calcium def?

[Teratron]

Strain-unknown seeds
Grow method-ebb and flow
Medium-hydroton
Water Cycle-every 6 hours for 5 minutes
PH-6.0-6.2
Nutes-1000 PPM flora nova grow in RO water


Symptoms are middle to top of plants. I suspect calcium def due to the high PH. Added 150 PPM calmag and lowered PH to 5.6, because of the new hydroton (first use with batch) the PH will probably rise back to 6.0 and stablize. Plan to continually lower PH to 5.6 until it stablizes at 5.8.

Any ideas or thoughts are welcomed.

In addition to the symptoms pictured plants have also experienced slight purpling of stems as well as slightly stunted growth. Plants look good otherwise, good green color with a nice shine and texture. Symptoms showed up 4-5 days ago on the one leaf pictured and have slowly spread to most of the plants over the following days. Pictured leaf was the first affected and has the most damage.

 

[Weedhound]

Do your leaves get wet and the dry under the light? Thats one thought. Your plants are too far along for your hydroton to be your main issues.....nice big happy heaves that appear as though something has happened to them. New hydroton will cause you probs at the beginning with it's funky ph problems. Later it's problem can become overfert/salt buildup as hydroton tends to "hold on to" extra nutes and salts....again leading to lockout.

Pests, water burn, or the need to flush excess salts/ferts out of the system would be my three guesses. The ph MAY be abnormal or oversalted inside your medium causing ph lockout in the medium itself; which is why you would flush with ph correct water. But for some reason it strikes me as waterburn......just looks that way; but that's really just an aside.

good luck.

 

[Weedhound]

Crap you said it's moved over and through your crop within a few days? Pests would then jump to the top of my list; some sort of disease would be a close second.

best of luck.

 

[HeadyPete]

How bout some more pix? Close ups and whole plant.

I think you are right with the ph problem. The rez feeds all the plants so that's all the plants show symptoms. You may see more damage from the sudden swing in ph from 6.2 - 5.6. Always change ph slow and gradual over days. Any damaged leaf will not repair, look for the problem to stop spreading as things stabilize.

What kind of light are you using?

 

[Teratron]

400w HPS, I would normally not drop the PH so much but I do believe that the hydroton keeps the PH in the 6.0 to 6.2 range for a while during the first grow with it as Ive experienced this in the past. The PH seems to have stablized in the 5.8-5.9 range which I am happy with, I will try to keep it at 5.8 and see if the symptoms stop spreading.

I have not checked for bugs but I don't believe its bugs because I have had trouble with several kinds of bugs in the past and the symptoms don't appear to be the same. I should check them good for bugs though so that I can eliminate that. The plants were around a month old when the symptoms appeared and starting to get rather large.

I wonder if the high PH was locking out something that the plants didn't really need when they were smaller but now that they are getting big they may need it?

 

[Teratron]

 

[HeadyPete]

Sorry, I didn't mean that you can't go low with ph, I believe you are right where you should be. What I meant was you can't go that low in one shot. You should have brought the ph down slowly over a week or so to avoid stressing them further. Anyway, good news that thinigs are stabilizing and hopefully there won't be any issues.

If you are just feeding cal mag now then that is a problem. You have to give calmag every feeding (5ml/gal is about standard) because of the RO water.

So good stuff, keep the ph stable at 5.6ish and feed the calmag every time.

 

[Teratron]

Sorry Pete didn't mean to sound defensive and how rude of me to not say thank your for the sound advice. I normally would not drop the PH so much in one shot but I was confident the PH would rise from 5.6 to 5.8 after a single flood cycle because of the new hydroton. PH is still stable at 5.8-5.9 and I am lowering it to 5.7-5.8 daily. The symptoms appear to have stopped spreading, I will be monitoring them closely to confirm this.

The flora nova nutes I use do have some mg and ca so its very much plant specific on whether calmag is required. Some plants thrive on just the flora nova while others need a little bit more, or in some cases alot more.

 

[Teratron]

My wife took some better pictures.

 

[HeadyPete]

We'll see if the ph fix corrects the problem. I wish you the best!

 

[Skipload]

Havnt read previous posts. The indentations in the leafs are from insufficent light. The necrossis is from a lack of nute. Change your nutes once a week. They dont seem like they have used up the nutes but they have depleted some vital portion of the nute. Wouldn't recommend low lumens in bloom.

 

[Teratron]

I don't think light is the problem, its a 3x3 footprint with a 400w HPS. Thats more then enough for veg. Some would argue thats even enough for flowering.

IMO your locking nutes out because they are root bound.

Those are some bigass plants in tiny ass containers.

