First hydro grow: Need some help!

[Groov]

Hello , thanks for taking the time to help me out. Like I said in the the title, this is my first hydro grow, I have done one other soil grow successfully.

Okay I'm just going to start at the very start and tell you everything I've done from the time of germination so you can tell me what to change on this and my next grow.

I germinated 10 Apollo 11 seeds between moist towels. 100% germination rate. Planted all 10 in jiffy plugs, had all but 1 sprout. Plugs were placed under 400w MH about 4 feet away and to the side and humidity dome was used. All plants were looking really healthy, nice and green and everything. Once roots started popping out of the jiffy plugs(about 5 days after sprouting) I transplanted them to their new DWC 5-Gal paint bucket home and this is where things start going awry. I'm using 3" GH Net Cups filled with expanded clay. I just put the jiffy plugs in the expanded clay in the net cup, put the net cup in the lid of DWC so that the bottom of the cup was barely touching the water, and have an air pump and airstone running 24/7 in each bucket. First thing I noticed was that the jiffy plug on each plant is always waterlogged, and the leaves are starting to yellow. So I took out a good amount of the water in each bucket so there was probably a 3" gap in between the net cup and the water level. Plants started to regain color a little, but are still yellowish and now are drooping quite a bit. Next thing I noticed was that I have spider mites already! So I went and got some NO-Pest strips and put one in my veg room and check the leaves daily for mites and spray the underside of leaves with just plain tap water. That pretty much took care of the mite problems however you can still see the white spots from where they have eaten the chlorophyll. But they have stopped and I don't find anymore mites. The plants are now officially 11 days old. The plants are starting to droop more and more and aren't a healthy green. The leaves are looking morphed and twisted about on the first set of true leaves. That's where I am at now and that's why I need your guys help!

So here is what I'm asking: I know there is an overwatering problem but how do I correct this in a DWC setup? I think I should not have transplanted them to the DWC container so early. Maybe just let them sit in the net cup with the expanded clay and top water them until they get a little bigger before transplanting? But since I already have, what should I do now? And on my next grow from seed, what should I do differently?

Also, because the leaves are twisting and such, I'm guessing the pH is out of wack. Let me go test it -- yes the regular tap water(no nutes or additives yet) is about 7.2 pH. I know this is too high for hydro, so should I add pH down to the water even though I don't have any nutes or anything in it yet? Is pH down safe for seedlings at only 11 days?

Temperature is about 72 F constantly since I'm running a 24/0 light schedule and the humidity is hovering right around 30 degrees. Thank you guys so much in advance for your help and if there is any information I left out that you need to know, just tell me.

 

[Black Ra1n]

I'm no hydro guru but I'm going to take a stab and say that jiffy plugs are pure peat moss and don't think they work all that great in a hydro setup. Next time I would germinate your seeds straight into rockwool cubes or better yet a mixture of vermiculite/perlite, after they establish put them into your net pots/expanded clay. Always correct the ph whether your just watering or feeding, when feeding correct after the nutes are in the reservoir. Your temp could be a bit higher, but thats not a major problem. Like I said I'm not a hydro expert, but they're are plenty here that are..... good luck man...

B/R

 

[Blackmelo]

I do not think the jiffy plugs are the problem at all. You say they looked waterlogged, well, hydro is supposed to be wet.

Hydro roots are constantly in water, as long as the water is well aerated the roots won't suffocate.

Yellowing and twisting of the leaves sounds like a nute or ph problem.

Hydro need a ph of 5.5 - 6.3 max! Yours is 7.2

Ph down will not harm seedlings.

Your plants will want a light feed by now too i reckon. Once your ph is right you can monitor how your plants respond to the feeding and judge if it was too little, just right or too much. Then adjust accordingly.

You need to watch the ph daily in hydro.

 

[Groov]

Thank you both for the informative replies. B/R: Yeah next time I think I will wait until they establish to put them into the net pots. Blackmelo: Thanks for the information; I've started adding pH down to my reservoirs and gave them a 1/4 dose of nutes for now. We'll see how they respond, I am just really worried about the droopyness at this point.

Can anyone else give me some input? Maybe some advice on how to go about my next seedling grow? Thanks in advance.

 

[Blackvelvet]

Light should not be 4' away but rather about 18". If you see stretching get it down to 1'. 18/6 rather than 24/0 cycle.

 

[MTF-Sandman]

Do you have any fans blowing on the medium and plants? Increased airflow will help dry the RR/'tron as well as increasing the plants transpiration which will help keep the RR a little dryer.

Definitely bring the light closer than 4' as well...especially with a smaller bulb like a 400. I'd have it about 1' over the tops as long as you can handle the temps.

 

[Groov]

Ahh thank you for the responses.

Blackvelvet: Thanks for the input, but I am going to stay on a 24/0 light cycle until tomorrow when they are 2 weeks old. I've never heard of an 18/6 in seedlings? But I did lower the light per your advice.

