Check this out...any help appreciated.

[razyr]

Alright guys, hope everybody's doing great in growland, I'm not but I'm hoping with your help to turn that around.

I'm running a 5 gal DWC with 4 bagseed plants, it all started great but quickly went down hill. The plants started from seed in peat pellets moistened with RO water.




They took off within a few days and were doing great for a while, I had no nutes but they were on there way so I was basically playing a waiting game, while trying to maintain the young plants.



When they started to out grow their peat I had no choice but to pot them in some left over perlite I had until I could get my nutes for the DWC. Right before I put them in the perlite they had started to yellow at the bottom most leaves, so i hit them with half tap half RO and an extremely light dose of a soil fert i had left over. This, I believe was the beginning of my problems.










You can see that on some parts of two plants I had what looked like nute burn, but on another it was curling inward something fierce. The plants spent a week in the perlite getting plain RO water until my nutes showed, I cleaned all the perlite out of the new roots but could not get the plants out of the peat, due to the roots being lodged in the mesh. So, I put the plant, peat and all in the net cups, pulled the roots I could through the cup and placed them all in the DWC bucket.



I'm using the AN 3 part with RO water, I started the plants at about 250 ppm and have moved it up to 365ppm, on a .5 conversion, over the past week. I have maintained pH between 5.5 and just over 6, I just received my pH pen so it will be more accurate now. The roots are just barely in the water but getting plenty of foam splash, the cab temps range from 75-90, above 85 is rare, humidity is 30%-40% and I mist often. My nute temps range from 17c-23c, only gets warm when I'm asleep. Here is what has happened since going in the DWC.











Here's some shots of the roots, they were nice and white but have been showing more brown/yellow color, and not growing at all.









Anyway, this is my first time with hydro, I expected many bumps in the road, I just want to make sure I learn from these mistakes(there were a few more than I had anticipated so far), and I'm having trouble diagnosing these issues. Oh...I almost forgot, this is all under a 150w HPS with one 18" plant floro. Any help would be greatly appreciated and most definitely reciprocated, as i've taken so much knowledge from here that I love to give back when I can. peace

Had to prove I've done this before, with slightly better results

 

[20kw dreams]

Looks to me like that peat is staying way too wet, after you burnt them slightly. You've probably got some root rot to boot. The pots aren't submerged are they? Just barely splashing like on the bottom of the netpots, right? Pull the jiffy's out so they're just barely sitting in the rocks like an inch or 3/4" or so. The rocks will still wick water up t the roots, but the peat won't stay as saturated...hopefully...and way more air will circulate around the peat.

For future reference though, peat prob isn't the best medium for transplanting into hydro.

Good luck

 

[green michine]

Best of luck man.

 

[razyr]

I was afraid this was the problem, thanks for convincing me to actually do something about it, I'll get right on fixing that. Yea, I really don't like the idea of using the jiffy's but I don't have a whole lot available where I live and there so damn easy(see: I'm lazy). The cups are not submerged, I have the nutes about 1" below the bottoms, but they stay pretty moist from the bubbles. Thanks for all the help, I'll make the fix and see if they recover. peace

 

[razyr]

Alright, just finished raising the jiffy's up and hopefully out of harms way. I'm fairly confident that if this does the trick of drying out the bottom of the peat the roots will grow like mad. The top half of the peat on all the plants had an abundant amount beautiful white fuzzy roots, just begging to go somewhere. Thanks for the support, I'll update when there's a change. peace

 

[scegy]

hey man
altering temperature in DWC is not a good thing, specially with young plants, i had the same problems when i had variable temps....fan blowing in the RESERVOIR not grow bucket, and an aquarium heater, those two combined give you the wanted results...with normal outside conditions
root root cures if you make the conditions right, in your case it's the lack of DO and maybe variable water level...roots get dry,wet, dry, and there you go root rot...how do you water them?

 

[Blackvelvet]

Add something to prevent rootrot and increase oxygen to the roots. I suggest 3% hydrogen peroxide from the drugstore. Add 1 teaspoon per gallon of rez daily or 2 teaspoons 2 or 3 times a week.

Dirtybudz had some root trouble and used the hydrogen peroxide rate above...

and check the new nice white roots (thanks to the H2O2),

I am sure they will pull through. Good luck growing!

 

[razyr]

Thanks for all the great tips, there's a lot of intricacies to growing hydro that you just have to learn from doing, which is why I love it so much.

Scegy- I'm using frozen 20oz bottles to lower the temps in my bucket, I have put BB's in the bottoms of them so they sink to the bottom and don't float and touch the roots. The nute temps stay between 17c-20c while I'm awake, and climb I'm assuming a few hours after I fall asleep, so temps above 20c aren't maintained for too long...or am i just naive and that swing really does make a difference? I have 2 dual diaphragm air pumps bubbling the solution, is this not enough, or do you mean the DO at the peat level, due to it staying soaked? I water by putting my lid on an extra empty 5 gal. and mixing my nute solution in the original bucket then replacing the lid when it's ready. I've been thinking I should just pre-mix the solution in the extra bucket and swap the lids then drain and clean the original, then repeat week after week, to reduce the time the roots are out of water. Good idea or unnecessary?

Blackvelvet-Thanks for the tip, I have been using h2o2 in my res, albeit not often enough, and I have been searching for recommended dosage. You have not only ended my search but given me a verbal swift kick in the ass to be more diligent in my efforts, thank you. Oh and beautiful root porn, i can't wait until I have my own(thats not quite so sad). peace

 

[scegy]

razry: that's bad, putting frozen bottles in the grow bucket is not good, you lower your temps very unequal over the bucket and most important TOO QUICK, i'd suggest an aditional tank(reservoir) which is connected to the grow bucket, look in my grow thread in hydro grows

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=40143&page=3&pp=15&highlight=scegy

and bio-tokes
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=8182

you can toss out the airstones and bubblers this way and oxygenate the whole system with one water pump

by using this system you'll be able to cool down ur temps ~5°C when you need it or more, because you can't cool the grow bucket, you can cool the reservoir!with a simple PC fan installation and a lid with holes on the reservoir

temp swings make a lot of difference yes, in TDS is the same thing
by mixing new solution everey week you constantly change the TDS values + you toss loads of nutrients down the drain, bio buckets won't require that, i highly recommend you reading those links that i just gave
idea about two buckets isn't bad if you plan to continue this way, do read the things i gave u, in my favour if you want

adding H2O in my system was, sorry, the baddest thing i did in hydro so far, it totally kills the microfags- microanimals in the system and restarts it, rising DO leves the peroxide way is not the right way, the key is in system construction!

p.s.
adding rhizotonic or any kind of fish emulsion in the transplant time will make a huge difference in recovery time, with proper DO leves ofcourse, else you'll get loads of slime

another thing....100% light proof in water area is needed, that's very important... a few algea won't hurt your system but it definetly clogs up your pumps and hoses so try to reduce this factor as much as u can

good luck!