First time grower faces many problems

[strangerthan]

Hey, it's my first thread, and my first post!

So, this is my first grow also. I did a lot of research, mostly on overgrow and here as well. I took my time gathering what I needed. I'm doing it stealth-style inside a filing cabinet. I'll post pics when it's not so embarrassing!

The details: It's a DWC in a 2 gallon bucket, C99xA11, like my inspiration, Nimby, from overgrow had. That's grown from seed. It's now under a 150w HPS, on now 24/0. The plant is in those orange-ish rocks in a five inch mesh pot. I've got A LOT of air pumping through the water as my pump is pretty impressive. There are two 3 1/2" abs elbows for intakes at the bottom back. Out the top are two custom carbon filters, through which 2 comp fans draw enough air to keep temps at 69-80 degrees F. Humidity's a bit high at times, ranging from 30-72%. Water temps are at 70 degrees which should be decent.

I think my problems started because I tried to grow totally organic, using Earth Juice with some Liquid Karma. I had chronic ph problems (punny!) caused by some serious slime, which eventually locked out all nutes from the plant. The plant was about three weeks old and about 2 inches high. I traded that stuff in for the standard GH nutes, and the plant doubled in size in like one day! Three days later the slime was back.

I definitely have made a connection between the slime and the ph. All would be well and stable for three days. New roots would start to form. Then when the slime comes, covering them, tyhe ph rockets up t 8 or so. I tried using h2o2 (3% stuff), about half an ounce a day, the slime came back. I tried covering the rocks with visqueen plastic to ensure darkness below, the slime came back. I've lost a lot of root upheaving the plant and rinsing and all causing some serious wilt.

I bleached again, and got some SM-90, which has oils that are supposed to deter fungal growth (Pythium & Fusium?). It seems to work fairly well. Now after 4 days, there's minimum sign of slime. Only in the last day do I see any sign, now that the Piney SM-90 smell has subsided. I guess I should put more in?

The current problem is one of ph. With the SM-90 in, the ph starts out high (bleach residue probably helped that too). The thing is, when I put in PH down (still using the Earth Juice Natural down), the littlest bit takes it down to like 5 from 8 (checked a half hour after mixing). I don't bother upping it as 3 hours later it'll be back up at 8!

Perhaps it's the ph, but I haven't grown any new roots barely, since the SM-90. The plant is looking SAD. Is this normal? Has anyone had a similar experience? I'm not sure what to do, and any help would be much appreciated!

 

[Guest]

Hey man... a couple of things here. What is your water temp? Ideal is around 68-72... when you get around 80... you start to get bad bacteria.

How are you cleaning that slime from your roots? The shower works well.

 

[strangerthan]

My thermometer reads 70 so that should be alright. I just rinse them in the sink and kind of rub at them gently. It doesn't get all of it since they're pretty tight up at the top.

 

[sweetgreendream]

What do you mean when you say slime? Is it brown, green,...?

 

[strangerthan]

It looks like snot, and it smells kind of like...a plant, not bad really. It's kind of brown, but probably because of the veg nutes.

 

[sweetgreendream]

Okay the reason I asked is that often organic nutes will not fully dissolve and they leave a brown sediment that can cover the roots. THis will do what you described, i.e. stall growth while new roots form.

If you think this is the case I suggest mixing the nutes in a seperate bucket first adn than transfering it to the resevoir carefully trying to leave the sediment in the mixing bucket. Did that make sense?

 

[strangerthan]

I gave up using the organic nutrients two months ago and have been trying to use General Hydroponics basic line. Each time I would bleach everything and start over trying a new variable. I've done this about 10 times now. New white roots would grow in the first two days, slime would form, destroying them. Then I'd try something else.

The last test was the SM-90. It kept the slime away for about 4-5 days as opposed to without anything, or with h2o2 (which made no difference). With all previous attempts, the slime would return after 2-3 days. The big problem this time is (maybe because of the ph?) no new roots would form with the SM-90 in the mixture. Now I've got my slimed roots from the attempt before (when I tried covering my medium with plastic thinking that light through the rocks was causing the problem). With no new roots to keep it going, I've lost another set of fan leaves in the last 2 days, yellow and crisp.

So now what? I've been sprouting a new seed, but I can't see there being any difference if I start over. The only thing I can think of that would work is to change my water and clean everything every third day, which is just out of control. Too much work, too much waste, and with distilled water, too expensive.

I believe I have a fungal problem (as opposed to bacterial), so according to the guy at the hydro shop, SM-90 should be the ticket. I'd still have to add more every 3 days, which would be fine except for the problem that nothing will grow in it! I'm not totally positive about this. Would a bacterial infection smell different or worse? It seems that this slime can grow in the dark which I find odd considering all I've read on this.

