Droopy Plant with Spots

Discussion in 'Sick Plants and Problems' started by Enigma86, Jul 17, 2020.

  1. What type of medium; soil or hydro? 45/45/10 Peat Moss/Vermiculite/Perlite
    Indoors or outdoors? Indoors
    What strain? Super Critical Bud CBD
    How old are the plants?10 weeks
    What type of lights and how many watts? 480 W Meiju QB RedSpec
    How far from the lights? 16 inches
    What is your watering frequency and source of water? ~4 days / Tap
    What, how much and when was it fed? NPK? JR Peters Citrus (20-10-20) last fed 2 days ago
    What is the medium/runoff pH and PPM if in hydro? 5.3 / 550 ppm
    What are the temps and humidity in the room? 82 Day / 70 night
    What size pots? 10 gal smart pot
    Any bugs? Look real close. Not that I can see
    Any other pertinent info? Lots

    Pictures -

    Pictures a couple days before this started -

    Hey there guys I would really appreciate help. I have now been trying to figure out what is wrong with my plant for a week now and I've been trying different things to no avail. I had been using 1/4 tsp of my fert per 2 L of water for my feedings (didn't have ph or ppm yet) and everything was going fine. Then when I rewatched the youtube video I got this whole recipe from I realized I wasn't feeding enough and that it was supposed to be .6 grams / L, approximately 1/3 more than I had been feeding. Up to this point I had not been watering to run off because the plant was still filling out the 10 gal pot and I didn't want to over water, but this time I watered till runoff. The plant drooped like normal but never recovered. This is also when I cranked the light to full strength and added mylar around it.

    It's also worth mentioning she was in a different room where the temps were getting too high (90's). So the day after I watered her I moved her to a different room. Since then I have been seeing these spots starting to form on the second and third leaf nodes of the plant and the plant still just drooped. I had somebody tell me it was possibly lockout due to salts, so I flushed out the plant. I had a ph/tds meter show up in the mail and immediately tested my nutrient solution and even the stronger amount I fed only came out to 350 ppm (water about 160). I even recalibrated it with a gram of salt in 500 mL of distilled and tried again. So then I was worried I hadn't been feeding enough and just mixed in enough to get the ppm up to 750.

    That feeding was 6.1 Ph and 750 ppm. Runoff started coming out at 5.0 ph and 850 ppm and then the end of the runoff was 5.3 ph and 550 ppm. I also tested immediately with a soil tester and it gave a ph of 5.6-7 (though not sure how accurate with those things). Shes still droopy so I poked some holes around the medium to let more oxygen in. Now we are 2 days later. Sorry for the long story but I wanted to make sure people were aware of what I've done to get here. Thanks guys.
     
  2. From what I can tell that seems to be fairly too acidic for your plants. If i was you i would bump up that Ph number by 0.5 to see if that improves the water and nutrient uptake of that plant. When your PH drops by 1.0 that means your medium is acid, that medium is potentially feeding that plant already. feeding, i dont think, is the problem. I'm willing to bet its due to PH causing a nutrient up take issue. I'm sure some expert in here is gonna give you a similar answer. Imma noob hahaha so wait for some one more experienced to give you more accurate answer. But for now I would defiantly up the PH feeding by 0.5 maybe even 1.0. So feed with 6.5 not 6.1 ( maybe 7.0) and see if you see an improvement if you have to immediately water before heavy wilting if its that bad and you are waiting on an answer.
     
  3. What’s the lower growth like?
    Looks like maybe too much light. It’s happened to me. I like to put them under a fluorescent when this happens. If it’s too much light she’ll start to recover under a fluorescent fixture in under a day.
     


  4. The undergrowth is all over the place some have a dark green color but are droopy, others now look like they are burning. A couple have gone yellow. Others have some dark spots on them. None of them have the rust colored spots.

    I honestly didn't know you possibly could give them too much light.

    Yes I am in agreement with the ph. I was planning on feeding closer to 7 this time and I'm going to add a small amount of dolomite lime as well. Right now I'm trying to dry her out because all the flushing and refers along with moving her to a different vpd I don't think she's up taking water at the same rate as she was. I honestly can't tell if things are getting better or worse.
     
  5. You most certainly can give them too much light. In veg you could get away with 100w (from the wall) lights at the stage you are at. Vegging plants simply do not need that much light. I would aim for 6.8 ish for the PH just to be safe. They are gonna continue to show those signs before they get better. I'm having a similar issuse with my plants in veg where they are too tall, getting too much light, and i accidentally gave them too much PH down because i forgot i PHed the water before i added nutrients, not sure what i was doing/thinking when that happened. But currently they are on their way to a healthy harvest so I'm not too worried. Just be more aware of your run off changing as your soil becomes less acidic as more and more water passes through it.
     
  6. Yeah thanks. I think you're right. I'm currently in my kitchen right now testing runoff of just the peat moss in some cups and running water straight through gives me about a 1.7 ph drop but my tap starts at 8 so it's pretty acidic. The vermiculite probably buffers a little but I'm guessing the peat started off at the lowest acceptable ph and as I've been watering nutes in it's slowly been going to unacceptable. Wish I had been water testing this whole time.

