Help! Pickled plants!

[closetdreams]

Six weeks into my most promising grow ever, and I managed to sabotage the poor things.

TL;DR
Vinegar fumes pickled my plants, here's images of the aftermath: http://imgur.com/a/gmt43 The images were taken today, about five days after the incident described below... If you have any ideas, suggestions, or comforts that may help - I'd really appreciate them!

Long story
I have a tiny garden of three plants in a closet. I'm using Root Spa hydro buckets, a 400w lamp with a fan venting into the attic, two clip fans in the closet, and the Fox Farm line of fertilizer products. I usually leave the doors to the closet open when the lights are on.

So here's where I messed up. The carpets in the room with the closet in it needed cleaning, because pets. I'm into cleaning without harsh commercial products, so I sprinkle watered down white vinegar onto the carpets to prime them for the carpet shampooer, and also put HOT water, vinegar and essential oils in the shampooer.

After sprinkling the carpets with a gallon of 1/2 vinegar, 1/2 water combo, I fumbled pouring the almost boiling water into the shampooer, and scalded the crap out of my hand. After administering first aid to myself, it took about 2 hours for the pain to subside enough for me to run the machine and suction up the vinegar solution, and maybe another 3 hours or so for the rest of the vinegar fumes to dissipate.

The plants looked a little soft and wilty that night when I closed the doors. The next day, they started looking crispy. I started removing the worst leaves. In the following days, leaves have continued to get yellow and crisp. They were due to get their water changed two days after the incident, (moving into week 6) so I did it.

It's been five days since I accidentally pickled the plants. Had I not been distracted by a scalding injury, I don't think the vinegar fumes would have hurt the plants as badly - but I also should have closed the closet door. The plants were subjected to the vinegar fumes for about 5 hours total.

Are the plants going to recover? Is there anything I can do at this point to help them recover more quickly?

Thanks, y'all!

 

[Guest]

No, the vinegar fumes simply wouldn't have caused the problems. I use white vinegar to adjust my water ph and goes directly into my plants every other day. You need to look for some other cause for your plants withering. Your vinegar/carpet cleaning episode lining up with your plant problems was just a coincidence.

 

[fredDRO.MoBB]

I remember wen my mh light cracked in half and all my plants died due to the mercury fumes. I called hydro shop and supposedly mh lights that Crack won't do that. but then I tested the leaves and it came back with high mercury. so plants do take in fumes from stuff. am pretty sure if u did something different then usual u would kno. if u didn't do anything new and that happen most likely it's a fumes. and jus because a lil vinegar diluted wit water doesn't overdose them am sure large amounts of vinegar fumes would. then again who am I? jus my opinion

 

[fredDRO.MoBB]

maybe I shouldve looked at pics first but kinda looks like heat stress or light burn. how far away are your lights? and what wattage are they?

 

[closetdreams]

Here's a picture of the closet
http://imgur.com/zhwfNUO

I've got two Critical Sensi Star plants and one Colustrum (sp?). The plants looked frikkin' amazing up until the vinegar incident, which happened five days after switching the bulb. They were all perfectly green, bushy (even though one CSS was kinda short) and had leaves the size of dinner plates. The tallest CSS plant in the left corner was getting so tall I had to cut off one of the tops, but it still looked perfect.

I don't *think* it's heat from the light, but fredDRO.MoBB might be onto something about a bad bulb...?

Week five is when the metal halide bulb gets switched to HPS, which I did on February 8th. Then the Apollo HPS bulb I had blew on the 10th. I ran to the store to get a new one, and lo and behold - they were having an awesome 60% off sale on AgroMax 400W bulbs, so I bought two HPS and two metal halide.

On the drive home, I noticed one of the HPS bulbs was rattling in the box. I wondered if that one was broken and if I'd have to go back to the store to exchange it. I put that one in the lamp first to check if it worked, and it seemed to be fine.

Could the rattling mean that the bulb is damaged and ruining the plants?