Fill that tray in with some hydroton, or make a cover and give the roots some place to go

Now you could be onto something. The plants have a very dense rootball, but I was under the impression that it didn't matter so much with ebb and flow, so long as they are not drying out.

I was already planning to transplant them into 1 gallon pots before I flower them, do you think that would be sufficient or should I go a step further and fill the tray with hydroton?

 

[ureapwhatusow]

I never understood the thought process behind some hydro growers thinking that hydro plants dont need large roots....

All the best hydro grows I have ever seen have HUGE massive root systems, which is the only way i know to support HUGE massive plant matter systems.

Just because your feeding them nutrients via water (hydroponic feeding) doesnt mean they cant/wont become rootbound in a finite root environment IME.

IMO one of the great things about hydro is the ability to create such huge amounts of available rootspace easily.

I cant make my dirt pot bigger very easily, but its pretty easy to fill that tray in and 4x your available space for roots.

In my experience most ppl interpet that hydroponics means bigger plants wiht smaller roots means small pots

but your point is correct wiht the advent of DWC many growers are cultivating huge rootballs in hydro and getting great results

I use a far larger container in water than most, I use 12 " wire baskets and an extension on the outflow of my ebb and flow tables to give a much larger rootzone and i am very pleased wiht the results with this technique

 

[chubbynugs]

All i know that if you are using ro water you NEED to use a calmag supplement. Would be stupid not to.

 

[Pirate]

Looks like a slight mag def if I see rusty looking spots in there between the veins. Are you using the Lucas Formula?

The first thing I would do is flush the whole thing out and restart the solution........"When in doubt, Flush it out"....... If your not running the Lucas Formula you can try it by adding 8 mills of that Nova Grow and nothing else. The PPM will be at 1350.(Lucas) It will not burn em. Running less will not give the plant the right proportions of the Pre-Set values in the NOVA. If you did this you would not need to use Cal-Mag additives. Keep your PH at 5.9 to 6.0. MAG is more available at that PH level. Set your timer to run the pump every 4 hours.

If the roots are not coming out of the holes on the bottom of your pot........your fine for now. (IMO) Opinion based on......Been there done that info. If the roots are coming out, just use a bigger pot. You'll be real sorry if you fill the whole tub. You 'll have no way to move or handle the plant once you do that. (again.....been there, done that) I am just now finishing up several 4 foot plants that are in the same sized pots as you have.(1 gallon with rocks) Full bloom completed. Never re-potted. No deficiencies.

If your gonna flower this plant..............you better think about doing it soon unless you have a shit load of head space. She looks like a stretcher to me. If its just a mother..........then forget I said that.

ALL the advice is what I do myself with great results.

Hope that gives ya some more to think about.
.
.

 

[Teratron]

No not using Lucas formula, I have some flora nova grow so I am going to use it up as it does work for veg. The flora nova bloom is the same as lucas formula I believe, thats what I will be using for bloom and maybe a little kool bloom too.

Whatever was causing the marks on the leaves was fixed by changing the PH and adding the calmag. Symptoms have stopped spreading and growth is quite noticable, though still not 100%. I believe it was calcium def because I never got that yellowing that I normally do with mg def.

However the plants are rootbound I believe. The roots have been growing out the bottom for at least a couple of weeks. Aside from the slightly stunted growth, another thing that leads me to believe they are rootbound is that all the larger plants start to droop about 45 minutes before lights off, while the smaller plants that are 2-3 weeks younger and much smaller do not show these symptoms. Also, there is some leaf twisting, something I have seen in rootbound plants from past soil grows.

Plants will be getting transplanted into 1 gallon pots in the next couple of days, this should get the plants back to the optimal state and if I flower them shortly after they return to optimal health there should be plenty of roots to support the plants through flowering.

The plants are in 1 quart pots right now, no wonder they are not completely happy.

 

[Crush]

400w HPS, I would normally not drop the PH so much but I do believe that the hydroton keeps the PH in the 6.0 to 6.2 range for a while during the first grow with it as Ive experienced this in the past. The PH seems to have stablized in the 5.8-5.9 range which I am happy with, I will try to keep it at 5.8 and see if the symptoms stop spreading.

I have not checked for bugs but I don't believe its bugs because I have had trouble with several kinds of bugs in the past and the symptoms don't appear to be the same. I should check them good for bugs though so that I can eliminate that. The plants were around a month old when the symptoms appeared and starting to get rather large.

I wonder if the high PH was locking out something that the plants didn't really need when they were smaller but now that they are getting big they may need it?

It's a classic hydro PH problem causing nute lockout. Expect more throughout your grow if the resevoir isn't changed constantly.

Keep the PH at 5.3-5.5. 5.4 ideal. Adjust the resevoir daily if needed.

Also changing the resevoir weekly will avoid further problems in the future.