue from pvc fittings? Did you build this system yourself?

Yeah, I built 6 of them myself. No pvc. Just a bucket, a netpot, black airline and an air stone for each. I don't have a central res.

Speaking of glue.. I think there were some stickers on the net pots... didn't even think about that. Would glue residue make white bubbles everywhere? It's in all 6 of them.

The foam is still there this morning, but it looks to be lessening. The musty odor is mostly gone as well. New root growth is bright white and coming out of the net pots.

How do you plan to change the water in this system? A shop vac maybe?

I would say change the water and see if it returns. Maybe give it one more day to see if it goes away. Ive had shit like this happen before but it was only after the system was freshly built. Maybe its a oil coating on the air line.... shrug. Give it a day, if it is not better then change the water.

Edit : Btw easy on the peroxide. Use to much and ive seen odd this happen

hmmm add some hydrogen peroxide(h202) and it should kill anything growing that might be causing these bubbles. it should only be 5% of your total liquid

By any chance are you running any type of heater that puts off Co2 ? Ive had this issue and if it continues your leaves will turn leathery and you will do much harm to your plants. It "in my case anyway " must be some type of Co2 poisoning.