So my seedlings are about 2-3 weeks old and everything was going good until I bought a ppm meter. When I did I found that my tap water PPM was 800 @.5 Even tho my plants were doing great in the 800 PPM tap water I thought that 800 was way to high and so I bought some RO water and changed the rez. I added some floranova grow till the water was 370 ppm. Then the next day the tips of the leaves started going brown and drying out and breaking off and the plants as a whole are starting to turn light green/yellow. Since then I thought it was either nute burn or mag/cal def So i changed the rez again and added floranova and mag/cal+ till the PPM was 315. The problem is still getting worse. There are 6 plants all different strains, 3 in one rez and 3 in the other. Weird thing is that 2 of the plants are completely healthy and in opposite rezs. Even though the plants don't look to healthy up top the roots are stil growing about 1/2 an inch everyday. Anyone please help me!!!! I don't want to lose these plants. Also PH is 6, water temp is 70, air temp is 73, 14 watt air pump running 4 air stones, and light is 400w HPS 30 inches above canopy.
so.. this may be a simple answer... but it seems like your plants were doing fine until u changed there water.. so in shock they could be. If that is the only thing you changed then that is the only problem.. u should really stick to the same routine.. plants dont generally like change... so stick to the same routine.. hopefully they can make a comeback.
I made the rez change about 4 days ago and it has progressively been getting worse every day, shouldn't they have stabilized from any shock by now? I suppose I could wait 3 more days till my rez change to see how they are doing but I'm afraid that they will have no leaves left!
If they were doing fine while your ppm was at 800, maybe you should raise your ppm up to 600 or so and see if that helps. If your babies have been exposed to 800 ppm for a while, they could have became acclimated to thriving in high PPM water. This isn't a sure-fire solution. But that's something I would give a try to see if it fixes the problem.
First off how did they do good at 800 PPM? Shouldn't they have died in that since they started from seed in it. I just don't understand this. Second I was contemplating raising the PPM as you suggested since they look like they might be def in something (like calcium because of the tips and nitrogen due to the light green/yellowing of the leaves). But wasn't sure because they also look like they might be burnt lol. I just cant decide which route to go...more nutes or less. Do the tips look like nute burn to you or calcium def?
also in case anyone was wondering the strains are LSD, OG Kush, Blue Hash, Mekong High, BCN Diesel, and Tutankhamon. The LSD and OG Kush look fine, its the other strains that are effected.
take the safe route for a week, flush with ph corrected water for a day or 2. Afterwards, start back with 1/4 strength nutes, work your way back to full strength, let them come out of the shock before trying to blindly dose them. Dont guess with them, you will kill them with kindness, just let them recover and they will tell you what they want with time.
Well I decided to get my answers the fastest way I could. I raised the PPM of one of the rez's to 550 and I am flushing the other one with plain PH 6 water. I'll let you guys know tomorrow what happens.
good luck mate... its like if u have a baby u never put in the sun.. then BAM. throw it in the sun.. its gonna burn.. You would be surprised that the seeds can adjust fairly easily to extreme environments.. its just when u change its routine.. its unhappy.
shoulda done what thefloweringman said...but i too wish you the best of luck!!! if ever you are baffled, as it sounds i too would be with this issue, do what thefloweringman said. Flush netpot and let h20 recirculate for 24 hours and refill res with 450ppm nutes.
imho from looking at the pics...lockout is the problem, not water... leaves look underfed(prob due to lockout, since you have been feeding well) if anything. Were the lower leaves yellowing before you changed your water?? Could be shock, but im guessing your mediums are locked up from the high mineral/salt content in your old tap water...flushed res will get better and res with added nutes will get worse. MY GUESS...
do not forget to flush the netpots, not just clean out the res. just makin sure you know.lol and make the ph 5.8 bro. trust me.
stop adding nutes! obviously when you added nutes and changed water it fucked it up. undo everything new that you did. then bam! back to normal.
Damn I didn't even think about flushing the net pots... Thanks Joe!!! I'm doing that now in both rez's. But so far no changes in either rez for better or worse. How long will it take for me to tell if I over ferted the rez that I upped to 550PPM? Or if I messed up by flushing the other one? I'm only used to soil so I don't know how long it takes for problems to show. Oh and I need to clarify something.... even though most of you think it is nute lock due to over fert, which very well might be the problem... when I was using 800 PPM tap water I was also adding nutes (1ml of floranova per gal), but I dont know what the final PPM was since I didn't have a meter yet but I would guess I was running about 950 PPM and they were looking good but just growing little slower than expected. This is why in my very limited knowledge, lol, I think that the plants were underferted from being used to an extremely high PPM from start like Mardukk said. So my bet is on the rez that I upped is going to improve while the other rez that I flushed will start getting worse. But only time will tell... I'll be sure to update everyone in the morning when I check on my babies. Thanks for all the positive feedback guys I really appreciate it! This sure is a great learning experience for me.
Problems show within 3 days max and can be corrected quicker in dwc. lol. underfed, ph or locked up medium. What are you flushing with?? If you dont have drip clean or hygrozyme use 1/8 strength nutes to flush with. Yes 1/8 nutes will help to remove more excess salts than plain h20. make sure ph of either is @ 5.8 Good Luck! Make sure you post results of your experiment as i am interested in knowing who was right...just for knowledge and experience purposes...
I flushed with about 1/16 strength nutes. Just poured a lot of it through the net pots, then poured a bunch of just plain R/O water through them. And finally filled up the rez with a 150 PPM mix (it was at 315). So far...it hasn't been a whole day yet but the rez that I bumped up to 550 looks to have stopped the spread of the problem. And the plant that was showing no signs of problems (OG Kush) in that rez is still showing no negative signs (no nute burn or yellowing or anything). On the other hand the rez that I flushed and dropped the PPM to 150 has continued to have the problem spread.....and it has even started on the plant that had no problems as of yesterday (LSD). I'm still going to give it another couple days till I make a final conclusion but so far it looks like they were just being underfed and the extra nutes are helping. But I will keep you guys updated everyday as to their progress and my findings.
Well the rez that I upped to 550 the plants are doing amazing now and growing so much faster and the new growth is a nice dark green. While the other rez continued to have plant problems. So we now have our answer - my plants were used to being in over 800 PPM from seed and were starving at only 315 PPM even though there was more floranova in the lower PPM mix. I have now upped the weaker rez to match the other one so I can get on with this grow
WOW! LOL!! Who needs nutes when you have 800 PPM water... does that shit come out looking like milk??? It is very abnormal that you have 800ppm tap water unless you are on a well, and it is even more abnormal that the plants were getting ample nutrition from only the minerals that were present in the water. Just b/c it was 800 ppm it did not contain all the nutes they needed??? some questions are more of a mystery than others... lucky I didn't bet the farm