Problems with pests/fungus ??? Help

[mrledee]

Hello Everyone,

I just started my first aeroponic experiment a few weeks ago. Its outside (I know not exactly ideal) but so far its been going pretty good. I have my vegetable plants in 3" net baskets in 5 gallon buckets with sprayers spraying the nutrient solution into the root system that drains down into the main reservoir and recirculates. I've been using water soluble hydroponic fertilizer from JR Peters. For the past few weeks, everything was going pretty smoothly.

I began to notice some damage to some of the lower stems on a few of the plants (see pictures below). It looks like something is eating up parts of the lower stems of the plants and on one of them it actually looks like something cut the stem open and exposed part of the inside of the stem (#3). The sprayers are under the root system, no water should be hitting that part of the plant. The buckets are at least 3 feet of the ground and I haven't seen any insects on them. I'm not sure what else it could be. I live in Jacksonville Florida.

Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot!