Hey Everyone, I hope you all can give me ahand with this one. I thought I had things pretty much nailed down but apparently I am missing something. I have 3 Blue Widdow and 3 G-13's in RDWC. Using Lucas Formula with GH nutes. They are all from clones that I cut & rooted in my aerocloner. After rooting I moved them into netpots w/ hydroton in a small RDWC system in my veg tent under 7 - 15watt 6500k CFL's (24/0). I ran PH'd tap water and gradually ramped the nutes up to just over half strength (500ppm) They were quite healthy when I moved them to the flower room. I started them as follows: RDWC system 600 watt HPS 40" above plants on 18/6 schedule Temps 73F - 85F RH 40-50% Nute temp 69F TDS 600ppm PH 5.8 They went a bit droopy when I moved them but recovered nicely in 24 hrs. I did have one day that the AC shut down and the temp in the room hit 97F before I got the air restarted. Again, they went a bit droopy but recovered quickly. I ran this way for 6 days and all looked good. I changed my lights to 12/12 schedule and dropped the light down about 6". After two days the newer growth was looking pale compared to earlier growth. I thought "Nitrogen defficient" and bumped the nutes up to 800ppm. They continued to decline. I bumped nutes to near full strength (950ppm). I then noticed that the viens in the leaves were notably darker than the area between and I was starting to see some brown spots and dying off on the edges of a few leaves as well as stalks beginning to sag & droop. I bit of research led me to think I had a Mag defficiency. I added epsom salts @1/2tsp per gallon to my nutes and made a foliar spray of 1/4tsp epsom salts in a gallon of water & PG'd to 6.0. With Mag added and foliar spray for two days I thought things were improving. Then when I checked on them this morning they look AWFUL!! Pics below. That got me thinking..... I had very good success before I moved to my new space. About the time I moved to a larger space I also had some events in my life that distracted me badly from my garden. I had one decent crop but it did have an issue with the brown spots on the leaves that coincided with my addition of an ozone generator to control odor. I blamed the ozone generator. I decided not to use the ozone on future crops. What I didn't consider was that at the same time I started the ozone I also moved my lights to a 12/12 schedule. Second crop: I got really distracted and the weather got quite hot. Clones were happy until they started to show flower. Then they started to droop and die. As I had allowed the nute temp to run into the 80s for several days and the roots looked a bit funky I suspected root rot and treated with bleach & H2O2 as proscribed. I also added a nute chiller. The plants seemed to improve a bit then went to hell and I chopped them. After I pulled these out I threw away all of the netpots, hydroton etc. I filled the entire system with strong bleach solution and ran it for two days then flushed thoroughly with tap water. I soaked all of my tools & glassware in a strong bleach solution and rinsed. Third attempt: I had a few clones that had been hanging out living on straight tap water. Suprisingly they were quite healthy looking. I moved them to flower and very soon they started looking very much like what I am seeing in my current batch. I did make one serious mistake on these. I misread my prior notes from successful grows and started my nute level much higher than I should have. I flushed the system and refilled with nutes @ 650ppm and 5.8PH. They died.... Here we are today. My current plants are looking quite bad and I am no longer convinced that it is a Mag defficiency. As far as I can see: Lights - Good. Not too close. Air temp - 73-85F -Good RH - 40-50% - Good Nute temp - 69F - Good Nutes - Lucas 1/2 strength - OK??? TDS - Currently 500ppm - OK???? PH - 5.8 - Good Airflow/ventilation - Good What am I missing?
I guess I'll take a stab at. It sounds like you over corrected everything. Epsom salt should fix your stem color with 1 does, giving it everyday good build up salt and lockout other stuff. Also, I would have lowered my PPM. If you start, for example, at 600 PPM, come back and check again in a couple days, if it's higher, maybe around 7-800, your plant is drinking more water than nutrients and that means you need to lower your concentration. If it goes the other way, then that's when I would add more nutes.
Thanks for the input EggMan. I did only dose with the epsom salts in the nute solution once. I did apply the foliar spray multiple times. I started them out at 600ppm and they looked good. I switched the lights to 12/12 and they started to look quite pale and the TDS dropped slightly. Then I bumped the nutes up etc...
See the chart below for light distance...6 inches is way to close on any clone, don't forget with clones you don't get any of that hybrid vigor that many gardeners blab about, so things may well take longer. Ensure that you have enough grown roots, at least 2-3 inches before blasting them with you concoctions, as clone lighting is soft, you just want the photo motor to tick over not rev. Attempt to stabilize the plant before dumping to 12x12 at least 1 week of 18/6 ..just to allow the plant to settle, as cloning is one of the most traumatic situations for plants ....go figure!
