We just finished performing a water change, and we've made an unexpected discovery...  When I looked at the pump-return on our large eggplant, I didn't see much flow.  However, I did see a large mass of roots.  I thought that the roots might have overgrown the drain.  This has been known to happen, so we watch out for it.  Here's a photo of the big guy:

We decided to take a look under the hood, at the root system beneath.  We released the latches on the top bucket, then lifted the lid (and whole eggplant with it).  Take a look what we found:

The odd-looking shape is perfectly understandable.  The roots grew until the filled the entire bucket.  Next, they started to form a root-mass on the bottom of the bucket.  Finally, they discovered the drain into the reservoir (the tube-shape on the bottom).  The roots literally grew "down the drain".  I've never seen roots that are so uniformly white and healthy.  I'm really starting to love House and Garden (Van de Zwaan).  Their stuff is really spectacular.

Secondly this week, I'd like to answer an ongoing question from several of our readers.  Frequently, I'm asked about aeroponic sprayers and nutrient clogging.  I'm amazed that people ask so much, as I've never had a problem.  I frequently use products from Botanicare, General Hydroponics, House and Garden, Technaflora, DNF, and Grotek. None of them has ever given me a problem at all.

I just changed out the aeroponics sprayers in my the CO2Boost Experiment, which gave me a unique oppotunity to show you the sprayers.  These sprayers were photographed about two minutes after them left service.  They had been spraying an 1800 PPM mixture for 29 days, under 24 hour spray.

The sprayers only show very slight and superficial nutrient. None of the "working" surfaces had any buildup at all.  I'm genuniely not sure why other people are having the clogging problems, but none are happening here.