Help with slow growth/PH problems in hydro.

[Observer Tom]

Hi folks, well I started a hydro bucket project about 3 weeks ago and I'm just not seeing much of anything happen. They aren't doing much root growth and the tops have made tiny progress in that time. My soil plants are growing far faster and I suspect I'm doing something wrong, so here I am!

I'll lay out the details below, but what I'm looking for is help getting these girls growing faster. At this rate they will be in the bin by the end of the month.

I've got several 5 gallon buckets with a 1/2" hole drilled a smidge above the bottom. The buckets are lined up over a rain gutter to return the run off back to the res. The idea is to get them rooted in the netpots then plumb all the buckets together for E&F.

I have 3 sizes of netpots, almost half are 6", some are 8" and many are 10". Most of them have fresh hydroton that was washed back and forth between 20 gallon buckets for about 2 hours before being used.

I'm using tap water in a 20-25 gallon res with 2/3rds strength florashield, 6 tsps GH bloom / grow / micro. I'm top watering by hand with a large metal bowl and PH'ing the water to between 5.5 and 6.0 before I start watering. My EC is between .80 and 1 depending on how long ago I changed the res. I've been changing the res every 3 days as soon as I can see a residue building up.

At first I thought the residue was from all the PH down I have to use, but I no longer think that's the case. I add probably a tsp of PH down twice a day to bring the PH down from 7.5 which is where it wanders to every couple hours. I now think the residue is from water getting trapped in the bucket against the tiny lip at the bottom of the bucket.

My next post will include pics of the room, buckets, roots and leaves.

 

[Observer Tom]

Here's a pic of the whole room for perspective.

A bucket from above. You can see how much water stays in the bucket between waterings. I'm wondering if it's going stagnant and causing my PH to rise?

The same bucket from the outside to show drainage and water line.

Here's one of my plants, taken out of the cloner and into the netpot 2 weeks ago.

The same plant from below showing root growth.

Here's a transplant from 3 weeks ago. This plant was roughly the same size it is now when I got it. It hasn't grown more than an inch or two in 3 weeks.

Another 3 week old transplant, still showing no roots?

Another 3 week old transplant, almost no roots?

Some leaf damage on a 3 week old transplant.

Same plant, different leaf.

 

[Observer Tom]

I'm top watering so I figure some leaf damage could be caused by nutes splashing the leaves. Also, some burn happened when I accidentally tripled the nute mix while swapping out the res. However, most of the burn has showed up in the past 1 week and these plants have been stalemated for 3 weeks now.

I got the larger plants from a friend who had them in buckets. While being taken out of the buckets they lost a lot of root mass which I figured would take a couple days to grow back. It's just growing back really, really slowly.

So what could be causing them to go so slowly? Maybe the res is too cold, maybe the room is too cold, maybe there's a pest or root disease or what.. throw me your questions and I'll answer or take any photographs needed to help track it down. I'm sorta at a loss here.

I put half my clones in soil and half in these net pots. My soil clones are now twice as big as my hydro clones and I just don't get why. Help me figure it out! =)

 

[CaStoner]

Hey Tom, How clean is your tap water I would suspect that but since your showing such a low EC. also are you running any large air stones in the res to help get D.O for the roots.
A cold res is good for not getting root rot and more D.O but not too cold will slow down growth. I would try using bottle water and see if there's a improvement. I will never use tap water in a Hydro system I use strictly R.O water you might want to invest in a R.O system I went with G.E Merlin system will do 750 gallons a day without a storage tank.

 

[Observer Tom]

Thanks CaStoner. I haven't gotten my well tested, I plan to do it soon. I suspect my res is too cold, I'm putting a thermometer in overnight to see how cold it gets.

I had 6 medium round airstones in there but someone suggested my PH may be rising because of too much air so I replaced the 6 with 2 and the PH did indeed drop almost a full point every time I check it.

I'll post back when I have a 24 hour handle on res temps.