im new to hydro and my plants arent happy about it,,,,,,they arent growing and they continue to droop.
Your problems are fixable without going to pots of soil.
Sounds like classic overwatering. Got yellow leaves or tips, too?
Rockwool cubes are highly absorbent. If you saturate them, all the air is driven out of the cube, favouring anaerobic pathogens and drowning roots.
Cubes must be kept damp, never wet or saturated. Clones should be planted into the media of your choice soon after they are showing a decent spray of roots, like these:
These are about 12 days post cutting and are ready for pots of media and HID light.
Now, to fix your immediate problem, add H2O2, 50% grade at 1ml/L of watering solution, correct pH to 5.8 if needed. Wet your cubes thoroughly with this solution and shake the excess out with a sharp snap of the wrist until you can shake no more liquid out of the cubes. Don't squeeze rockwool- crushes the material and removes airspaces, will cause an overwatering-like condition. A bucket of watering solution will last 3-4 days before you should dose it again with H2O2 or mix up a new bucket.
Keep your clones only damp, never wet; a 40mm cube weighs 5g dry, 20-25g when properly 'damp.' Heavier than that is too wet. If measuring your watering by weight, you'll have to estimate the wt of the clone stuck in the cube, perhaps 10-15g- weigh a couple of your cuttings to know for sure so you can subtract it from a total wt of a clone in a cube.
Water clones in RW cubes by dipping only a corner of the cube for only a second or less into your bucket of watering solution:
Your clones will begin to show new, lime-green growth on their tips in 7-10 days. You should also see a recovery in your roots, which are probably pretty brown now. You should see some new, white roots poking out of the bottoms of your cubes. Once the roots have redeveloped to the point shown in the pic above and there's a little new growth on the tip, they can be potted up in media and put under a big light.
If you're going to nest your RW cubes in pots of pellets in a flood system, which will require flooding about 3x per lights-on, make sure that your RW cube is about 1/2" ABOVE the flood line. The flood level MUST NOT be allowed to touch the RW cube. Roots will seek the damp pellets, but you can handwater the pellets around the cube (NOT THE CUBE) for the first week in the pellets. If you use pots of absorbent media like RW floc, flood advanced plants 1x/day at lights on; newbs can be flooded as little as 1x every 2-3 days. Gauge by feel of the weight of the pot. Small plants will take a long time to soak up al the water in a pot of absorbent media.