    What symptoms are you having? Its funny you say your plant is too tall... Mine doesn't want to grow upwards much... But then again I did tie all of her arms down so... I guess that's my fault.

    Also another question you might be able to help me with. I hit the plant with about a 750 ppm solution (including tap so about 550 nite only) last time and I think I am starting to get a little burn on the plant now. But what I don't understand is that I read a lot of people that veg up to 800 ppm of only nutes. And she's a pretty big plant now... Why would she be burning? Also... Where does nute burn show up? New growth mainly? Old? Or just all over?
     
  7. 1.7?! DAMN! Thats some really acidic peatmoss hahaha. I would almost flush, its not recommended so early on but it might give you a more consistent run off seeing how it jumps from 1 to 1.7 from what you've said. I wouldn't be as concerned with PPM because its not like your using a heavy soil like fox farms stuff but id still defiantly keep an eye on it and write down all the fluctuations you may be experiencing later on down the line. You really wanna keep that plant PH in a safer range for maximum absorption. Again I'm sure some one more experienced could chime in any time but for now yeah just make sure that run off isn't going below 5.8 at the most!
     
  8. The way I see it that might mean that if the water going in is 8 and comes out at 6.5 or so then the soil is probably 5 or so I would guess. I have a soil meter like I said in my original post but I think it reads high by a about .4 or so. Which 5 for peat isn't really that bad, a lot is around 3.5 and I know this peat moss has some lime for balancing cause I called the company.

    But yeah I'm with you so far unless some expert comes in here and says we're way off. I'm gonna add in the amount of lime that 10 gallons should call for next feeding... Aim for about 550 ppm including tap water and keep the ph at about 6.8. Really itching to see those runoff numbers to get some more data now.
     
  9. yeah keep in mind I just turned 21 and I'm starting my first legal grow that I'm 3 months in on. So what ever expert comes in here, please be nice to me hahaha. But for sure keep this thread updated dude! I'm interested to see the outcome! I've experienced and seen a lot such a short time so i hope my experience can help others in some way where they might not be getting responses. I've had multiple mentors spew info at me because i'm an ADHD sponge for grow info.
     
  10. Oh man sounds like we're kinda similar except I'm 33. I just pulled myself out of the rabbit hole of doing mycology. I probably read over 200 hrs worth of stuff on that one. I finally got a good process down and so now I know it and moved on. Trying to do the same here. I don't want to constantly screw with things. I want to find one thing that gives great results, perfect it... And then just stick to it.

    But either way I appreciate the responses. I like getting to converse with somebody on it even if they aren't an expert. Your experiences help me and vice versa. I'll keep this updated with how it goes. I'm wondering how quickly I can get the ph back into the right range without overshooting. I'm guessing since my medium is peat moss and dolomite lime and water phed to around 7 really would never be able to go higher than the high 6s.
     
  11. If I’m reading correctly your problems started when you blasted your light. My cousin went thru this two months ago. Your plants look like his. He was using a spider farmer 4000 / lm301b diodes. Two different plants. They both got light damaged but showed different negative effects. One would droop like it was over watered.. cut the light in half an move it to 24 inches.
     
  12. That's true. Unfortunately it also started when I did a lot of other things so it's pretty difficult to track down. Either way I went ahead and did some modifications. I looked up the lux for cannabis in veg and it pretty much tops at being able to handle 60000 so I adjusted the light up a little and turned it down till my highest reading was 60000. It puts 80000 at the new height on high so I'm guessing that where I had it it was at closer to 90000. I'll wait till in flowering to crank it again but I'll keep it at 18 inches.

    Thanks for the input!
     
  13. So the update right now is a couple days ago I fed with a 550 ppm solution of tap water, nutes, dissolved dolomitic lime, and then a little under a teaspoon of baking soda to bring the pH to 7.3. runoff came out around 5.8-5.6. So a little improvement. The plant looks like she might be picking up a little and I'm not seeing any major increases on my dead/rusty spots.

    Plan is to do one more application of lime since a decent amount settled in the pot during watering. Gonna make the pH more like 7.6 and try to get a 6.0 runoff. Then hopefully the lime will start to help buffer the soil more and more for the rest of the grow and I can decrease the pH of the feedings.

    Sent from my Pixel 3 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
     
  14. More update. Plant is definitely having a positive response now. Leaves are regaining their strength and standing back up. Plant overall looks like it's starting to grow again. Cannot determine any new spots of deficiency on leaves. Rh in the room has jumped at same temperature leading me to believe that transpiration is happening at a quicker pace than before.

    Something I wanted to ask though is this. I was planning switching to flower today before all of this happened. Based on the symptoms I saw, assuming I see no other issues from this point forward and properly keep the plant in the right ph range. How long should I give her to fully recover from what I'm seeing as a pretty long cal/mag deficiency? I want the best crop possible and am glad to sacrifice time to get the plant in optimum health before popping over to bud production.

    Thanks for everybody's help.
     

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