Nutrient/PH? Problems in veg...lots of pics

[7MGTE]

How long has this problem been going on? About 2 weeks
What STRAIN are you growing? Satori, Speed Queen, Mandala #1
What was the establishing technique? (seed or clone?) Seed
What is the age of your plants? About 1 month
How Tall are the plants? Around 6-8in
What PHASE (seedling, vegetative or flower) are the plants in? Veg
What Technique are you using? (SOG, SCROG etc) Just letting them grow
What size pots are you using? (Include how many subjects to pot) 1 gal grow bags
What substrate/medium are you using? What brand of soil mixture are you
using?(percentage of perlite, vermiculite...etc?) FFOF/Perlite around 60/40
What Nutrient's are you using?How much of each with how much water? How Often? *Knowing the brand is very helpful* FloraNova Grow/Floralicious+ and occasional superthrive. Around once a week.
What is the TDS/EC/PPM of your nutrients used? ~500 ppm
What is the pH of the "RUN-OFF"? Unknown
What method of pH test was administered? Using Strips? pH pen? liquid
How often are you watering? Once every 4ish days. (if they are watered on a Friday next water would be on Tuesday)
When was your last feeding and how often are you feeding? Last feeding was Friday 4/4/08
What size bulb are you using? 600watt HPS
What is the distance to the canopy? ~18in
What is your RH Factor? (Relative Humidity) Fluctuates between 25-40%
What is the canopy temperature? ~78F
What is the Day/Night Temp? (Include fluctuation range) N/A
What is the current Air Flow? (cfm etc.) Oscillating fan for air movement and Stanley blower for exhaust
Is the fan blowing directly at plants? Yes on low
Is the grow substrate constantly wet or moist? Top of soil dries quickly, inch or so below is moist
Is your water HARD or SOFT? Tap water is around 75ppm
What water are you using? Reverse Osmosis (RO)? Tap? Bottled? Well water? Distilled? Mineral Water? Tap. Can use RO if needed.
Has plant been recently pruned, cloned or pinched? No
Have any pest chemicals been used? If so what and when? No
Are plant's infected with pest's? I havent seen any

The problem started slowly and has increased in severity over the last few days. I've been double checking PH prior to watering and have attempted to check runoff PH, but this is difficult using liquid. I'm ordering a PH pen this week. Problems started on the lower fan leaves and has spread to newer growth. It is a brownish tan dotting on lower fan leaves that spreads out and turns into patches, with the leaves slowly turning brownish-yellow and drying out and becoming crusty and brittle. It's starting to do it on newer growth too now and looks only like little black dots in some places. Growth seems really stunted on all plants. I think because I'm a new poster it wont allow me to use img tags in my post but my gallery is 4 pages of nothing but images of the problem. Thanks for taking a look! And forgive the messy room

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

this is a stumper. im betting its a calcium def, or a ph flux...
it could be burn...im not sure about the floranova and the ffof... ive used nova its a hydro fert...

it might be p def also...
*im hoping someone else will chime in and help, click on his gallary ...

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

*edit...

ya looks like a mag def./cal def.
hit them with calmag/sensical and some RO/tap...

ease up on the floranova its a hydro food the ffof is rich mix as is...

 

[wafflehouselove]

FFOF does this after 30 days, from what i've got from other expert here is that the FFOF is out of cal/mag at this point and thus not making the N avialable. Try some calmag, your tap water is really nice btw. But im no expert im soil im just experiencing the same problem you are having after around 30 days in FFOF. The problem is that you have the replace the soils cation or something which is the calcium

 

[7MGTE]

Thanks to both of you for taking a look! I'll be picking up a bottle of cal/mag and a PH pen early this week. Hopefully being able to keep the PH ideal and the addition of some cal/mag will solve the issue. I'll keep you posted!

 

[magicbuds]

Make shure u do the ph run off test b4 adding any cal/mag as it could only be the ph causing the problem. My problem was similar and are booming after the cal/mag I added. Good Luck

 

[7MGTE]

*edit...

ya looks like a mag def./cal def.
hit them with calmag/sensical and some RO/tap...

ease up on the floranova its a hydro food the ffof is rich mix as is...

Would you recommend cal-mag or sensical over one another? Reading from some of your other threads you seem to really like sensical so I'll overnight that right now, but if cal-mag would be the better choice I'll pick that up later this week. Is picking that up as well a good idea yes/no? Or should the sensical do the trick if in fact calcium/magnesium is the problem? I know sensical contains a lot of different things; it wont be overkill? Thanks for the help digitalhippy!

 

[tree&leaf]

this is a stumper. *im hoping someone else will chime in and help, click on his gallary ...

