Plants look bad - what's the problem

[code9]

Plants vegged in a tray under 400MH until roots come out of the 4" rockwool cube. Then the cube is put into a bucket filled about halfway with rock and then fill the rest with rock. They look great when put into the buckets, but then all goes sour. Once in the bucket it is under 1000HPS. It is a flood and drain system. The res has GH grow at about 4ml a gallon. Also sometimes hygrozyme and also sometimes sm-90. Temps are around 78-82, same as when in the tray before moving to the bucket. I have had plenty of good grows, but can not pinpoint this problem. My only thought are transplant stress.

Any ideas or suggestions would help.






below is how it looked 5 days earlier

 

[BluntItUp]

Im not positive but i think it is overwatering, I had very badluck using clones in rw cubes. They keep to wet. What is your feeding like?

 

[BruceLeeroy]

those look like they're overwatered. if you buried the rockwool cubes in that hydroton and your flooding the whole works, thats my bet on your problem. do the cubes get wet when you flood? how often are you flooding? when you say you use GH grow in the res.... do you mean flora grow? if so, are you using the whole three parts? to me the look reminiscent of someone that spent 20 years smoking and then ran up the stairs.... limp and exhausted, out of oxygen. biggest problem with rockwool is the shit stays so wet if your not careful you'll have all kinds of problems. burying the rockwool in hydroton seems like a bad idea to me. i'd have only put like half the rockwool under the rocks at most. do you aerate the hell out of your nutes before/while your flooding?

alot of people dont realize that the people who pioneered the rockwool medium used a mix of usually 50/50 absorbant/repellant rockwool, two different types. as far as i know those grodan cubes are JUST absorbant, makes it real easy to overwater.

i would suggest killing your flooding completely for at least a day, maybe two. very carefully every 4-6 hours take a few cups of nutes and pour it around the VERY edge of the bucket, careful to keep it away from the rockwool. whatever you do dont get that rockwool wet again until it dries out completely. see if that makes a difference. hydroton also holds water like a bitch, making it easy to overwater.

people say h202 is a good way to help correct overwatering. might think about giving that a try.

how often are you flooding? what is your PH? can you give more info on the nutes, TDS etc? it doesn't look like transplant shock to me, it looks like some problem with your bucket system/feeding. lack of dissolved oxygen that the plants can suck up.

peace

 

[BruceLeeroy]

hah, great minds think alike blunt

 

[BluntItUp]

lol bruce u got it right! lol no great mind here. Just lost a grow due to those rw in dwc. Got to saturated and rotted. Hope evrything is going to be ok vode9. Goodluck man

 

[code9]

thanks BluntItUp and BruceLeeroy for having a look. I thought overwatering was the problem also, but i think it is secondary. When the problem happens the plants stop drinking and this leads to the overwatering. On this last time I hand watered making sure to feel each rockwool. I ended up with all the plants having the same issue (look) but some were no way too wet. Also i do bury the wool, but if i do not the tops get funky and eventually moldy.
I am thinking it might be the fresh washed rock has a high PH from washing with the 7.1-7.3 PH tap water. This causes the roots to stop drinking????

 

[BruceLeeroy]

if your rockwool is getting moldy or agae or fungus, it's because it's staying wet. there is no "too wet". "any" wet is too wet. those rockwool cubes should be staying bone dry if at all possible. this is why i like nft/aero dwc and swc systems, they allow the medium to be kept totally dry all the time. roots wont quit taking up water just because of Ph, and i'm sure that the hydroton is close enough to a neutral ph that i'm sure that combined with your water ph of 7ish isn't causing the problem.

keep in mind, the outside of the cube will feel dry when the inside is still packed with water. are they properly ventilated? what are the temps and humidity at in the room?

you might try just not giving them ANY water until they start to droop and show signs of UNDER watering. if this takes much more than 240 hours for them to start to droop from lack of water then it's pretty much guaranteed overwatering. then do what i suggested with the careful watering along the outside rim, or just a partial flood so the water doesn't reach to the rockwool. to be honest with you, having a buried 4" rockwool cube in hydroton will just not work IMO. perhaps someone that has had luck with this type of thing could help more. in my experience, any time i haven't kept the rockwool completely dry, or allowed it to dry completely at least once in a while, they've gotten overwatered. how often do you flood? for how long? how many times per day? back to the nutrient question, are you using GH Flora nutes and if so, what ratio are you using the three parts in?

if the rockwool is kept dry, it wont get moldy or anything

any chance of taking a pic of the flowering ones without the hps light going? it makes it hard to really see the coloration on the leaves with that orange tint lol. the ones under the MH look nice, that too makes me think it's overwatering.

