I'm kind of stumped on this one, hopefully somebody can help me out. I have an 8 bucket hydro system. It's laid out in 2 rows of 4 buckets connected to each other with 2 levels of drain hoses, each row drains into the same reservoir where it recirculates from there back to each plant with dual feeder lines. The res has a large air stone in it. The room is sealed and vented with intake and exhaust fans. I use General Hydroponics, Fluoronova 2 part system with Kool Bloom supplement (in the last 2 weeks only). 2- 1000W HPS bulbs. Temperature sits at about 24 deg celsius (lights off time) up to a max of 33 deg celsius (lights on time). Humidity is controlled and stable at 50%. I'm in the last week and half before harvest. All my plants look good and healthy, big buds, no problems with them, except for one, somehow overnight wilted and died. The leaves turned yellow, drooped, the buds dried out and went crispy. It's the third plant in a row of 4, and no other plant is showing any signs of this. I cut the stem open and the feeder chute up the middle looks open and fine, no browning or spotiing on the inside walls. The only odd thing that happened, was about 2 days before the plant wilted, my exhaust fan died. I replaced it with another one I had, but it was a different size and required some different ducting. The fan ended up sitting about 2 feet directly in front of the dead plant. Could this have caused it to die, or is it being in front of the fan just a coincidence? if so, why? Has anybody had this happen to them before? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Could it have been pulling too much air too quickly over that particular plant. Such that it would'nt allow it to breathe to create photosynthesis. Combined with the emmense light to dry it out. I don't know this for sure, but I have a bit of a home rig for ventilation and I don't put my fan too close to the ladies. Take care and post if you find out anything. Piney
I was wondering if something like that was possible. With the original fan, I had it sucking through the carbon filter above the plants, but like I said, the new fan was different, required different ducting that I didn't have (of course if there's going to be a problem with your room, it's going to happen at 9:00pm on a Sunday night with no chance of going out and buying anything new) but with the new jerry rigged ducting, it didn't fit the filter, so it just sucked straight through the fan. What would be the difference between that and having the oscillating fans blowing directly on it?
Yes that would be dif. However, the air is still being passed over the plant at an accellerated rate. Hmmm well that would be the only condition that could be extenuating in this circumstance with the change in air flow. One other idea is since you are using hydro. Do u use a dif. rez for each plant. If not, then one of the plants could be dif. strain and/or weaker and had a nasty reaction to the nutes, or a rez. change/ while the others in the same situation could handle it?
i think you cracked it with the fan thing actually....with an oscillating fan the air is moving constantly,not one way only.....did you ever see plants on a cliff top?.....all bent over and scoured...and the fact its only this one plant....could be...
When a plant turns yellow this can mean nute burn (not always). Have you added any nutes lately. If so, what and how much? NP
Each plant is in it's own bucket, but all the buckets are connected with 2 seperate levels of drain tubes, and drain into the same res. There's only maybe 1/2" of water in each bucket. It's not a different strain because they're all clones from the same mom. It can't be the nutes, they're all on the same feeder system coming from the same reservoir and every other plant is looking great. The only difference is that damn fan! It's gotta be the problem....
I just thought of another weird factor - I've got my fan on a thermostat, so it only comes on when the temp gets too hot and turns itself off when the temp drops back down. So it's not a constant exhaust, the fan only comes on for a few minutes at a time. COuld that still be enough to screw it up?
I talked to a few experienced horticultural friends of mine, and they said the same thing you said before about sucking the air around it and starving it of oxygen. Even with the fan only coming on intermittently, it was a strong enough fan (10" circular) to cause the damage. So there's a hard-learned lesson for myself about fan placement in a room. Losing an 1/8th of a crop a week before harvest really sucks! Thanks for your help!!!!