He's using crap soil which doesn't contain enough nutrients in its 100% form let alone reducing that down by 40% by adding perlite! Add in that he's pounding these plants with huge quantities of the wrong spectrum light for vegetative growth - 600w HPS at 18 inches in Veg? And it's no wonder the plants are desperate for nutrients and water - and the soil isn't provding enough, hence the deficiencies.

Fix the underlying cause and not the resulting problem - repot into a better quality potting soil with mimimal soil amendments for adequate drainage. A handful of perlite or vermiculite into a 2 or 3 gallon pot of soil is more than enough for adequate drainage and learning how to water plants using the 'wet/dry' method ensures proper watering and drainage.

Allowing plants to grow naturally by simply taking what nutrients they require from the soil as and when they require them is a far better growing philosophy than using poor quality soil and then guessing at the quantities of nutrients to add. Particulary with organic nutrients which take a lot longer to be chelated down into plant useable forms. Mineral or chemical based nutrients are immediately available to the plant - but not everyone wants to feed chemicals to their plants.

 

[C6H6]

this is very off topic but 7MGTE, what year? i my self own a 90 and am building an 89 with a 1JZ.

 

[7MGTE]

Thanks for your input tree&leaf. My budget for this grow was limited and as a result not all aspects are ideal; constructive criticism is a good thing. I was under the impression the FFOF was in fact a high quality soil, and know that many people here highly recommend it. Why don't you like it? Is there a specific soil you recommend or prefer?

Unfortunately the HPS is the only lighting choice at the moment; a MH or CMH for veg will be used next run. At the moment I'm simply trying to "dial in" my cab for optimal conditions given the equipment I have and I don't want to change it at this point.

Just thought I would mention as well that GH's FloraNova line is a "mined mineral" or "refined nutrients" based fertilizer, not an organic one.

 

[7MGTE]

this is very off topic but 7MGTE, what year? i my self own a 90 and am building an 89 with a 1JZ.

Wow small world huh? I own a 7m swapped 86 p-type, an 87, and an 89 in the middle of a 1.5JZ swap. Good luck with your 1J build, you'll love it!

 

[tree&leaf]

I was under the impression the FFOF was in fact a high quality soil, and know that many people here highly recommend it. Why don't you like it? Is there a specific soil you recommend or prefer?

Fox Farms Ocean Forest isn't that bad (or at least not as bad as I suggested) but it contains guano which can cause its own set of problems and as its 'supposedly' an organic soil mix can contain a fair amount of incorrectly composted elements.

If you're just starting out and not specifically going down the 'organic' route, personally I would avoid using 'organic' soils, although North America seems to apply its own set of 'organic' standards that do not apply elsewhere. Eg, guano and peat due to their environmentally unfriendly collection methods are generally not allowed to be used in organic soil mixes outside of North America.

Growing 'organically' ie using organic soil and organic nutrients requires a slightly different mindset and technique to using chemcial or mineral based fertilisers, due to the way the nutrient elements are made available to the plants. Although the far superior and 'sweet' tasting buds produced from growing organiclly in my opinion are well worth the extra effort.

Any multi purpose peat based compost with added John Innes (loam) intended for container plants should be fine. Avoid any soils that advertise slow release fertiliser and water retention crystals - they cause problems with fast growing plants like Canna.

Stick with the Ocean Forest for the moment - just don't 'cut' it with so much perlite, because all you're doing is removing nutrients which means you'll simply have to start feeding much earlier than you should. Just learn and understand how to water the plants correctly and make sure they have adequte drainage.

Unfortunately the HPS is the only lighting choice at the moment

Fair enough, just keep that 600w HPS further away from the canopy - the optimum distance should be about 2-3 feet, but in veg you can keep it even further away. The 600w is the most efficient of all the bulb wattages and in vegetative growth you really only need about 2,500 lumens per square foot for healthy growth. At 18 inches that 600w is putting out 90/1.5 x1.5=30,000 lumens per square foot! Not only is most of that light not actually being used, but its giving the plant the very maximum light to use, which means you need to ensure that water, nutrients and co2 keep up with the light, if you don't, you get deficiencies and growth problems.

You can use a HPS for veg growth, but personally I don't like it. You get faster growth with the predominant red spectrum and this is compounding your problem as outlined above - the faster a plant grows the more nutrients, water and co2 it needs. Red spectrum also tends to produce wider internodes - this basically means the plant gets taller for the same number of nodes and taller plants in flowering require more depth penetration from the light. Also, if you think back to nature, vegetative growth tends to happen in the spring and early summer - when the light spectrum has a lot more blue in it, flowering happens in autumn when the light has more red in it. That's why plants in vegetative growth grow better with more blue spectrum light than red.

Just thought I would mention as well that GH's FloraNova line is a "mined mineral" or "refined nutrients" based fertilizer, not an organic one.

