One of the unfortunate side effects of staying in a tropical climate is the growth of fungus in an open hydroponics culture. It is hard to detect unless your plants start to show blackened roots, dead tissue in the middle of the stem and the most telling: white hairy growth on living or dead tissue.

So one of the ways to get rid of fungal growth is to use a UV sterilizer in your system.

The unfortunate side-effect being if you use an EDTA based fertilizer, it will cause Photodegradation of EDTA very rapidly. Causing not only the destruction of your fertilizer but also a toxic build-up of metals within your system, such build up is known to cause pH changes which will cause plant stress and eventual death.

While I did not take photos of the unfortunate plant  condition, the new growth was dying on all 30+ plants that I had on my rack.

This usually is the signal that non-moveable elements which are usually non-organic in nature was deficient in the water, thereby proving the hypothesis that the chelating agent was being destroyed (the fertilizer I was using  uses EDTA as the only compound for that purpose).

No amount of water changing helped and I was forced to connect my only remaining Hydroponics system to my aquaculture tank in a bid to save it.