I am having an issue with a pepper plant that I am trying to switch to hydroponics. I built a very basic dwc setup using a coffee can, an air pump, a homemade basic until the hydro store opens tomorrow, and some glass pebbles.

I boiled the water and allowed to cool before placing it into the system, I setup the air pump and line, put some nutes in the water, and setup the temporary glass media. I took one of my pepper plants that was doing okay in soil and cleaned the roots the best I could and placed them in the media with the roots partially hanging out of the basket. I first tried the water level about half way up the hanging roots but it only took about thirty minutes before the plant went soggy almost like it looked under watered so I rose the water level a bit more. I waited an hour and it looked worse. I then dropped the level to where the roots were only about 10% in water and again worse. I took all the way out of the water and the roots dried up and the plant looked like it was on life support and checking out of this world.

HELP! Too much? Not enough? Doesn't seem to matter what level I leave the water. It's getting a good volume of air and the water has a light amount of MG nutes until I get some liquid from the store. I provided a photo to show what the plant looks like after a few hours. It was strong and standing tall when I started about four hours ago. The black piece of plastic around the base of the plant was just added a bit ago to keep the sun directly off of the roots and water. It hasn't been on long.

The plant has some other damage on it from some bad soil it was started in but that was changed a couple weeks ago and it is healing well.