Possible over fert or dificiency??? HELP save my Afghani's!!!

[PH020]

I have some sensi seeds afghani growing in grodan rockwhool, they are approx 5 weeks into flowering. They are under a digital 600w in an aircooled hood which is approximately 28 to 32" from the tops of the plant. The air in the room is circulated often as well, they are watered with store bought reverse osmosis water as our local tap water is very hard and not even really drinkable. I'm using botanicare flowering pure blend pro bloom organic plant food, and liquid karma. The water temp is room temp as they jugs are stored near the plants until i put nutes in them. At 20ml of pure blend and 10ml liquid K per gallon nutes they were doing fantastic until about a week and a half to 2 weeks ago when they started to look like they were nute burned, so I flushed them for a couple days and started fresh with a low 7 to 10 ml pure blend and no liquid k per gallon ratio. Yet they are still looking worse and worse. Its starting to look less and less like burn and more like some severe dificiency. I've done 3 successful grows with the same strain, nutes, and medium before but we moved to a new place and the water here is unusable so I had to switch to store bought. So this is my first grow on this water. When I ph it straight from the bottle its pretty much around 6.0 or so. I'm trying to get some pics up to show where the problem is occurring on the plants. In the picture they are on a piece of plastic, they are not like that under the 600, but they dont come out right on my camera otherwise. If I forgot to include some type of info please ask, I need any help I can with this as I have quite a few of them going and its effected all of them and I dont want to lose them or have to cut them early and scavenge the remains

http://www.icmag.com/ic/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=773030&ppuser=40800

http://www.icmag.com/ic/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=773031&ppuser=40800

 

[Weezard]

H2 oh oh!

H2 oh oh!

Aloha, Pho2o

And count yer blessings.

Undrinkable is not unusable.
Quite the contrary.
I'd guess your symptoms are a result of using bottled water.

Bottled drinking water has way too much sodium added for taste.
Good for us, bad for plants.
Hard tap water has plenty of Calcium and Magnesium.
Bad for us, good for plants.

Distilled water has none and will leach elements from the grow medium and the plants.
Not good for people or plants.

Since you store your water before adding nutes, be sure to aerate that water just before you apply it.
Plant do not drown, but they DO suffocate.

Best of luck with them.
Weezard

 

[PH020]

I do aerate the water before applying, I thought about trying our tapwater out but its so bad here we cant even use the dishwasher or everything has a white film on it and after a few washes is almost encased in it. I heard that hard water locks up the roots from absorbing nutes? Anyone have any info on this? And a friend that helped me get started mentioned that they need larger pots, but could that cause something like this? They are currently in 1 gallon pots. Oh and its not "drinking" water, its "purified" through "reverse osmosis, carbon filtration, and ozonation". Well at least according to the bottle. Thanks in advance guys!

 

[Weezard]

RO? Oh oh!

RO? Oh oh!

I do aerate the water before applying, I thought about trying our tapwater out but its so bad here we cant even use the dishwasher or everything has a white film on it and after a few washes is almost encased in it. I heard that hard water locks up the roots from absorbing nutes? Anyone have any info on this? And a friend that helped me get started mentioned that they need larger pots, but could that cause something like this? They are currently in 1 gallon pots. Oh and its not "drinking" water, its "purified" through "reverse osmosis, carbon filtration, and ozonation". Well at least according to the bottle. Thanks in advance guys!

Same advice for RO water.
It is too pure.
No sodium, but also no trace elements, Calcium, or Magnesium.
Heck my tap water here is too pure.
But from the sound of yours I'd just settle for adding about 200 ppm of Calmag to the RO water.

Rockwool in gallon pots eh?
Easy enough to check.
If you have any roots pokin out the drainage holes, it's time for bigger pots.

Rockwool can give you PH fits.

Have you neasured the PH of the run-off water?
I'll bet it's a little high.

Regards,
Weezard

 

[PH020]

Good call, I'll check the runoff. Yeah I'm not a big fan of rockwool but I'm new to this and I have no experience with other mediums so I'm a little nervous about switching. 200 ppm would be how many ml per gallon?

 

[Cruzin]

those things are burnt up, you need to check ph, ppm, your water quality and flush.

 

[Weezard]

How many ml. in a teaspoon? I forget

How many ml. in a teaspoon? I forget

Good call, I'll check the runoff. Yeah I'm not a big fan of rockwool but I'm new to this and I have no experience with other mediums so I'm a little nervous about switching. 200 ppm would be how many ml per gallon?