Vostok, Thanks for your reply. I am not sure I understand though. The lights started @ 40" above the plants and are now about 34" above the plants. I had 5-10" of roots hanging from the net pots when I moved them. Not sure what you are refering to "photo motor"? My cloning pricess includes: rooting the clone, moving the clone to netpot/hydroton in a small rdwc and vegging for a couple of weeks before moving to flower. I did change lighting sched from 24/0 to 18/6 for 5 days then to 12/12. I thought I had mentioned the 18/6 above but apparently I left that out. They looked good while on 18/6. It was after changing to 12/12 that things started to look bad. First the new growth started to pale then the older leaves started to droop a bit. Then I started to see the brown spots followed by stems going soft and letting the plant droop. Finally the dieing off of the edges of some of the leaves. Thanks again and I appreciate your assistance. FJ.
Any clues from the pictures? Currently I have dumped the nute solution and refilled with tap water PH'd to 6.2. I know when I add nutes the ph will drop further.
Circulate and give thought to the last time you jumped into a pool of icy waters....so why should your ill plants....? lol
Sounds like youve done pretty much whatever you can, and its not making much of a difference. It isnt light shock. If it was, youd see uniform yellowing/bleaching of your leaves. Since all your plants are affected, i would suspect theres a problem with your system. I think thats the first thing you need to rule out. Make sure your air pump is working properly, is of the right capacity, and theres nothing clogging the lines up. To me, your plants have the classic overwatered/oxygen deprived symptoms. Nute def like symptoms also show up with low o2. Thats the first thing id check.
Thanks Blackmore, Of the six plants only one of them appears relatively unaffected. It is the smallest of the six. I think that may be an anomoly and the issue is likely system wide. As to the O2 question: I have two air pumps with a combined capacity of 65 liters/minute. They are running through 8 air stones. All are bubbling nicely. That does bring to mind the difference between this system and my other RDWC system that worked extremely well. The newer system has over twice the air pump and five times the nute solution capacity. Te newer system also has a 6" 'waterfall' where the water returns to the control bucket. Anyone have any thoughts regarding the plants possibly exceeding the capability of my system only after switching to 12/12? Is it likely that the plants O2 requirements increase significantly when going to flower? Any suggestions regarding correct air pump capacity for a system contaning 42 gallons of nutes and 6 - 8 plants? Thanks again. FJ.
I hate changing more than one factor at a time while attempting to troubleshoot. Unfortunately I am afraid that I will loose these girls if I don't find a solution quickly. That said... Today I have: Dumped (most of) the nute solution and replaced it with fresh 550ppm @ 5.8PH. Added a 3rd air pump w/3 airstones. Added H2O2 @ 3ml/gal to the nute solution. In the process I also noticed that not one, but two of the plants look ok. They are less obvious as the are the two "runts" of the group. They have received one bit of attention that the others have not. When I check PH & TDS I collect 200ml of nute solution from the 'waterfall' in a beaker and test from there. After I am done top water the two runts with the solution. Take a look at the two smallest plants in the middle of http://static.grscty.com/uploads/monthly_09_2013/post-143431-0-91247800-1378926176.jpg Thoughts? Thanks. FJ.
Correction on the air pump specs: Combined output 47 lpm not the 65 lpm stated earlier. With the addition of the 3rd pump I now have 56 lpm total rated air pump capacity.
If its working fine, the airpumps probably not the issue. Although it really looks like it. And ur right, if it was the air pump, these symptoms wouldve showed up in veg. Hopefully your pump hasnt developed a hiccup or some choked lines. Other than that, I cant think of any other reason why your plants would look so starved. Light shock, eventhough i doubt it, you could place a cfl over one of the plants and see if she recovers. That would rule the lights out. Ive had plants suffer light shock before when switching from cfl to hps. They cleared back up within hours after i cfled them. But my symptoms were very very different.
I can clearly see the bubbles produced by each of the airstones. I am confident that my air system is working. I am questioning whether it is sized correctly? As far as light shock: The plants did droop significantly when I moved them from cfl to hps. They recovered nicely overnight. Things looked good until I went to 12/12 on the lights. ????
Blackmore, I appreciate you taking time to give me a hand. I am a bit stumped. I have had enough success with my hydro systems that I thought I had things pretty well nailed. Unfortunately this has me fairly stumped. Any additional suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks FJ.
For lack of any other course of action I have ordered a 110lpm air pump. It should be here tomorrow. I have been using tap water so far with good success until recently. I purchased an RO filter and installed it today. I am filling my #2 tank with RO water. Things that worked for me very well in the past are now failing. I am trying to figure out what I may be doing differently that would cause my issues. Any thoughts as to what I may be doing wrong would be much appreciated. Thanks FJ.
Your situationhas me stumped really. Ive never heard or seen plants react this way to 12/12. - plants look overwatered/o2 deprived - not nutrient related - o2 is fine (check roots for rot, compare a droopy plants roots to a healthier one) - no evidence of light shock/bleaching So i dunno. Since 12/12 caused this, maybe the plants could be eased into 12/12 by gradually reducing the daylight hours over the course of a few days. (in an attempt to reduce shock) But ive never faced this problem before. Just taking shots in the dark now.