First Grow - LSD DWC

Sit back. Grab a box of tissues. Hug your dog and read this tragic tale of this last week. Two of my three plants were having a hard time. One has recovered and one is on the verge of being good for nothing but compost. 😥 I defoliated at the end of last week. Two of the plants started showing signs of stress soon after that, which didn't surprise me after defoliation. The nutrient levels in their 5 gal DWC buckets started climbing out of control. There were also some brown spots on the leaves which I thought was calcium deficiency. I guessed it was nutrient lock and even though I add Cal Mag to my water, it made sense to me that it could also get calcium deficiency if it wasn't taking up the nutrients. I flushed the pots of all the plants and nothing changed after a couple days. I began checking around and noticed that there were problems with the air lines to the two affected plants. One hose had a kink. The other had a leak. and the pump had somehow been bumped down from the normal max output. There were still bubbles coming to the surface, but I had not noticed before that they weren't as strong as they used to be. I fixed these issues and even added a second air rock to each of the containers. One of the two sick plans recovered after this, but the last one was getting worse, wilting and looking almost dead. I cleaned up all the dead leaves and kept looking for issues. I found no signs of pests. However I noticed that even though the sick plant was in a warm spot in the far back corner. Even though there was a small clip on fan right by it at the top of the canopy, I think it may have just been recirculating hot air. I lowered the A/C in the room and moved the clip on fan to point up, pulling fresh cool air from below the canopy and left it to the large fan in the opposite corner to circulate all the air above the canopy in the tent. This dropped the air temperature from about 83 F at the screen there (possibly higher a few inches higher in the canopy) to about 76 F. Water temperature has stayed steady at 71 F. I also added a small dehumidifier, which dropped the humidity from around 80% to about 63%. It occurred to me that this could be Root Rot, but they roots looked and felt fine to me. I have a terrible sense of smell, so I probably wouldn't notice if the small was off. I added some H2O2 for a day and a half and I'm now flushing it again and adding Hydroguard. So far, her condition just keeps getting worse. My best guess is that it was a combination of these many small factors building up along with the stress of defoliation until it was pushed over the edge. I'm pretty much at a loss for where to go from here. It may be too little too late. I included a pic of the roots as best as I could show while flushing the bucket. The other big disaster I had this week was that I have some clones I took of these plants that I made just as an experiment. I have them in a closet in a half-ass grow. I decided that it would be easiest if I switched from 5 gal buckets to big plastic storage bins. I put them all in a new rugged looking 40 gal bin that I bought. I only got it filled about half way when it ruptured, spilling water everywhere...everywhere. I cleaned up that mess and have the plants set up in an alternate solution and they seem to be thriving. The bright spot is that the two healthy plants seem to be taking over the space the dying plant is vacating, so maybe it won't be too big of a hit on my total harvest.