About a 1/2 teaspoon should do jus' fine.
I used Rockwool for a while.
Alone and as a root holder for DWC.
Too much trouble.
Same with Hydrotron.

Spent all my time chasing and amending PH.
Went looking for a medium with less "baggage".
Found Coco coir!

Love the stuff. PH neutral, great tilth, lightweight and it's affordable.
I use it for all my plants now.
Look at the difference between FF Ocean Forest and Coco with my Onion starts;

Same seed, same age, same sun.
Check it out for your next grow.

Always happy to he'p
Weezard

 

[PH020]

So its called coco coir? My local shop carries coco but the guy warned me away from it a while ago and made it sound like the devil, almost felt like he was paid to push rock wool on customers. I'll check it out when I pick up the calmag tmrw. Thanks for the info!

 

[PH020]

Ok, I just checked my runoff ph and its a solid 6.5, within tolerances still. Wtf else could it be? They were doing great on the amount of nutes I had them in, and they suddenly shifted for the worse. Flushing has not helped at all.

 

[PH020]

Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[PH020]

Why are all the fan leaves along the bottom of the plant still looking good?

 

[PH020]

Can anyone give me some more info about cal mag? a brand or more specifics to the name? I'm trying to find some locally and I havent had any luck.

 

[RetroGrow]

Definitely looks like a classic cal/mag deficiency from using straight RO water.
I am using RO water, but mixing it with tap water, because my tap water is too hard. Recommend mixing your water, and adding a cal/mag supplement. Any make is good. I am using Botanicaire.

 

[Barnt]

I've never used PBP, but I once had a bottle of fox farm tiger bloom go bad on me. Of course I didn't know it until my plants looked like yours.

I've had so many cal/mag issues its not even funny. I always water with 10ml of calmag with my feeding and now I have no such issues.

Your problem to me does NOT look like cal/mag issues. I used to use RO water thinking my water was bad. With proper calmag, I didn't have any problems.

Back to the bad fert thing. My tiger bloom had crystals in the bottom and you could hear them moving around when you shook it. Lots of the salts and goodies were at the bottom not dissolved anymore. By week 5 my plants looked JUST like yours. No phosphorous in the food, so the only thing the plants can do is leach it from the surrounding leaves. In flower phosphorous deficiencies raid the fan leaves at the top of the plant leaving the lower ones in tact. I'm not saying this is your problem, just that you should check your nutes. My nutes were fine for several grows and then suddenly I had major issues--just like you are describing. I changed nothing as well. My nets were stored at room temperature and were about a year old.

This was taken at ~week 6:

 

[RetroGrow]

"Your problem to me does NOT look like cal/mag issues. I used to use RO water thinking my water was bad. With proper calmag, I didn't have any problems."

Yup, you're right. I am just now looking at the photos. Not a cal/mag deficiency, but does look like a phosphorous deficiency.
Check out Stitch's pictures here:

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=11688

 

[PH020]

See I just read that and I have no color distortion other than the yellowing and browing of the upper fan leaves and now the bud leaves. There is no blue, purp, or red on the plan anywhere and they look healthy everywhere other than the leaves that have turned yellow and are dying. I'm completely stumped, but I did have a thought about my nutes being bad, they are about a year old... I'm going to try and get some cal mag tmrw at the local shop and replace my nutes with a new bottle. I'm hoping I'll see some improvement soon before I have a panic meltdown.

 

[RetroGrow]

Nothing to panic about. The buds are still going to be good, as long as it's not insects destroying them. The blackening of the leaves does resemble the phosphorous deficiency in Stitch's guide, though.

 

[hempluvr]

I would flush the shit out of my plants with distilled water and leave them alone. Trim away the really damaged leaves and let the plants be. After the flush feed them a really low ec/ppm nutrient solution. Something with higher levels of p+k and less nitrogen. Make sure you are flushing with at least 3x the amount of water for your pots. So if you have a 3 gallon pot flush with 9 gallons of water and so on. Also adjust your ph as needed. If you flush with distilled water you will have no problems with the water messing up the plants. I feed my plants with distilled water and flush with it...works wonders!

 

[PH020]

I'm doing another flush, should I use any clearex or just straight distilled flush? How many days should I flush them with just water? Thanks guys!

 

[PH020]

???