What now???

You can even dilute the water a bit more to add some vegg nutes in since i see your plants burned through the cotyledons.

OK Jack sorry to do this to you, but you added in some second and third thoughts. What final instructions do you have? I will likely get the water from one of these filler up stations. I will take my meter and get the lowest ppm count I can and if that doesn't get me low enough then i will just buy some distilled water in a jug. If I use just this water then I will have to add in Cal-mag, but if I mix it half and half then I can avoid Cal-mag. A 50/50 mix will put me at about 100 to 125 which will be fine next week probably. However this week, tonight's water change, I will reduce the water blend further to 25/75 to hopefully get a ppm of about 75 and then add in my oh so dangerous veg ferts to get a final res ppm of about 100 to 125. Next week I will bump the ppm's if all goes well. Does this sound right?

Will I be able to heal the plant leaves at least the yellowing? How long should I wait to see signs of improvement? Will the leaves pick up and the yellow start to fade?

Yup that sounds good to me, Dont worry about the leaves, the probability of saving them is low, but they may come back. Fortunately your plants are still very young and u can let them vegg a little longer to get more leaves. I always loose some leaves its not really a big deal.

First I see your water as a big problem. You need to start from zero with fog and half or less nutes. Really you don't know what the 225ppm's are in your water. Chlorine or floride in a fogger will not work and we have seen what happens. It's not pretty and it looks like what is happening to yours.

The thing I found with fog is the roots can not be dry for even a few minutes. fog is so fine a mist it dries up fast. And will let root chamber heat up unless the room is kept cold. We finally had to keep the fog on 24/7. When the plants get bigger the fog needs to increase big time. This is where we started down hill. I meen you need alot of fog or your plants need the water up take. that is why even the boys at NASA saw that an areo system or DWC hybrid running was needed to really bring home the buds.

Get some clean water and pump up the fog they will be OK.

OH, and you have had some really good help reasoning things out.

By far this has been the best help, it's much appreciated. Last night I went and got some 11 ppm R/O water. I left about 3 gallons of my old water in the tank and then mixed in the R/O water until I had 150 ppm's. I added nothing else and will let that sit for a few days. Already 12 hours later the leaves have picked up and they give off good vibes. I'm not sure how to explain it but you can sort of just tell when you finally get it right, the plant gives good vibes.

This is now the 3rd crisis I have gone through and I have to wonder what else is waiting. I have a feeling even before reading today's posts, that the timer was going to be the next thing. I still don't have definitive advice on how long to set the timer for. Now today it looks like I should be increasing the watering timer every week or so.

As to the watering issues, tell me if this will work. I have a single chamber fog system so it's inevitable that the roots will grow down to the bottom of the tank. They will eventually touch the water and will be able to use that as their source of water. Will I even need to increase the fog if I allow the roots to grow down to the res? I have bubblers in there already so it's kind of like a DWC system at that point.

I have thought long and hard about whether to put my original spray heads back into the chamber. I used a homemade aeroponic system while I waited for the fogger to arrive. The problem I have with putting the sprayers back in is that my misters hit the bottom of the net cups which means that I wont have a fog zone any more so why even use fog in the first place. I know a lot of people use fog for only the first few weeks and then switch to another system. If I were to include sprayers then the best way to include them would be towards the middle of the res. Then I would have a fog zone, spray zone and finally a DWC zone. I think fogbox does something like that. My point is that I don't even have enough roots to allow the misters to even make contact with roots and if I raise the misters then I negate the fog. All the problems associated with fog tend to be with the later stages of plant development with the plants incessant need for massive amounts of water and I'm no where near that point. My issues seem to be with my retardedness more then anything. First the lights too low, then late night timer issues, now the water.

If I did include spray heads, wouldn't they best be used towards the middle of the root zone which means that I don't even need to worry about that for at least another week or two?

Thanks for the great info fellows.

i would just do a ebb and flow or dripper, when the fog is off to soak the roots, or u could set a timer to fog, and then right after u can have another timer switch on a drip or something. So ur cycling the process, when the roots start to dry up let the cycle restart, the roots will absorb a lot from the fog, and then they will get drenched right after with the a drip or ebb or even ur misters. This should keep everything in check, and allow u to still utilize the full capability of the fog. That article i gave you is pretty good, u dont have to follow anything to the T, make it ur own:jointsmile:
About the roots being in the bottom, is it possible to have a separate res? I don't think u want the roots to be submerged for long periods of time. That tap root sucks up a lot of nutes, it might overwhelm the fog capabilities.

I broke down and put misters tn tonight and in a mater of hours the plants doubled in leaf size. I am pretty amazed. Regardless of the nutrients level the plants for sure have not been getting enough water. I think the problem lies in the size of the container I used. Tonight as I was installing the misters I noticed the fog wanting to settle on the bottom 3 inches above the water line. Now I could add another 20 gallons into the res or I can just get a smaller container. This would be more along the lines of the fogponic commercially available system with their shallow fog chamber. I also read that the misters should only be used in 15 on and then off. I think I will get a second timer for the misters as well. I can alternately cycle the misters and fog in a more shallow container and I will probably be spot on.

The only problem with using a second chamber is that I would need a way to move the fog around. Up till this point I have been using fans but I have had 3 burn out do to moisture build up. Unless I know for sure there is such a thing as a water proof fan, then I don't want to create a system that would use a fan. Besides I had fans blowing down and within the fog chamber already and still it doesn't help the fog stay were it needs too. A fanless system would be ideal I think.

I'm hoping the roots will be fine at the bottom of the res chamber. Since the nute level's will be pretty low, I hope the plants will be fine. Isn't this how the DWC method works anyway? I have seen pictures of a DWC/fog system and those plants were huge.

You need to match the size of ur root chamber to the output capacity of the fog, U should be able to fill up the chamber completely with fog, not just the bottom, What fogger are u using?

Keep in mind a DWC grown plant sucks up massive amounts of water, and if your Nute solution is low in PPM the plants will be flushing out all those nutes the fog just gave it. But then again there is always a balance you could find between the two. A DWC/fog method kinda seems redundant becuase there 2 methods on completely different extremes of Hydro. One Utilizes alot of water and alot of nutes, while the other is the exact opposite, fog requires little water and low ppms. A DWC/fog method would be more like a DWC then fog type set up which im sure your not really trying to do.

In any case, try and find a container that isnt so deep, i searched ur posts and found ur set up. Since the fog is heavy it will drop, and once it hits water it will condense quickly(remeber water is polar and sticks to itself).. I really think the best solution your going to come up with would be to find a container at least half the depth of the one u have now, and use a separate res. The fog has to fill up the chamber so it can engulf the roots, and if u can fit some misters in there go for it. u could fog a couple times before having the misters come on too. Also, the separate res makes life so much easier because ur gonna have to dump the water out once-twice a week anyway, with a seperate res u wont have to change the water as frequently because the roots only get what u give them and your nutes should stay in balance a little longer.

I drew a quick sketch for you, the misting lines dont go through the bottom of the root chamber kinda hard to make it out, they would enter up on the side to prevent leaks. This way u will have a shallow root chamber and u can utilize all the supplies u already have. Much better to have a complete aero system them an hybrib that defeats the purpose. let me know what u think.