Ban, this is a very basic question for a different forum, as hydroponic growing has its own set of unique growing problems and opportunities. You want to post here:

GW Hydroponic Growing Forum

Filling your res too high can be a problem. A temperature shock when changing water can also. You are a beginner, so the best bet is the hydro forum which talks exclusively about these issues.

My opinion of Flora Kleene, is that General hydroponics took you to the Cleaners with an unnecessary product looking for a problem you don't have and if anything , the misapplication of it helped prompt your problem, by not paying attention to the basics of water temperature, and by running a sterile res like it sounds, the chlorine may have damaged your roots. Tomatoes usually have no problem with chlorine vs. other hydro crops, but a combination of cold water, not enough aeration, too high water level and a litney of other problems all can cause what you had. Post pictures and details in the hydro forum... Next time buy a gallon of distilled water at Walmart, pH it between 4.8 and 5.0 and pour it through your growing media. Don't buy any proprietary formulas for anything unless you want to grow weed, which is what most of them are designed for since that's where the commercial bucks are made in home hydroponics. Otherwise IMO every single product I've seen and many I've tried are just a bunch of unsubstantiated "miraculous grower" claims.

Welcome to hydro
PC

Thanks PupillaCharites for the input.

I have posted the question in the hydroponic forum. You mentioned some good points and will use them on my next res change.

Thanks again

Good luck. They don't look as active as they usually are but Nov-Dec is usually a lull there in hydro. You will need pictures if anyone is going to have a go at helping with what specifically went wrong, since just saying you changed the res and used whatever product from GH is not the problem ... it is something that happened that you did not realize that a person with more experience might pick up on by seeing. If you don't post any pictures, I'd suggest you just do your next change gradually. Plants hate abrupt changes. Cold water on roots, chlorine in organic-free "sterile" systems, leaving the roots out of water and breezes going through them too long as you make changes, physical damage from manipulating & stuffing roots in netpots and media which can injure them, and most of all completely swapping the old working solution for something new that has a different EC or pH, which is what makes your Kleene treatment a likely culprit. Hopefully whatever happened won't be bad. Check the pH in case there was a rebound which can happen quickly in the first 48 hours or so after a change.

Unless your plants are suffering from a problem in hydro, it's usually better not to over correct things or put too many products in beside the basic 2 or 3 part fertilizer you are using since they remove the simplicity and add to the cost. Let me suggest though to you to add two cents worth of epsom salt (magnesium sulfate heptahydrate) = a half of a level teaspoon of epsom salt to your 15-18 gallon res which is a basic nutrient that Floras are a little light in specifically for growing tomatoes, tomatoes have a high magnesium requirement. Be sure you have enough Calcium to go with that, Calcium is probably the main cation nute you really need to watch in general in hydro.

Good luck
PC

Thanks PupillaCharites

The larger/stronger tomato plants have bounced back. A few smaller plants and weaker cucumber plants on the outer edges of my setup have died.
I did a reservoir change on my Ebb & Flo reservoir tank, last night, and skipped the Flora Kleene process. This setup has around 10 tomato plants topping off around 7 ft tall. I have changed this tank before with no adverse affects.
Looks like I have a 30 dollars a gallon of FloraKleene for sale... LOL.

Thanks again for the replies,
Ban

Hi Ban, I hear you on the Flora Kleene stuff ... just like all of those whiz bang products, they are worth hanging on to and some time you may get some tough salt buildup in the hydroton or whatever you have in the EnF and it may come in handy...you never know (the astronomical cost $30 is another subject)

I used to take care of that problem, which was not frequent but is more common in desert climates, by just running water through the media pHed as low as ok for the plants. When you finish the growing cycle, you can just put all the media into a large tub, and just soak it good, dump the water and soak it at a pH of 4 or so, dump, and soak rinse. That's how I'd recycle it swirling it around with my hands to get the old organic matter out, and that saves a lot of money on buying the media. When I let the roots completely dry out in the rig, they came out more whole and easily compared to wet roots.

For DWC it was never an issue. I still have some strawberries running that I planted in two tubs nearly 14 months ago. They are outside and whenever it rains the hydroton gets rinsed, but if they were inside, I would just run a gallon of $0.88 Walmart distilled water through the pot,s like I said in the first post. You could use RO or Rain too. That's better than tap or well because it sucks the residues into solution more, and having it pH'ed around 4.8 for tomatoes is fine. It takes extremely little pH down to pH distilled water if it isn't already at low pH. The acid side pH dissolves the carbonates and phosphates which build up and leave a white residue.

Your tomatoes sound great! Must be a pretty tough set-up to deal with plants that big. Here's a picture of strawberry roots damaged by chlorine in tap water after a res change:

Tomato is less sensitive to chlorine than strawberry but if there is very little organic matter in the solution, they can get punched too if chlorine is not dissipated. Like your situation, I lost some of the plants at the edges, where the bubbler was not very efficient.

Good luck. I'm so caught up in tomatoes I've neglected the strawberries, no res change since June 3!

PC

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Thu, Nov 13, 14 at 11:34