peace

 

[gaiusmarius]

yes indeed its very important to wash your hydroballs very well before you use them. the red dust they give off will completly screw up you ph.

the question about the grow is important too, you need to use all 3 parts of the GH ferts, you can't just give them grow and no micro and bloom. its only the proportions that change. unless you are talking about some other 1 part veg fert called grow?

the other thing is that hydroton needs water running through it at least once every 30 minutes while the lights are on. don't worry about overwatering, this isn't earth its hydro. just keep that water recirculating on a regular basis and your plants should come back.

all the best of luck mate

gaius

 

[BagseedSamurai]

Just calm everything down a notch. make sure thier water is filled with air, calm the solution and they should start to pick up.

 

[BruceLeeroy]

the other thing is that hydroton needs water running through it at least once every 30 minutes while the lights are on. don't worry about overwatering, this isn't earth its hydro. just keep that water recirculating on a regular basis and your plants should come back.

all the best of luck mate

gaius

i would definitely aggree with this if it wasn't for the rockwool. having a 4" rockwool cube buried underneath hydroton that you keep constantly wet is IMO a recipe for disaster

 

[BruceLeeroy]

in all fairness the only system i've used with both rockwool and hydroton was an aeroflo. if the rockwool was wet then the shit hit the fan much like you're seeing.

perhaps things work differently with ebb/flow type setups.

peace

 

[gaiusmarius]

they do work differently because the water is on a cycle not on the whole time like with aeroflo. also the proper growing rockwool is able to maintain enough air inside it even when its fully soaked. if you do some research you'll see what i mean. how otherwise could a rockwool slab grow work as well as they do uesing drippers that run 5 times a day until there is plenty of run off? not that i'm a rockwool fan in any way, but i have worked with the stuff enough to know what i'm telling you is correct.

peace and all the best
gm

 

[code9]

I use the 1 part GH FloaNova Grow. I worry when the rockwool drys out completly. Would that not kill the roots that run through it? Is it okay in a bucket ebb/flow to keet them dry and the roots below will supply the water?
Normally if the plants are doing fine the water on the rockwool does not seem to matter. I can't get a day pic anymore, but the color was light/pale green and the veins on the leafs were dark. Also the stems turned a purple/red color.
I ended up throwing away most of them and am going to start from new. It will set me back 2 weeks more, but probably better in the end. I hope these don't have the same issues, but i am going to watch the watering better and see what other info you guys/gals have. thanks!

 

[BruceLeeroy]

if you do some research you'll see what i mean. how otherwise could a rockwool slab grow work as well as they do uesing drippers that run 5 times a day until there is plenty of run off? not that i'm a rockwool fan in any way, but i have worked with the stuff enough to know what i'm telling you is correct.

you must have missed my post where i talked about different types of rockwool? also drippers are a little different because of the amount of D/O that ends up in each drop as it drips.

anyway, if i were to try and use the setup your using, i would put enough hydroton in the buckets so that the rockwool cube would come to a little below the top of the bucket. fill the sides with hydroton but dont cover the rockwool. then flood the buckets to about an inch below the rockwool. do this every 30 minutes or so as gaius says with a good high DO nute solution and i think you'd do just fine. letting the rockwool dry will not harm the plant as long as there are roots that have access to a nice wet environment. keep in mind the way a plant works in nature, there are many places where the top foot or so of soil is bone dry and the roots sink deep to suck up water from lower down. the key here is to make sure your lower roots stay wet. you might even want to flood every 20ish mintues if all thats getting wet is your hydroton. if they all dry out your in trouble. this would recquire a cycle timer though and not sure where you sit for gear. also it sort of takes it out of the ebb/flow thing and turns it into something a little different. you may also doing this want to hand water each pot once a day for the first few days until your roots have a good chance to get deep into the bucket. i'd also consider just using little cubes for clones and then putting them into hydroton earlier and skipping the bigger cubes completely. this would let you flood alot higher up and still keep your rockwool dry.

i have only ran one ebb and flow table and that was 8 years ago, i wasn't happy with it and haven't been back since. i've used rockwool in several different type's of NFT setups, as well as mixed with hydroton in an aeroflo. i'm trying to get away from that as well, it's just a pain in the ass IMO. keeping the base of a stem wet is a good way to invite lots of problems. mold, stem rot, algae.

does anyone have any input as to what else could have caused those first pictures? i thought they looked overwatered and it sort of went off on a tangent that may be wrong