Any advice is welcomed!

[jimnut]

Hey GC, thanks for taking the time to check out my thread, let me give you some of the facts.

What type of medium; soil or hydro? Hydro, started in rapid rooter
What brand and type of soil? Hydroton
Indoors or outdoors? Indoor
What strain? Super Lemon Haze feminized from Dr. Chronic
How old are the plants? they sprouted 2 weeks and 2 days ago, April 19
What type of lights and how many watts? 42 watt 6500K cfl on each
How far from the lights? Up until yesterday it was about 4 inches, now I've moved them back to about 7 or 8 inches
What, how much and when was it fed? NPK? I gave them a tiny bit of GH Micro (2 ml/gallon) 3 days ago, but then i decided that a complete flush would probably help last night, so now they're nutrient free
What is the medium/runoff pH and PPM if in hydro? The pH is at 7.06, because the water is distilled with no nutes or anything added. I put in a few drops of pH down just to see if it would lower and nothing happened due to no buffer.
What are the temps and humidity in the room? The temps stay in the range of 72-76F at all times, maybe 77 if it's super hot. Humidity is from 40 to around 60 which I've read is ideal.
What size pots? The started in the rapid rooter for a week and were then transfered to the waterfarm buckets filled with hydroton
Any bugs? Look real close. I don't see any signs of mites or other pests.
Any other pertinent info? I'll type a more detailed summary below.


First off, let me say that this might be long. I don't have a camera at the moment, so I will be as thorough as possible. I really want my babies to come through. Ok GC, I've done a lot of research over the past 4 months, and I decided to invest in a couple GH waterfarms (the drip systems with the 2.5g reservoir). I started them for a week in the rapid rooter. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. I kept the lights about 4 inches away to reduce stretching and tested it with my hand to make sure the lights wouldn't hurt it at the leaf level. I used a bucket of distilled water to water the babies. I ended up transplanting both into their waterfarm buckets after 7 or 8 days. Here's the first potential for problems. I decided to use tap water in the reservoirs, because I didn't have any distilled at my house at the time. So a week goes by with pretty much no new growth to my plants. Temps, lights, and rh were all the same. The plants are getting water, because they haven't fallen over or drooped, there was just no new growth. Well, over the course of that week, brown and yellow discoloring started to show on the edges of the big leaves first and then moved to the smaller 2nd set of leaves just barely growing out of the stem at the top of the plant. Also over this week, the brown spots became darker and almost brittle feeling. By the end of that week, I noticed that dried water droplets were leaving behind caked white residue (possibly salt or calcium). I decided to switch the water to distilled again and maybe put in some nutes (I know, probably not the right thing to do). Well, 2 days went by and the yellowing actually started to reduce, but the brown has started to spread closer from the edges of the leaves to the inside of the plant. Yesterday night, I switched the water out again for distilled with NOTHING added. I got a pH meter and tested the water out of the bottle. It was almost exactly 7 so that's fine, because I don't have anything in there to be absorbed by the roots, right? Well, one is about 75% brown with only the very core by the stem staying light green, and the other is about 50% brown all at the tips (the tips are straight-out but twisting)

Ok, so I guess I'm asking would a high salt tap water, brown blacken and yellow plant leaves like that? And can my plants bounce back? And what can I do now to ensure that? They're in pure distilled now, and the lights have been moved back to about 8 inches. Sorry for no pics.

[SmknVTEC]

Your pH is way off. It needs rto hold steady at 5.5 plus or minus two tenths no more. That is your biggest issue.