I use general hydroponics. The brown on roots is from the nutes. Some nutes stain roots and some nutes gather on the roots like a film . H202 is what I recommend using 3% strength 10ml per gallon of water every water. Feed once a week and top off as needed with water and h202 or hydrogaurd or ez roots but h202 is cheaper. Also keep ph at close to 5.8 ph as possible. Also make sure your air pump is strong enough along with the right size airstone . Check out my YouTube channel
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And I can my res once a week
I change water occasionally, every 2-3 weeks. I have an auto-top-off water system (refills to deal with plant water consumption & evap) to keep the water levels consistent. Every few days I check EC and add concentrated nutes (I use Jack’s) to keep EC at ~1.5.
… but I’m RDWC, so there’s a fair amount of additional water in my system (35gal-ish), don’t know if that changes anything.
I really appreciate all the feedback you all gave me. So far i think my plants are looking alot better. A self feeding system sounds interesting maybe something I’ll look into in the near future. One other thing i was hoping i can get some help with is the bushy ness of my plants. I would assume it’s a good thing but should i do anything besides raising the lights to start helping them grow? I had to keep them fairly low due to one outgrowing the rest but now i raised it to about 30 inches from the lowest plants and about 20 from the highest.
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IMHO, the answer to when to dump and change your water, like most things, is it depends. I’ve been running “mostly” veggies in DWC/RDWC for a few years now, and it’s been a real learning experience. I still do it wrong quite often, but I try to use some logic.
You gotta figure, when the plants are little, they don’t eat or drink very much. It might be 3-4 weeks before you even need to add any. So unless there’s some kind of problem, there’s really no need to just dump it all.
Sometimes on my smaller RDWC’s, I plug off the res, and just do DWC until they’re ready for a stronger mix, then fill the res with stronger stuff and go into full RDWC mode, blending it all. Then when it becomes evident that I need to basically start over to get an even stronger mixture, I’ll dump and fill.
Conversely, once the plants get huge, they drink so much that I need a fill res on a float control just to keep up. So again, not much point in dumping when they drink it so fast. The caveat here though, is that the nute mix can get out of balance after a while, so a dump and fill is required then. That’s pretty system-dependent though, with variations coming from how big of a system is running. Two plants in a 3, 5gal bucket RDWC is going to have very different dynamics than a dozen plants in a huge room with 13gal buckets. An EC meter won’t help with that, as it’s not the total PPM, it’s the ratio of what’s in it that gets skewed after a while.
Again, this is mostly opinion, but it’s kind of a “teach a man to fish” thing, as there’s so many variations that can arise that a logical understanding is more important than a list of black and white rules to follow. It seems like no matter how many crops I’ve started and finished, I always learn something and have plans of doing things just a little bit different “next time”.
Hope some of that make sense. Looks like you’re headed towards success though! 
I’ve taken everthingv I’ve learned from all you of you into consideration and have experiment ed with different things. For the most part as you all saw i was headed towards success it seemed but have recently this past week have lost almost my whole crop see pics. My leaves just crumble and fall. I will say my ph has recently been really high even with high amounts of ph down. As of now i have it around 6.0 and have yet to see improvement. When i first saw the symptoms i immediately did a flush since it had been around 3 weeks since my last reservoir change. My ppm was around 800 and ec i belive around 1500 to 1600. Since the last couple days it actually went up to around 1000ppm and 2000ec. I try to keep my water level about one inch below the netting and have tried going up and down to see if any of that fixed anything but didn’t see much change if anything shit got worse. Any recommendations hopefully i can salvage the plants. Also i started to flower after my flush switching to 12 hour cycle
I’m considering tossing these plants and starting all over but i think if can salvage them it would be a great learning experience
At this point i really think my issues are root rot. Even though my roots look white in the water i can’t really think of any other reason. Why they would be that brown from the top. I would assume if it’s root rot it’s a done deal at this stage but my thing is i used the hydroguard every reservoir change but should i have been adding it every week? I can’t figure out where i went wrong. Was my humdity too high at 45-50 at this stage?
