Once the roots hit the water bath, things REALLY take off! It's your call, but it's been my experience that if left in contact with the water 24/7, it's not long before the entire reservoir is full of roots!

If that happens, just leave your air bubbler on, maintain the nutrient level and keep on growing. Now, it's growing as a "Ramp" and GROW it will!

Leave the roots alone, they'll just keep growing and growing and try to fill up the pot. The only downside to that is that if your root volume gets really large you'll end up with less space for water and have to refill more frequently.

This wouldn't be a common problem, though. Typically you have to grow a MASSIVE plant to get that kind of root system.

Cutting roots shocks the hell out of plants and will arrest new growth for a few days.

One of the primary advantages of hydro is that plants don't need a large root system to prosper.

This chile went from radical pruning in photo 1 to fruit in about 90 days, photo 2. Notice that almost all roots are pruned to a nub.

Just let them grow you'll be glad you did, certain plants will die or grow very slow if you mess with the root system. Look at it this way if your were growing in dirt you wouldn't need to trim the roots and there no difference in hydro. That is why you keep the root zone dark, because the root zone is dark in dirt farming as well.

Except that there is a humongous difference between hydro and dirt, Rube. There are a ton of advantages with hydro because dirt is limiting, so using trad farming as a guide for how to do hydro is a mistake. Otherwise, people like me who have a ground garden wouldn't also be doing outdoor hydro at the same time. Dirt doesn't need trimming because dirt limits the root growth in ways hydro doesn't. Plus, dirt isn't confined to a volume equivalent to a 5 gallon bucket (or whatever the OP is using). The roots spread out rather than just down and that is why we can grow tomatoes in 6 inches of soil if we allow the roots room to spread and use fertilizers.

I wouldn't trim because of what hooked on ponics said. The root's will try to fill the pot, but they should be okay until after a first harvest. If at that point you choose to trim you are allowing time for the plant to recover. Personally, I say compost the plant and use cuttings to start new, though.

I use 5 gallon buckets for all tomatoes with GH waterfarm hardware. It's essentially a drip system with dwc qualities. It works better than any other system I've experimented with so far and I don't trim roots. Might have to try it with peppers, though, like willard did. I can't ever get peppers to root after a cutting.

The very dense and long root systems of my tomato plants were choking the plants below it in my Tower Garden. So, during a dark drizzly day, I took the tower apart and cut back the roots. They had grown to completely cover all the drainage holes. I know now to put them in the very bottom pods for in order to try and salvage what I could, I cut the roots WAY back. Today it's been about 48 hours and the plants do look like they are wilting a bitâ¦I think all I can do is hope for the best. I'll report back in a few days. Hopefully they'll come back. If not, its not problem b/c I'm ready to move on to my fall crop.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Wonky Gardener's Blog

I have an NFT/aeroponics system using 4 inch irrigation tubing. I have a basil plant that has been growing in the unit for about 4 years now. about every 3 months I have to pull it out and trim the roots, otherwise the roots fill the tube and the water backs up and starts overflowing out of the top of net pot holes. A couple of times after aggressively trimming the roots, and it was in the middle of the summer, the plant got a little wilty. But after a few days it was going strong again.

When growing in soil plants have evolved to send out roots to find moisture. the further they spread the more moisture they'll return to the plant.

With hydroponics this trait is unnecessary, because we are giving the plant all the water it needs, whenever it needs it. So a little trimming shouldn't hurt the plant too much.

One caveat, whenever you cut a plant there is always the chance that it will get infected with something, bacterial or fungal, and die from the infection. But if you keep your plants healthy and keep the water clean you shouldn't have a problem.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m23/kangaroo9/Hydroponics/003_zpsekkzz221.jpg

Dont worry the roots hitting the bottom look at these and the plant is so health just keep the bubbler going and you will reap the rewards.