 

[Guest]

Here's a picture of the closet
http://imgur.com/zhwfNUO

I've got two Critical Sensi Star plants and one Colustrum (sp?). The plants looked frikkin' amazing up until the vinegar incident, which happened five days after switching the bulb. They were all perfectly green, bushy (even though one CSS was kinda short) and had leaves the size of dinner plates. The tallest CSS plant in the left corner was getting so tall I had to cut off one of the tops, but it still looked perfect.

I don't *think* it's heat from the light, but fredDRO.MoBB might be onto something about a bad bulb...?

Week five is when the metal halide bulb gets switched to HPS, which I did on February 8th. Then the Apollo HPS bulb I had blew on the 10th. I ran to the store to get a new one, and lo and behold - they were having an awesome 60% off sale on AgroMax 400W bulbs, so I bought two HPS and two metal halide.

On the drive home, I noticed one of the HPS bulbs was rattling in the box. I wondered if that one was broken and if I'd have to go back to the store to exchange it. I put that one in the lamp first to check if it worked, and it seemed to be fine.

Could the rattling mean that the bulb is damaged and ruining the plants?

I don't think that the condition of the bulb would have such a quick and drastic effect like I saw in the pic posted earlier. I tried to look again at the close ups, but can't find now. Your closet setup looks good. Must of been tough getting a good light seal around those folding doors. Looks like plenty of space though.

You appear to have lots of good air movement, so that figures into my opinion that the vinegar fumes probably had no chance to damage. Looks more like low humidity and/or high temps. I didn't see those mentioned, but I was hurried earlier and may have missed.

 

[Guest]

My 400 watt HPS bulb also rattles slightly, It's normal.

 

[closetdreams]

I haven't been keeping track of how hot or how humid it gets in the closet. That office is always a bit warmer than the rest of the house - especially when there's CPU intense gaming burning up the computer AND the plant ballast on... Sometimes I remember to make sure to have the regular ceiling fan on in the office and a separate Hunter fan blowing toward the closet from across the room.

I live in zone 9b, so our weather has been good enough for me to leave the central AC off for most of the winter. It's usually between 70 and 85 degrees in the rest of the house, and the doors are usually open to the closet when the lights are on, which is currently 10am-10pm, depending on how close I got the timer set to actual time.

Come to think of it though, I don't think I got the doors open when the HPS lights came on for two days after the vinegar event. Had to leave the house before they came on, so the doors and the light-blocking curtains hung outside them were closed for most of the day until I got home. It's super possible the humidity and heat was too much for them.

What's the best things I should buy to put in there and start keeping track of heat and humidity?

 

[Guest]

I would pick up a temp/rh meter that records the highs and lows for a given time. Take a reading with doors open and then closed, compare difference. I think you're gonna find that you build a lot of heat in there when doors closed. I noticed your ballast is also in the room on the wall. I'm not familiar with that type of ballast, mine's magnetic and puts off a lot of heat but is outside the room. It all ends up meaning you need a lot off extraction on that vent to keep heat down. Bad part is, you also pull out humidity and lower that number along with the heat. Kind of a balancing act you gotta do to keep both happy.

 

[Lester Beans]

I am guessing that the closet it getting hot when the doors are shut.

Check your rootzone as well because hydroponics does not like warm water. If your roots are brown, slimey, or smelly that is a sure sign of root rot.

Using a product like Hygrozyme will help and keep the roots nice if the temp is a little hot. It is not a cure all. You need to get a way to keep the temps between 70 and high side 80. The res water temps should be 65-74.

Also make sure you are changing your res out every week and supplying fresh nutrients and ph'ing the solution to 5.8.

Best of luck keep us posted!

 

[closetdreams]

Thanks, guys. The plants seem to have recovered, even though they lost a lot of leaves. They've been putting out new top growth and the tallest one is still getting too tall (over 4 feet) - which is a crazy first for me, and I don't know how to handle that. Trimming stuff off the top sounds sacrilegious.

I suppose the right answer is to remove the other shelf and just raise the light more, but the insulated vent tube I have installed on the light isn't the most flexible/collapsible thing. When the plants were small, I just put them up on tables and extra buckets to raise them up to the light, and lowered the plants as they got taller - instead of moving the light.

Lester Beans, I've been keeping the reservoirs full and ph'd. That Hygrozyme stuff you recommend - is that like Fox Farms' Microbe Brew?