 

[strangerthan]

So I'm trying a few things. First, considering that all the leaves but the tiny ones on top were dead, I chopped the plant, I cut off the bottom half of it and I'm trying to clone it. We'll see how that turns out.

So when that gets some roots or when the seedling's sprouted some, I got several smaller mesh pots. The one I was using before was a 5 inch. Really that's like 4 times bigger, and in order to get 2 gallons into the bucket a lot of the rocks were submerged. Maybe this blocked some of the bubble and caused some stagnation. So this time, I'm going to try keeping the rocks just about completely out of the water, and have the root just grow out the bottom of the pots. I really don't think that's THE problem since the slime formed more this last time on the walls of the bucket than on the medium rocks, but it seems like a good idea, nonetheless.

Besides that, I got some HyOx which is just h2o2 in a 35% concentration. I'm a little confused about how much to use. The dude at the hydro store said that the objective is to get the buckets to be at 3% hydrogen peroxide. If this is true, then using the typical 3% stuff that you'd get at a grocery store, you'd have to grow it without any additional water, just h2o2? Even with this high powered stuff, to get that concentration, I'd need like 2/3 of the 1 liter bottle for my 2 gallon bucket. That seems pretty crazy. I've read that H2o2 is only active for like 20-30 minutes when added to water, after which it dissolves into water and oxygen. I'd be going through an awful lot of this stuff putting that much in every few days.

 

[Blackmelo]

hmm sounds like a weird and frustrating problem.

So you got rid of the organic completely and started the plants off in some fresh water with the GH.
You still using the Liquid Karma? I heard that leaves brown residue. Try without it.

Are your roots comletely light proof? Ohh, thank fuck I just wrote that. >>Goes off to fix a light leak problem on mine...

 

[sweetgreendream]

As a trouleshooter I would say there are 2 path you can follow:
1- try to figure out what caused the issue?
2- start from scratch with the only goal of success and a "who really cares" attitude about the past.


I suggest #2 and it seems to jive with your nature by your posts. So let's start with the basic premise that growing succesfully is easy and there is no reason you should not have success like so many others. By succesful I am not talking about the perfect grow but just a grow that produces quality uds with a relatively normal yield for the strain.

I would start with a fresh bucket since these are cheap and it removes so many left over variables. Clean the medium very. very well and replace it if possible. BTW what medium are you using? Is it rockwool? If so consider using hydroton since many find it easier but to be fair R/W works fine for many, many people.

Build the system add water and take a reading. What is baseline PH and PPM with no nutes? Add nutes and I always suggest starting at 1/3 strenght and build up keeping an eye on the ladies. forget any additives.

Keep it simple, post info as you go and the community will help you suceed.

 

[strangerthan]

Again, with new plant

Again, with new plant

So I'm back at it. The clone didn't work, as I think the plant was just infected, and the evil slime formed in the water I was trying to do it in, preventing any growth from occurring.

I did get the smaller mesh pot, I grew the seed, stretched it to the height of the grow pot, put it in so the tap root went through the bottom, and filled the 2 gallon bucket enough so that it just touches the bottom of the mesh pot covering the root.

I gave it about 1/2 tablespoon of the 35% h2o2, and put in some gh standard line nutrients in a 1-2-3 flower-micro-grow ratio to a ppm of about 250. All was good, and the ph was about 6 for 2 days in which time I could observe that the root was growing, at least. The second day I put the same amount of h2o2 as the first.

Then something weird happened. Third day I check it and the ph was at like 2, which is the lowest I've seen it. I put in ph up, a little, and nothing happened. I'm still using the earthjuice natural up & down powder. I put in like a 1/4 teaspoon more. It went up to 2.5. It seemed like my ph pen was funky. I tried it in distilled water. It read 7.3 which is about right. No matter how much ph up I gave it, it wouldn't go up! So remembering that the sm90 (dreaded stuff!) raised my ph uncontrollably last time around, a put just a bit of that in, and damn! It skyrocketed up to almost 9! After adding a shitload of down (like a whole teaspoon and then some) I got it down to 6 again. I waited about 30 minutes between adding all this stuff to see if it had any effect. Mostly it didn't, the change was noticeable almost immediately. So after 2 more days sitting in that, I wasn't getting any growth of the root or otherwise.

I flushed it for a day or so using only distilled water, just a touch of ph down to get it to 6, and a bit of h2o2 to fend off the slime. Does anyone know if it's advisable to flush in just distilled water as it has NO nutrients of any kind?

