the smell may be an indication of anaerobic biological activity. That happens when there is no oxygen available in the solution.
How are your plants doing?

marginal.

Funny you should mention oxygen. That bucket was just stagnant water. I just today got around to adding an airstone.

Will it get cleared up by itself now that I added the airstone? Or, do I need to do something special?

I would dump the solution and make up a fresh nutrient solution, maybe even add some hydrogen peroxide to clean up any nasties left behind. Always oxygenate your water it stops nasties growing and especially if you are using a organic nutrient.

Cheers Fil

Hydrogen peroxide should be added at the very least.

If it were me I'd mix up a strong bleach solution (10-15% minimum) and just scrub the hell out of everything I could separate from the plant. Rinse thoroughly so the bleach won't kill the plant, reassemble, refill and then use hydrogen peroxide in the nutrient solution to clean what couldn't be bleached (the roots).

I also had this happen to my plants but luckily I saved them and just happened to see them drooping one afternoon. One of the aerospring containers (I join two together to grow my heirlooms) was all smelly and it was obvious the roots were starting to die. I instantly took out the garden hose and sprayed in fresh water and investigated. Turns out that somehow my sprayers got clogged from sucking in some algae via the pump. The second aerpospring container had a super strong airstone in that side and although the sprayers were clogged, the aeration helped save those roots from dying....Although in time Im sure it would have started dying as the others did.

I simply unglogged the sprayers, flushed out the systems with new water and filled them back up and added nutrients...problem solved...and I added a much better airpump to both sides if my sprayers clog again, this will help prolong the life until I can unclog them.

I'm so glad I posted this thread. I had no idea that aerating the water was so important. I thought it was a "nice to do" thing rather than a "must be done" thing.

Looking through your blog I'm betting that the lack of aeration was probably a contributing factor in most of the problems you had before.

I'm not trying to be critical when I say this, but it's pretty impressive you were able to keep it afloat this long. To grow without aeration and get any kind of real results means you didn't make any other mistakes. If you had, it would've tanked things super fast.

I bet your plants are going to take over your basement now that nothing's holding them back.