Well, my poor strawberry plants had a fungus of some sort and the roots were rotting. I am still trying to figure out what caused it, but I have made some changes. Turns out strawberries do not like "wet feet", ie they shouldn't be saturated.
Unfortunately I didn't know this when building the system, and set it up so that a trickle of nutrient water was constantly going over the roots. I had been using a modified NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) system. In an NFT system the plant roots must reach the bottom of the channel so that the tips are immersed in the nutrient water. However, if your roots are long enough to reach the bottom, then you can't use this system.
Under normal propagation you let the roots grow long enough before transplanting them into the NFT system. But since these plants were store bought in soil, many of them didn't have long enough root structures. Thus I was encouraging the roots to grow by running water through the net pots and down the roots. (see the previous post for more info).
I was able to save enough of the roots by soaking them in hydrogen peroxide (it eats away the fungus and dead root material) and rearrange them in the pots so that the roots make it down to the bottom of the channel where the water is. My first big failure and lesson learned. Hopefully the plants will survive, they are in pretty sad shape right now, and our little cold snap isn't helping I am sure.
Sadly I panicked when I saw the condition of the roots and didn't stop to take any pictures. Next time I will get pictures!
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