Hydroponics Help Needed

[Fizbin]

First off I hope this is the right topic to post this in.

We are new to hydroponics. We have a dutch bucket system and an NFT. We have our first, I guess you could call it, crop growing with,,, minimal success so far.
The Dutch Buckets, have green beans which are doing well, as well as some zucchini. A handful of other veggies never started off to well or withered and died.

The NFT, we have strawberries and lettuce. The strawberries, we've lost maybe a 1/3, some have even flowered and then within 4-5 days for some unknown reason the leaves and flowers turn brown/crunchy and die. The root systems are wet so it wasn't like they didn't reach the running water. We have some expensive hydroponic lights overhead so I don't think it's lighting. I try and watch the pH and keep it close to 6.0.

Could it be an over/under abundance of plant food? Would getting a Nitrate test kit tell me if there is too much or too little nutrient?

 

[Marck]

Troubleshooting a hydroponic system can be an interesting exercise.

Tell us more about your system. Photos will help.

Is your flow constant, or do you have minutes on, minutes off? I suppose NFT suggests it is constant, but there are endless ways to modify a technique. Do you ever flush the system? Are the plants dying due to rot of some kind?

For anyone dropping by, NFT = Nutrient Film Technique (not Non-fungible Token)

 

[Fizbin]

I can get an image or two tomorrow.
The buckets seem to be successful. Every 4 hours they get a 10 minute drip of water. The bean poles in the last 3 days grew to the ceiling. That's about 1.5 feet a day! Crazy.

But the NFT, things just limp along it seems. I did a 75% water change today, and dropped the pH down from 7.2 to 5.6. I did NOT add any nutrient wondering if I had maybe OD'd them. We have pretty alkaline (7.3 out of the well) water here. The gH isn't that bad (compared to another place we have [135gh]) at about 20. I've had aquarium heaters in the reservoirs and bumped them up today from 60 degrees to 75. We've had super cold evenings here, 30-40degrees of deviation from daytime highs,,,, that's crazy and weird as well. Normally we're at 80ish during the day and in the 60's at night. But for the past month-ish 70's during the day and 30's to 40's at night!!!

To your question, I pulled some of the small lettuce and yes, the roots are light brown, mush, rotten.
The strawberries I received looked great when I got them, but now a bunch of the leaves are very very dark green. That's why I think I may have had too much fertilizer in the water.

 

[Marck]

Changing the water sounds good. Why do you want the pH so low?

I'm not certain if dark green strawberry leaves would be a problem. Is the texture of the leaves changing too?

 

[Fizbin]

Hey,
The pH is a bit low because I miss measured. But, it seems that the water change and maybe the pH helped as things look less wilty today. I'm still on target to get a photo today but we had a surprise rain storm out of no where that set me back on a few projects.

How do you test Nitrogen? Is that just a nitrate test kit. Back in the 90's I owned a pretty popular aquarium and fish store in Columbus Ohio. Virtually all we sold were Dutch Aquariums (the headliner were the plants and not the fish). We tested Nitrates and Iron, and did water changes if the plants couldn't keep up with it. Injected Co2 and Fe, to maintain pH levels and iron content.

 

[Marck]

There are nitrate test kits. Has a set amount of fertilizer been calculated for your system? I suppose tha amount to add will vary with plant temperature and plant growth. Do you add nutrients individually or is there a pre-made formula you use?

 

[Fizbin]

Ok, I got around to getting some photos.

This is the NFT, squares are open in whole rows because we haven't platted there yet.
Empty squares in the middle of channels are where things died.

These were grown in seed trays and were just placed in the channel the other day.
In the past 3 days these have all started standing up. But, why are the stalks so thin and weak?

This strawberry was doing great and had flowers and everything.
Within a week, this is what it looked like.

So this one is right next to the dead one. The dead one looked like this last week.

 

[Fizbin]

Here are my buckets working well.

 

[Marck]

The long etiolated seedlings in the second photo are due to insufficient light.

The light on the NFT rows in the first photo looks uneven, and not particularly strong. Have you measured it with a light meter?

The strawberries (Fragaria) look primarily like root rot though there may be a nutrient component to their decline as well.

 

[Fizbin]

Yes, you're probably on target with the lack of light. They were seeded just in our kitchen with not a lot of direct light. Now they are in the NFT they've started looking better.

Yes again, I need to add another row of lights to the NFT. I bought 2 and didn't realize it was wider than the bucket system. I have some shop lights I was going to add. They are pretty intense, I get the lumens and color to you in my next email.

The SB's, I'm thinking when I put them in trays from the nursery, maybe I should have cut the roots way back. The image shows the length of the root system when we got them. No new white roots at all.

Nutrient, once again, I have to find test kits of some kind for this.