So I'm a little over three weeks into flowering, everything has been going good up until this point. About a week ago I flushed the plant due to suspected over fert and a smell that I think is root rot. Ever since my ph and ppm are crazy. My ppm is high due to the fluctuations ph and I'm having to add more ph down than usual, no ferts have been added since the flush and the ppm is 360. Ph all day long is kept between 5.2-5.9. When the lights go off its at around 5.8, when they come back on its about 6.4-6.6. What's going on? Also a few ml of h2o2 to rid the root rot. Good idea? You tell me. If someone has any info it'd be appreciated.
Fill your entire reservoir or whatever with clean, distilled water. Run that through the system for a few hours. Put more airstones in your reservoir and check the temp of the water in there. Remix your nutes at about 800 PPM, PH it to 5.8, and go from there. Let us know what happens. In my experience, when the PH jumps so drastically so quickly, it's because the PPM mix isn't strong enough.
lloks like its normal, if you have a little rez, at this point at week3, they drink a lot, and if your ph is going up , then its a good sing that they drink and feed, keep adding ph down, you can also try to clean your rez , empty water in it, clean it, then refill it, and good to go
If your plants are feeding and using the nutes, don't keep adding PH Down. Add a stronger nute solution.
Have to agree I would start with 800. I don't know the size of your plants, but think at this stage in my own grows i was double that.
Grifter, looks like everyone gave good advice on flushing followed by new nutes. But the smell thing concerns me as it did you. If turning up your air stones & bubbling the hell out of the reservoir doesnt remove the smell, you can try a bacterial treatment. There's an old thread on here somewhere that described this. You can buy Clear-Rez at your local hydro store for $20, or you can make your own for about $7. Go to ACE Hardware & buy a 1 lb. bag of HTH Super Shock n Swim. Dissolve 1 gram in 1 gallon of water, and shake well. Add 2 fluid ounces of this mix for each five gallons of water in your reservoir. Repeat the same dosage after three days if the smell has not gone away. This should clear up any bacterial issues you have. I've used this on clones to rid myself of bacterial issues that were killing my roots & worked great. Otherwise, watch the temps closely in your reservoir, try to keep them around 65-68 degrees. And keep it bubbling 24/7, the more air the better. Only other item I can think of is to use a root treatment like Rapid Start or Roots Excelurator (sp?). Both of these can help recovery if the damage was severe. Final item, after your grow, dump your nutes, scrub everything, spray with diluted bleach (about 1/2 cup to 1 gal. water in a garden sprayer), rinse, refill with water and 1 gallon of the above HTH solution. Let it run for several hours, better still overnight. Dump it all, rinse, and let air dry. Throw away your air stones & get new ones. Hope this helps & bestaluck to ya.
Ok so just changed the water. I'm growing in a dwc by the way. My water before was at 360 ppm with no nutes because I had to keep putting in ph down in it. My leaves started to droop from first post to now and before the change it wasn't drinking water nearly as much as it was before the ph/root rot problem. The plants about 2 1/2 feet tall pretty bushy with many small bid sites, like I said about 3 weeks into flower. So the new water I put in was at about 5.3 ph cause I figured the water the roots were holding was6.2 and the ppm is about 490 with about 400 of being the nutes(fox farm tiger bloom) and a cap full of h202. So does sound like it'll help. She's not dying or dead but she definitely looks shittier than she ever has. Also can't get my airstone out cause my root ball is completely wrapped around it. I'll try and get some pics up in a few. Ok see the leaves drooping. Not drinking water or wasn't guess time will tell if what I did earlier will make the improvement. All the burnt foliage you see is either from the burn or old. Like I said its my first grow so I didn't really do any trimming or topping. Just tied off some of the branches to one another to get them up towards the light. I was just happy to be growing something so I didn't want to get crazy and cut all over it.
I maybe incorrect but 360ppm before nutes sounds extremely high, even with ph adjustments. Could there be something wrong with your meter. I also believe the 360 ppm is considered dead, not having any benefit for plants and should be subtracted from the ppm after nutes are added. Please correct if i am wrong.
Ok so before the first change ppm was approx 1400 and I noticed the burn and the smell. So I changed to straight phd water. My tap is about 80ish ppms and my ph was climbing so often I had to add quite a bit of down to keep it were it needed to be which read about 360 before the change. That low of a ppm probably isn't beneficial but I was trying to flush the roots of the high amount of nutrients. So that brings me too today. The flush with high ppm and no nutes didn't seem to be helping my plant so I took everyone's suggestion and changed my water to what I mentioned in above thread. Also my ph meter is taking ALOT longer to get to telling me what the ph is. Example I test whatever I'm testing and before it would read and stop within 30 secs or less now it starts out low like 2 something and after about 5 mins or more it'll stop at the 5. or 6. whatever it is. Is my tester bad?also yes I do subtract that from my total ppm but 360 was all that was in there with no nutes. Maybe it had some left over in the roots from when it was high but my plant still didn't perk up. I had it in the phd water for about three days and didn't show improvement. Sent from my iPhone using GC Forum
My bad i thought the 360 was out of your tap. My ph meter will settle down in seconds. That your meter takes that long sounds bizarre, and that you are adding ph down constantly. I look at a new meter.
No i dry it then put the cap back on it. Calibrate in once a week, or check it. Most of the time its fine. Do you have any calibration solution?
I have no more solution, but on the box mine came in it said to never let the probe dry out. Sent from my iPhone using GC Forum
I don't know ..... I would follow the manufacturers instructions. Something quick you could try. If you have city water, they post there water quality on the internet. Ph, ppm, things like that. See what the ph of your tap water is, then check it with your meter. Let the water run awhile. It may give you an idea if you meter is close. Get some calibration solution, you maybe adjusting to a bad number.