I keep second guessing my self now i think it may have been due to not keeping my ph at the optimal range followed by me lowering the water level too low then too high. Can some enlightening me where the water level should maintain at this stage? Should it still be one inch under the basket?
Everyone will tell you to keep the water table an inch or so below the pot.
Like most things in my life, I do the opposite 
So take what I say for whatever it’s worth…
Look at your air stone, it’s completely encased in roots. There’s no spritzing from bubbles, or faux aeroponic action happening. An air gap between the pot and water is useless at this stage IMHO.
What’s really important is that there’s enough gap between the water level and the root crown (transition area between plant and root). You can’t really see the crown inside the hydroton, but if the surface of the media started getting algae, salt build up, or damping off of the stalk, THEN the water level is too high. I’ve always ran with the bottom few layers of hydroton in a 6" pot right down in the water with no problems. More water, more roots. My last one had 2 inches of the pot down in the water. No problem. Now your pot looks shallower, so you wouldn’t want to run it that deep. Again, it’s up to the root crown, not the pot itself. Think about if the net pot was a a foot tall. Running the system with 2 inches of water in the bucket just to keep the pot out of the water would be silly.
As far as those nutrients are concerned, I’ve never used Fox Farm (GH only). Is the line you’re using meant for Hydroponic use? I’m looking at the net pot itself, and even it is covered in brown sludge. You’re plants roots are being smothered, and if it’s not root rot, then at the very least it looks like the plant is suffocating from all that sludge.
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@Moose8187 it sure looks like the rot at the top of your roots and also how your tops look… @Bubbala said a lot of good stuff… I go as high as 2 inch below a 3inch net pot and go as low as 6 inch below the bottom of the 3 inch net pot…but I have a different type of DWC than yours…
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Hello everyone I’m back after having lost my last harvest i had to adjust many things before i started over again. The main thing i did was switch to GH and so far appear
to be having good success. The main thing i don’t understand is where i should start pruning my plants and exactly what part of the plant. Thanks in advance.
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this is something that varies and is more of an art than anything else…I grow what I call the ‘bouquet’ style and trim to make that feature…what style are you going for?
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That’s actually something i haven’t really thought about. Whatever would work great for my small space. Do you start with big leaves first on the bouquet style or just work down up?
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Just something I noticed going through reading about some of your issues, I would change your nutrient solution every 7-10 days. Keeps it balanced and fresh, when ppm hits 900 that’s when you should lower for for more mature plants.
This new run looks amazing! Good job!
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morning Moose…I start at the bottom and work my way inward and up…leaves and the branches that I can tell she will never put much energy into…
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Happy new years to you all. I want to thank all of you for responding and giving me all your knowledge. I was really busy with work and kind of forgot to keep you guys posted and respond. My bad. I took alot of your information and it seemed to have made a huge difference. Although i was scared to do too much i think i didn’t do enough this time around. I did however end up getting my plants to flower this time and the results seem to be better than expected. Here is some pics of my plants. My last question is when should i consider flushing. I believe my plants to be a little over a month in floweing.
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I ended up harvesting my plants and my results i think were OK for a beginner. Thank you all again. I’m hoping my second harvest turns out better but so far the smoke is good. Here is some pics of my buds after 14 days of drying and 3 days in jar.
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Hello again i have my new run with clones this time and so far they are looking great but i hope to keep the size of my plants down by topping off. I think i may have allowed them to get too big already but figured might as well top off now. when i was about to top off i noticed my plants appear to be shooting the nodes to the side already or am i tripping? Where would i top off according to the pics i posted? Should i wait alter couple days to allow the nodes to separate?
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clones nodes are not evenly spaced/side by side like a seed grow…they grow like yours show a staggered look…I top so I have 7 branch sets below the top…others have their own number of branches to keep