Sandman: I do have an exhaust fan and a blower fan on the plants. And I did lower the light pretty close.. not 1' but a little less than 2'.

Once again, thank you all for your advice it helps tremendously. If anyone else would like to add it would be much appreciated.

 

[Blackvelvet]

I swear man, if i weren't drunk i would not respond... get this. Plants can receive too much light. They become saturated. They can not recieve anymore. With a high intensity discharge light (hid), this happens. REduce your photoperiod to 18/6. Your seedlings need no more.......................

 

[Blackmelo]

Blackvelvet, the theory behind your last post is spot on but your advice is not right in my opinion.

4 feet is indeed a bit far away but 18 inches will give the seedlings too much light, they will be "saturated", as you say they and will be able to absorb no more.

I would keep seedlings at 3 feet under a 400w lamp. Then at 2 weeks, lower to 2 feet. Beginning of flowering down to 1 foot. Later in flowering, as close as you can get without burning anything.

You should always provide the amount of light the plants need and the plants light needs constantly go up as the plants gets older.
A seedling will therefore need alot less light than a fully mature plant.

Too much light will cause the plants stress and instead of getting them to grow faster they will infact grow slower.

Find the level you think is right, not the closest you can get the hood without burning.

I hope you are happy with my advice as I am speaking from experience when I compared a grow with the light as close as blackvelvet suggests and another one with the light further away.

oh yeah about the light cycle:
a 24 hour light cycle is no way damaging to a seedling but I prefer 18/6 just because the seedlings grow as much in the 6 hour dark period than they would on the 24 hour cycle and you save yourself quite a bit on electricity per year. The bulb should theoretically last longer if you give it a small cooling off period each day too.

 

[Groov]

cool thanks for the advice I am going to switch to 18/6 today. Yeah one of them is really starting to look really droopy and is developing a brown spot on it's leaf. This is after I have pH'ed the water and added some light nutes. All of the plants are now running PH'ed RO water with light nutes and a small amount of superthrive. I have noticed that the buckets are "frothy" on the sides of them. Obviously they are more frothy the more ppm's that are in the water. Is this okay? should I be worried about the nute froth?

 

[Jesusbuiltmygro]

I doubt it's the only source of your problem, but the guy was right earlier. You should never use peat in your hydro. Im my opinion you shouldn't even ever use rockwool unless you HAVE to. You'll need to upgrade mediums a little I think. Since you be masting cloning for hydro you will want them anyway. Rapid rooters or Oasis cubes are ideal for cloning and then adding to hydro.

Jiffy pellets are pretty shitty on the scale of quality hydro mediums. First off I don't like their water to oxygen ration. Though I can't find the numbers I think they hold too much water. Second they are no PH neutral so they constantly make your water more acidic lowering your PH. Though arguable most growers need lower PH anyway, but I think the water to oxygen ration not being great is really a key problem.

I would do a flush and use those gallons of spring water at walmart or such to ensure water quality then I would add very light nutes and adjust the PH to 6 or even 5.5

Also start monitoring your water temps. With a 400 you may dodge the high water temperature bullet... or you may not. You will want your rez water temps to be in the low 70s. 68 is ideal. High temps mean less dissolved oxygen, slower growth and a high chance of harmful bacterial infection aka root rot commonly caused by the pythium bacteria.

You should invest in some hydroguard. As for these babies. You might be lucky to see them live. As you've found seedlings though fast growing at first can still be quite fragile. Though I wouldn't say you have to let them grow longer to put them in hydro. I don't think that was the problem really more so the use of jiffy pellets and not good enough medium control.

Early on the plant can't uptake water that fast and you have to be very careful not to waterlog the medium. It might be smart to add some h202 to this system NOW as you've already setup the condition for root rot and the plants have a harder time fighting it while their root systems are young as their immune systems basically have no developed. In plants much of this immune system relies on external microbes to great ideal conditions.

I would have went with lava rocks. Have you not read Big Tokes Bio Bucket thread or his Basic Water Chemistry threat? Use the search tool of go to the hydro forum and you should find it. He does recirculating DWC which you will eventually want to upgrade to. You could actually probably getting better result with a Bio Tub grow than a DWC grow. Almost the say setup but instead of a weak ass air pump you put an aquarium water pump and the result is that it aerates more and creates healthy water movement through the medium.

In DWC dirt and sediment has a way of settling to the bottom very fast AND since the water is only barely moving the medium tends to hold more stagnant water for longer periods of time. A setup such as the time tested ebb and flow or recirculating DWC move water directly through the mediums at all times with constant flow rates and this ensure much greater water quality, better growth and vastly improved disease resistance.

Also .. are you growing more than one plant in a container? You shouldn't be doing that if you are. Spider mites at day 11... oh man thats bad luck.