Today I put in some nutrients, same ratio 1-2-3, this time to a ppm of about 150, and more h2o2, about 1/2 tbsp. We'll see how that goes.

 

[gaiusmarius]

Hi strangerthan,

only one thing comes to mind and i think that must be the problem. how well, if at all did you clean your grow rock or hydroton? this is vital when uesing those orange hydro balls to grow in. for some reason they give off this red dust, this needs to be rinsed off before any plants come near them.

take the pot into the shower and just wash those balls untill no more red shit comes out with the water. then start all over again and it will work, without any peroxide based products. just keep it basic to start with, just the nutes and maybe a rootbooster at a ph of 6.0 idealy.

let me know how it goes will you?

peace and good growings

gaius

 

[strangerthan]

I really think the slime was started by the Earth Juice. Most will say that it's not good for hydro. It does have directions on the bottle for hydroponic use, and the place I got it, did say that it could be used for such. Reality did seem to prove otherwise.

I did clean the rocks, actually. I put everything that could come off the system in the bucket, filled it with water, poured in quite a bit of bleach, stirred it around, and left it there for 20 minutes. I rinsed and dried everything. It kind of sucks bleaching things because it's hard to rinse it. It feels like you're rinsing off normal soap with really hard water, and only agitation will get it off. Even after you've rinsed, dried, when you fill it back up, you can smell the bleach residue, and the ph will be high. Since bleach evaporates, I think it's probably best to leave it, and not adjust the ph, as it will just fall once the evaporation happens. So after bleaching it's probably best not to adjust the ph for a day until things straighten out.

So it seems that the dreaded slime is gone. I've only had the same water in the present grow for 4 days max which was during the latest sm-90 experiment. No slime there, just no growth either! So today, the second day with just the GH and h2o2, I got my first set of leaves since the seed sprouted which is good. I hope it stays stable!

 

[gaiusmarius]

you used bleach to clean the hydro rocks?

man no wonder your haveing problems. if it still smells of bleach then you didn't rinse it off enough man. i would never have used bleach on my medium. just plain tap water does the job fine. you might clean your old used pots with bleach but not the hydro ton.

 

[Guest]

if all else fails ,,,go soil.

 

[strangerthan]

I've heard that when that sort of thing happens, root rot, that you've got to bleach everything like it was infected with some life threatening disease. I didn't put the plant right in the bleach smelling water, I waited a day until it evaporated.

I hope I don't have to do the soil thing. I live in a warm environment, and all my house plants have soil gnats that are pretty much impossible to get rid of. I have to spray them with chemicals consistantly, which I wouldn't want to do with this plant, or else they're swooping at my head all day. God there's more shit out here, ants everywhere, fleas on my cat, all manner of vermin.

Well it's certainly not growing very quickly. Just as big as it was yesterday. The ph is stable at 6. PPM is also the same, 150. No slime yet.

I can't imagine what's wrong here. My temps are great at about 77. Water temps are at 72. Maybe if I spray it's little leaves with a foliar spray, it'll get started? It's not supposed to take this long is it?

 

[strangerthan]

Electrical interference?

Electrical interference?

Maybe it's my ionizer? The thing is crazy. It's an electrocorp 1g700, which is just this little black plastic box 1 inch tall x 4 inches x 3 inches, with 3 littleholes in the top that have tiny filiments coming out.

Somehow this thing will make everything in the chamber electrically charged. Like I can touch the painted wood in my chamber and get shocked-repeatedly. Sometimes it makes my speakers intermittently "pop" on my stereo because of some interference.

It sounds crazy but maybe there's some correlation to my plant's refusal to grow?

 

[strangerthan]

Pictures

Pictures

Here are some pictures of my stealth grow setup, and of my tiny little plant.

 

[gaiusmarius]

very cool stealth cabinet, what kind of lights are you uesing. if you have done everytrhing to make them comfy temp, water temp, ph, ec, then it should be just a mater of time before they come back. asumeing they have enough fresh air and the right amount of nutrients, very very low for such a small plant. you can tell its a bit dark green for a seedling, unless its the lighting.

peace
gm

 

[strangerthan]

Lighting

Lighting

Yes, I used my video camera to get the stills, and it sort of sucks, so I adjusted the color and contrast in photoshop. It's actually a lighter green than the pic.

I've been using a single 150w HPS, thinking that, since I'm trying to do a scrog grow, I should only have to veg for a little while. Well I've been vegging for 4 months now! This current plant has only been in the chamber for 4 days, actually.

It's barely grown since yesterday, though, and so now I've put two spiral "daylight" compact fluorescents in as well. Hopefully the cooler spectrum will spur them to GET BIGGER!