It's a mineral/chemical based fertiliser. So you're using an organic soil with a chemical fertiliser! The problem with mineral/chemical based fertilisers is that it's extremely easy to over-fertilise and cause a salt build up in the soil, particularly as the recommended doseages are usually way out. Also, most fertilisers simply do not contain sufficient quantities or Mg for fast growing Canna, which uses fairly large quantities of it.

In my opinion, the easiest way to go and the least problematic way to grow is to simply repot each time after about 4 weeks. If you time your repots correctly, say seedling to small pot for 2 weeks, repot into larger pot after 2 weeks then into final flowering pot after 2 weeks, you'll really only need to fertilise with a nutrient in the last 2-4 weeks of flowering.

Hope this helps explain.

 

[7MGTE]

It certainly does help tree&leaf and I appreciate you taking the time to explain things a bit. I will take your suggestions to heart and raise the light, as well I'll avoid cutting the soil mix with so much perlite at transplant. Again thanks for the input it was very informative!

 

[tree&leaf]

Again thanks for the input it was very informative!

You're very welcome 7M.

There are as many ways of growing this stuff as there is in smoking it - and everyone needs to find what works best for them, but you won't go far wrong with simply sticking to the basics. After all, it's only a weed and grows pretty well in nature without any input from us, but we need to remember that in an artificial environment we play the place of mother nature.

I also want to see you get the most from those excellent Mandala genetics you have and having grown and smoked Satori myself, I just know you'll like it!

Satori is not a difficult strain to grow as long as you get the basics right.

Very best of luck with the rest of your grow.

 

[7MGTE]

Update...

Update...

Just thought I would give an update. The sensical was backordered at my hydro store and it finally arrived today. In the last week and a half or so when watering I mixed 1tsp epsom salt and 1tsp garden lime to 1gal of water in the hopes that it would help the problem. It looks like it did somewhat as the plants look healthier; however they are still quite sick.

I was wondering if anyone has any input on how to rectify the problem now that the sensical has arrived? Should I use it half/full strength in Ph'd tap water alone, or should I use it along with the FNGrow and Floralicious+ for a full feeding? Should I flush the soil prior to feeding with it and start in essence with a clean slate?

Also, I assume I should use it each time I water from now on, not just when feeding? And finally, should I remove the necrotic leaves (and I assume I remove the entire branch at the node rather than the individual leaflets)?

My house lease situation negates that I put them into flower as soon as possible, but I would like to fix this problem first.

Updated pics:

 

[C6H6]

Wow small world huh? I own a 7m swapped 86 p-type, an 87, and an 89 in the middle of a 1.5JZ swap. Good luck with your 1J build, you'll love it!

thanks you too. gotta love them old toyotas

 

[Illadelph]

Ya, I was wondering the same thing about dead leaves? Remove em or leave em?

Also, I had been wondering how to sterilize razor blades and scissors before cutting? Alcohol? H2O2? Boiling water? Open Flame?

 

[moonymonkey]

use alchol to sterlize..no i wud not remove theleafs..there still drawing energy there ...take them off pus stress back on the good leafs...as far as i know....peace moon/

 

[7MGTE]

Thanks for the input C6H6, Illadelph, and moonymonkey. I'm still unsure as how to go about feeding with the sensical, however they are starting to feel light today so tomorrow is probably watering day. At this point they havent been fed in over a week so I'll likely feed with a low ppm FNGrow, Floralicious+ mix supplemented with the sensical. Hopefully that will help rectify the problem. Any input? I know DIGITALHIPPY has experience with sensical, maybe he could provide some incite?

 

[rckymtnthuglife]

I'm not really sure what you did man. I do know how you can fix the problem.

Transplant those girls into 3gal but preferably 5gal pots. If you had gone to 3 gal at the first signs of problems they would be doing great right now...then you transplant into 5's for flower.

It sounds like you were feeding them a whole lot. I don't feed my Satori's really at all for the first month...also you should add 2 tbs of dolomite lime to your soil...and I would only use about 25% perlite. If you read the Mandala GrowFaq's Mike recommends this.

At this point you could add 1tbs of some High P Guano and perhaps 1/2 tbs kelp powder per gal. If you used R/O water you won't have to pH anything.

Don't just take my word for it.

Check out Moonshine man's mix, and Organics for Beginners in the organic soil section.

Please do take my word on transplanting though...at least into the same mix you've been using although adding at least 1 tbs of lime would certainly go along way.

Edit: I need to mention you shouldn't feed them anything but water or an ewc tea and molasses until they get through stretch...especially if you use 5gal buckets and add the guano and kelp. Hope this helps man. Oh heres a pic of Satori at day 25 or so of Veg.