Maybe you live in a warmer climate where they are more common. Anyway they can be hard to deal with really. You are getting near the, it's easier to start over fresh point. I like natural predators as a way to deal with mites, but I'm not sure how sealed your room is and you don't want them potentially crawling around your bedroom or such. I've seen people have quite the problem with mites. Are you sure they aren't gnats ? Gnats love wet medium and rotting plants.

You should inspect and potentially trim off any unhealthy looking part to the roots. Brown roots need to be removed immediately and a suppliment like hydroguard, hygrozyme or h202 should be added. HOWEVER ! keep in mind h202 should not be used with organic grows nor should it be used with hydroguard... I think.

Your container should be LIGHT PROOFED if it isn't already. You will find it easier to get bacteria infections and/or algae growth without a light proof container.

When setting up any new hydro it's ideal to let it run for 2 weeks before adding any plants, just make sure the water is well oxygenated. I've switched over to not using air stones since they clog and output far less air quite quickly. So I just use the open end of the tube. It makes big bubbles and it moves the water MUCH more than the air stone. A DO test from some guy on here showed the open tube added MORE oxygen to the rez than the airstone.

I also think the small bubbles increase the rate of sediment building up on the bottom of the rez. So an open ended tube may very well be more ideal. However I don't do DWC anymore so I have no direct results with the actual grow, but for aerating water I no longer use air stones. They were always oddly expensive anyway and impossible to clean so I'm glad to be rid of them.

Y

 

[Jesusbuiltmygro]

It's hard to say if the nutes will help or hurt the situation since we can't know to what degree the roots where damaged by the water logged medium. I doubt your problems originate from PH. Usually seedlings don't quickly develop PH problems unless you are very far out of range and you aren't at all.

I doubt 18/6 makes the lamps last longer since almost ALL of lamp wear happens during ignition of the lamp. That's why the digital ballasts claim to have 3 times the lamp life because they now use the slow startup process and it doesn't damage the element or whatever as much. I know that's the marketing claims at least I'd still run 18/6 though for the power savings and like the other guy said I doubt you grow any more on 24 hours. Plus with the plants being stressed that dark period could help them.

I personally don't like superthrive. I've found that it seems that it can cause a rez to potentially go bad MUCH faster. Though the increased root growth may be true I feel it's not worth the risk as I've seen super thrive destroy a cloner that was otherwise doing fine. I've never seen growth that fast or even like that. White fluffy growth all in the aero cloner that infected the root and made them poof out, but the amount of stuff it grew in just 2 days was amazing. The entire cloner was coated on all sides and all the roots, of course the clones all died despite my efforts to clean and prune their roots. It wasn't anything like the normal brownish infection that I assume is pythium. It grew MUCH MUCH faster as though I gave it the super booster additive.

Perhaps it was just some odd reaction with my citric acid PH down, but either way it only ever happened when using super thrive and I have seen other complaints about the product along with basically no proof that it actually does anything but smells real bad and leaves deposits on everything it touches.

I think if you want a root stimulator you should join the 21st century and give up on superthrive and it's snake oil style marketing. Something like nitrozime seems to me a far more useful product, probably move proven with modern science and also is ideal for foiler feeding. Also I feel I can clearly see nitozime working though that might just be because it a powerful organic foiler feeder vs a mysterious water based vitamin mixture.

Nitrozime is good for stressed out plants and is a completely natural root stimulator. When applied through foiler feeding nutrients are absorbed many times faster than through the root system. ESPECIALLY if your root system is damaged and clinging to life. Foiler feeding is a massively overlooked option for great growth boost and even better deficiency cure since it very fast acting and many times the roots will be nutrient locked an unable to quickly take up the nutrients. Foiler feed is always an excellent option to have up your sleeve.

 

[Guest]

dont listen to sproutco..i mean black velvet...he game me a ton of bad advise and screwed up my last 2 grows....hes never even grown before he jsut reads off others and makes up stuff he dont knwo...ask him about how STUMP REMOVER is good for your plants...id go to your local book store and buy a book rqther than listen to him.

 

[Groov]

Jesus - thank you for the detailed response, very helpful! Actually, overall the plants are really looking good it's just that one that's droopy and now is developing a brown spot. I'm thinking that is a deficiency of Phosphorus but I need to do some more research. And the roots on all plants are a healthy white. My rez temps have never gone over 70 F and never below 60 F. Usually they stay about 68-69 all the time. My buckets are light proofed with visqueen. I haven't seen a single spider mite since I've put a NO-Pest strip in and and sprayed the underside of the foliage with tap water. Thank you for the advice on superthrive. I will look at some other options. I have read Big Toke's basic water chemistry(the whole thing). And I've also looked at the Bio Buckets a little bit too. Since I have lowered the water level(only using 3 gallons of RO water in a 5 gal bucket) the jiffy plugs stay a happy moist, not overly wet or waterlogged. I am going to get a camera and put some pictures up here so you guys can get a better idea of what's going on. Thank you once again, I'll post those up soon.

 

[Groov]

pics are up now/bump