Mars hydro setup. 24k gold & white widow

Well week 2 was an interesting one, things started off a mess and got worse but by day 21 on Christmas eve I think we've gotten these girls back on the right track. Day 14 our girls were looking a little sad, they'd been drinking nothing but water since the first feed but are looking a little sad for their age. I couldn't help but feel something was off but I couldn't put my finger on why. The tent conditions were solid, steady 76F & 65-70% RH. Lights still @ 50% hung @ 30". The Promix HP was feeling hard and clumpy between waters so I decided it was time to transplant, the cardboard containers have been extremely annoying drying out way too quickly. As I transplanted I didn't see a good root ball, only the odd root sticking through some of the cube even crumbled away as I moved them but I got them into the 3G fabric pots in any case. With them in their new homes the lower growth was looking a lime green colour so I decided to give them a light feed, 1/4 gallon of 280ppm flora trio very weak batch less than 1/4 strength. Day 15: The new growth looks to be getting a little pale at the tips and the lower growth is looking worse, the girls are still small for their age but I decided to give it another day. Day 16: The Bottom leaves are nearly completely colourless and I still dont like what I'm seeing at the tips of the growth above it. The slow growth continues. Day 17: The trend continues Day 18: No change, no growth I know something is up. I researched a bit and saw it looked like a nitrogen & calcium deficiency... but why? I just fed these girls 3 days ago they should be happy and green. I look to the medium I've never used promix hp before but my gut is telling me my problem lies in there. I decided to go with a stronger feed at around 468ppm @ 6.1 PH with some rapid start. I wanted to test the runoff and see what was going on in there. The runoff of the first plant was showing 6.5PH & 2480 PPM!!! I was shocked. How did this happen? I've only fed that medium once @ 280PPM. I Flushed them all with unPH'd water until I got the runoff below 200PPM (roughly 9 Gallons) and then fed them. Back to the tent and hope we see some improvement. Day 19: What a difference, I had more growth in a night then I've seen since they popped the soil. New growth forming looks great maybe we've righted the ship! Day 20: The upward trend continues I delighted to say. unfortunately the first leaves don't look like they'll be making a comeback. I'm also seeing a little twisting on the the leaf tips of Bill. Looks Like it might be slight nute burn from the transplant feed. I'll monitor and if it continues scale thing down a bit. Day 21: The difference 3 days can make is truly astounding. It's Christmas eve and I've got the Christmas miracle I was hoping for. Also I found something interesting in the basement of my new home, it looks like a really nice RO system that's currently bypassed. I'm going to try changing the filters and getting this thing running for the girls. I decided to keep Shy Di and King Bob in my other tent for a couple weeks purely for experimental purposes. They remain unflushed, untransplanted and mostly just watered. you'll notice there has been literally no growth at all. They dont have a good root ball just nothing good going on there but they will be my lab rats. I currently can only grow 4 plants until my license is approved so I might as well plaay with them until they hit the compost. Also I still can't explain the high PPM runoff, I took a picture of the bucket of runoff water and you'll see its a pretty syrupy brown. Aside from day of transplant I've always watered to 20% runoff. I decided to make a slurry with some ProMix out of the bag. Water in was 189PPM, Slurry was 479PPM. I don't know exactly what this means for the future but I will be keeping a closer eye on my runoff as we move forward.