A little root separation dilemma

The situation is this: I have several plants that are about 3 weeks into flower in a 6" PVC tube being misted in a LP aero setup. The plants have stretched ridiculously and have overgrown my light. The long and short of it is that I have small vegged plants of a different (better) strain that I'd like to replace these with, but I'd rather not just have the flowering plants go to waste and throw them away. The dilemma lies in the fact that the nature of growing in a single, communal tube means that the roots have at this point all grown together into a single, interwoven root mat structure. I can't separate them without cutting or pulling the roots apart. I did a little test run with two plants. One recovered pretty well and the other does not seem so pleased. It's alive but the leaves are kinda droopy and sad (only day 2 though).

I have put them into nutrient solution with Roots Exceleratur from H&G, which does work well for stimulating root development. I'm hoping it will help the plants quickly regenerate their roots. I'm not really sure how to be gentle or do this in a non-stressful way, but I do need to separate and extract the individual plants. There may be no other way than to just rip the band-aid so to speak, but if anyone has any ideas I'm open to anything?

i have often run into this problem as well, theres really not much you can do other than cut them up with even root systems and hope they recover, most of them will, it is stressful but it wont kill all of them, i wouldnt throw them away either, flower them fuckers, good luck

Thanks for the input aknight3! Good to hear from someone who's been through this. I've chopped roots with vegging plants to a certain extent, and they do tend to recover and grow new roots, but I never attempted it with plants this far into flower before. The worst scenario would be if they never really recovered but didn't die either - they would just sort of limp through the rest of flower and produce really crappy results. I'd rather not waste the time and effort if that's going to be the case.

I've heard that as long as you don't punish the taproot too harshly, the peripheral root structure can regenerate. I hope that's the case???