Clean Those Systems!

Our PowerGrower started having problems over the last week.  Water was not leveling out in all of the PowerGrower units; water was not dripping from the rings as it should; and one of my pepper plants was starting to have issues. 

Well, we just got so busy and we started manually taking water out of the reservoir and distributing it to the PowerGrower units until we could spend a day to really do a lot of work in the grow room.  That day came yesterday.  We had added FloraKleen to the system last week to help loosen the salts anticipating the cleanup was coming.

What we found:

     1.  Several plants (Zucchini mainly) had root masses that were so large
          that they began to grow back up into the water connection lines
          between the pots.  The growth choked off the free flow of water
          between the pots.

     2.  The air pump needed a serious cleaning as salt and dust particles
          were clogging the normal flow of air to the lines.  Several lines
          were not functioning at all.

What we accomplished:

     1.  Since our zucchini plants were had already served us well and were
          on their last legs, we removed them from the system.  Our yellow
          pepper plant was also struggling so we added it to the compost bin.

     2.  We removed all of the debris from the air pumps, changed several
           lines, and ordered a rebuild kit in case the pump went south in the future.

     3.  We have the system running normally again  -   Lesson learned
           - MAINTENANCE SHOULD NOT BE PUT OFF