Nute burn from tap water? or nutrient deficiency?

Discussion in 'Sick Plants and Problems' started by jimnut, May 6, 2009.

  1. Sorry for the double post, just wanted to provide a better title. 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? They 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). Both plants still have their first small leaf set and another (the 2nd set) is starting to grow out of the middle. The one on the 75% brown plant is growing much slower than the other though

    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.
     
  2. STOP using distilled water go back to tap water,,actually tap water has a few benifical minerals and such distilled water has not. I don't no about high salt in tap water if you mean the white build up is from hard water.There talking human but cannabis uses alot of mag and there are other microb's.:smoke:
    Hard Water Benefits

    Hard water is not a health hazard. In fact, the National Research Council (National Academy of Sciences) states that hard drinking water generally contributes a small amount toward total calcium and magnesium human dietary needs. They further state that in some instances, where dissolved calcium and magnesium are very high, water could be a major contributor of calcium and magnesium to the diet.
     
  3. Hey thanks for the advice. Yeah, the white build up was from the hard water, but that's an interesting article you posted too. It makes sense, I just didn't want to put my one week old seedlings in 300+ ppm water. I had heard that might not be good. Thanks again.
     

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