Crap.. Just killed my rez culture, where to go from here?

So I noticed one of my plants not keeping up with the rest; it looks fine, just not growing as fast. When examining the roots I noticed that half the roots had some very minor brown algae/rot or something on 'em.

Currently I run Technaflora nutes + Great White + Humboldt MycoMadness @ 70F rez temp, and you'd think I'd have no root issues with the heavy beneficials & moderate rez temps. Anyway, I think I fixed the cause of the brown area (bigger pump/more circulation & new airstones). But while at the hydro store I saw some Dutch Master Zone & remembered hearing good stuff about it so I grabbed some & applied it without checking the contents of it (doh!).

After noticing the foaming I got a little nervous & decided to read the label... Copper Sulphate... oh crap, there goes any beneficials I had going. So what should I do now?

* Should I continue with the Zone (since I had brown stuff while using beneficials, maybe they weren't doing the job anyway)?
or
* Should I wait a day or two, drain everything & refill & repopulate? I can repopulate relatively quickly; I use tap h20, so I always run a 20gal rubbermaid with heavy airstones for a few days & then apply beneficials, and wait a few days & I fill my res from that to give the beneficials a good head start.

Or i guess it's possible that applying zone before rez changes, and refilling with pre-populated h20 might not be a bad strategy in general.

Anyone ever accidentally done this before???

I'd keep using the zone, and get rid of the beni's. Zone is some freakin great stuff. My res temps reach 75 degrees + and I have no root problems. Soon I will have a chiller and it will be a non-issue but in the mean time DM Zone has saved my ass. When people who use beneficial bacteria are having root problems they turn to Zone, so that should tell you how effective it is. The only down side to Zone is you cannot run DM Zone and H&G Roots Excelerator at the same time, they are mutually exclusive. But other than that Zone is a great product and I swear by it. I run zone in my system from the day I put the ladies in it until flush time.

Yea I've always had problems with anything but NTAG(NOT true aeroponic grow) aero setups, ie. micro sprinklers. But after listening to heisenberg a little too much, j/k, I tried beneficials and have been having much success. So i figured I'd build a RDWC setup since these undercurrent systems seem to be all the rage these days(and I wanted to get my numbers down to satisfy the legal dept, in my brain that is). Anyways, I had been content on sticking with beneficials until I unknowingly massacred them yesterday. After thinking about it I kinda like this crazy idea of using both Zone & Beneficials. Obviously not at the same time, but presuming I can keep some sort of master culture going in a seperate system, then I should be able to nuke everything with zone whenever needed and then quickly repopulate the rez by innoculating with a portion of the master culture.

On a side note... I haven't used HG Roots Excelerator, but I know people who have, and I have used Humboldt Roots which is completely identical in every way (consistency, behavior, smell, even packaging ie. aluminum bottle) and I must say I wasn't all that impressed. It's definitely active stuff, I could tell by the "PSssst..." when i initially opened the bottle. While i didn't have the airstone gunk issues many report, my biggest gripe is that as soon as you open the bottle it seems that the stuff has a very limited lifespan. By the time I got to the end of the bottle the stuff stank like rotten cabbage.

Now Dutch Master on the other hand, I am very impressed with. Looking at the zone product, the main ingrediant is Copper Sulphate. Copper has anti-microbial properties (along w silver & gold) but it is toxic for plants as we all know. Obviously DM has figured some way to make it work as an anti-microbial without killing the plants, thereby sterilizing the root zone. I suspect it won't help with algae, but for rot it should be a "silver bullet". What really impresses me is how they are pushing the envelope with stuff like this, I mean are they're ANY other root products out there that work using similar mechanisms? I dunno of any. When you consider that, and then also look at some of they're other cutting edge products like liquid light / penetrator, flower reverse, kreb cycle optimized nutes, etc. It seems to me that the folks over at DM are real pro's, and the stuff they are putting out is light years ahead of MOST of the competition. I'm getting real sick of the same ole' repackaged nutes with a fancy new label that show up at the hydro store every couple of months. So now that I've got myself all worked up over DM products, hopefully this Zone stuff will work like everyone says it does and cure all my problems

Are they still in the water that had the bennies + Zone or did you make up fresh water with Zone alone? And is there any improvement since yesterday? I sure hope it works out for you dude, that root rot is nasty stuff!

When I was in ebb and flow I used bennies, but as res change I would flood with Zone for a few hours, then reinoculate. Really had no reason to do this other than wanting to use up my Zone, but in any case it seemed to work fine. Zone does not seem to leave a anti-microbial film like Physan 20. At the same time I can't say I saw any benefit what so ever from periodic sterilization.

I found Zone is a great product to keep your res purged of everything, including bugs and indeed algae, except of course for the dreaded brown slime algae. For that particular problem zone did absolutely nothing, even at mega doses.