Ok, so as I mentioned this was an experiment and I've learned quite a few things from it.
The plant was seeming fine, I was about to flip the lights and it just kinda stalled. The leaves were healthy looking and all, but growth stopped. So I accessed the chamber and the roots had just grown preferentially towards the emitters, so they were just dribbling water. I also had one short part of a day when the aero timer failed. The nutramist system didn't even come close to keeping the plant from wilting, although I caught it after just about 6 hours, so I dont think there was any damage, but I deemed the nutramist worthless.
So I cut away the pipe and built a frame out of pvc to hold 16 emitters at a distance from the root mass. I put a water heater drain pan to catch and surrounded it with black/white plastic, kinda like a shower curtain. It really worked great from just a mechanical perspective and the roots went from cramped and sort of orange, back to growing vigorously and very white.
roots as they appeared when I cut the pipe away
root just one week later, quickly recovered
the "shower curtain" root chamber
Well, the roots stayed healthy looking and so did the plant, but it never began to grow vigorously again. Since this is a 120 day sativa that I really wanted a good grow out of (and I dont grow the same strain twice), I cut her down and am starting over again with a more reliable non experimental system. I did ditch all those cfl lights, they were at the end of their lifespan anyway, and bought 15 x 100 watt LED UFO lights to use as side lighting, and replaced my overhead HPS with a
hortilux dual arc lamp.
Trunk and roots at execution
What I think I learned from this:
1) Nutramist is worthless, it cant even keep a big plants from wilting
2) In aero, if the roots can grow over to the emitters, they will, and they will block the mist. The mist needs some free space to spread out or its not aero
3) at least in this setup, the mantra "big good roots = good plant" just didn't pan out.
4) You don't need a full chamber for aero, just a catch pan and a shower curtain. I think that could be adapted to multi small plant grows and could easily simplify the whole construction
5) I don't think you can grow a multi pound tree with aero.
My clones are growing happily in their reliable 12 gallon hydroton bucket now, surrounded by seductive purple LED lights. I'll do another thread on that perhaps, its sure to work, I have lots of experience with hydroton buckets. ;)