Question for the experts.

[Homegrow3r]

Ok I've had a look and what I have with my soon to be mother plants looks a bit like overwatering or pH problems, but I'm on hydro and it's running a pretty constant 6.0pH

Advanced nutrients sensigrow A+B

Silica supplement, can't remember the name now, but the problem existed before I added that.

I use hydrofarm bubblers.

I mix my nutes in a 100l trashcan ph balance and let them settle for a while before using them, do a bit of aeration too to drive the chlorine etc, out.

This is my first hydro grow.

The plants are big bang feminised and they were taken from a pretty sick mother which wouldn't have survived so they were essential, they'll be turned to mothers when I have one from it that I like.
The Afghani kush in the background is on the same nute solution and has not problems, although it has a little bit of ripple in the leaves, but the hydroton is still settling in and pH was up and down, more up than down.

Any ideas?
I've been using my Hannah instruments metre to check ppm etc, but still have to get that down, but am sticking more or less to the instructions on the bottle so I can't go too far wrong.

 

[MynameStitch]

can you take some pictures without the hps light on?
Also can you fill on the questions below, ones you have not answered yet?

What color are your roots? They look like they are stressed from the root zone than anything else.... like root rot or low oxygen levels.......

HYDROPONICS/Aero Ponics

How long has this problem been going on?
What system are you running? (DWC? Ebb flow? Aero? Water Farm? Flood Tables? and so on...)
What STRAIN are you growing?
What was the establishing technique? (Were the seed or clone?)
What is the age of your plants?
How tall are the plants?
What PHASE are the plants in? (seedling, vegetative or flower) are the plants in?
What Technique are you using?
What substrate/medium are you using?(Hydroton, RockWool etc.)
What is the Water temperature?
What color are your roots? White? Brown? Are your roots slimy?
What Nutrient's are you using? How much of each if using multiple?
What is the TDS/EC/PPM you are using?
What is the pH of the "Tank"?
Are you sure your calibration is correct on your equiptment?
When was your last watering?
What is your water temps?
When was your last feeding change? (ie. grow-bloom-micro-additional)
How often do you clean your system: example: Flush out water replace with clean water and nutrients?
What size bulb are you using?
What is the distance to the canopy?
What is your RH Factor(Relative Humidity)?
What is the canopy temperature?
What is the Day/Night Temp? (Include flucutaion range)
What is the current Air Flow? (cfm etc.)
Is the fan blowing directly at plants?
Is your water HARD or SOFT?
What water are you using? Reverse Osmosis (RO)? Tap? Bottled? Well water? Distilled? Mineral Water?
Has plant been recently pruned, cloned off of or pinched
Have any pest chemicals been used? If so, What and When?
Are plant's infected with pest's

 

[Homegrow3r]

How long has this problem been going on? They're about Three weeks in the bubblers.
What system are you running? (DWC? Ebb flow? Aero? Water Farm? Flood Tables? and so on...) Hydrofarm bubblers.
What STRAIN are you growing? Big bang
What was the establishing technique? (Were the seed or clone?) Cloned from a sick mother.
What is the age of your plants? 4 weeks all told.
How tall are the plants? 25cm ish
What PHASE are the plants in? (seedling, vegetative or flower) are the plants in? Vegging to be mothers.
What Technique are you using? Bubbler.
What substrate/medium are you using?(Hydroton, RockWool etc.) Hydroton.
What is the Water temperature? Grow room temp, 21c(70f) with lights off, 24c(75f) with lights on.
What color are your roots? White? Brown? Are your roots slimy? Good and white, no slime.
What Nutrient's are you using? How much of each if using multiple? Sensigrow A+B grow, silica supplement(wasn't there when the problem started)
What is the TDS/EC/PPM you are using? I have issues with this, it's confusing, metre is reading 850ishppm with starting point of 190 on my water. The other measurements available to me on my meter are microsemens, but I don't get this interchangeability and haven't understood yet what I should be doing, just keeping it consistent presently.
What is the pH of the "Tank"?keeping it in or about 6 thinking that was an issue as it was a little high at 7.0-ish
Are you sure your calibration is correct on your equiptment? pH is calibrated regularly with a two point technique and backup of universal pH solution helps when I'm lazy
When was your last watering? Bubbler pump is on 24/7
When was your last feeding change? (ie. grow-bloom-micro-additional) added silica supplement, long after problem stared.
How often do you clean your system: example: Flush out water replace with clean water and nutrients? Once or twice weekly
What size bulb are you using? 600W
What is the distance to the canopy? About 25cm, but I use a heat shield
What is your RH Factor(Relative Humidity)? 50ish
What is the canopy temperature? 24c(75f)
What is the Day/Night Temp? (Include flucutaion range) 21-24c (70-75F)
What is the current Air Flow? (cfm etc.) 100cfm inline input, 145cfm output pulling air through the carbon scrubber, also passive venting
Is the fan blowing directly at plants? multiple moveable pc fans hanging, not blowing presently on plants, lots of leaf movement though
Is your water HARD or SOFT? on the hard side
What water are you using? Reverse Osmosis (RO)? Tap? Bottled? Well water? Distilled? Mineral Water?tap
Has plant been recently pruned, cloned off of or pinchednope
Have any pest chemicals been used? If so, What and When?nope
Are plant's infected with pest'snope

 

[MynameStitch]

WHat is the water temp, you say grow room temp.... what is the water temp that is in the bubblers?

Is there any brown patches anywhere on your roots... does not have to be slime.... just brown areas....... did you check the entire roots?

Cause it looks like your plants may not be getting enough air they act like they are overwatered.....

what are you using for air? how big are the air pumps and stones? You say your water is on the hard side...... have you tested the water out of the tap? ppm/ec?
Ya, microsemiens is confusing to me also

Why do you flush out your system once or 2 times a week????? That is waste of good nutes.... you can do it once every 2 weeks or once a week if you want to be paranoid

How often do you test your pH and ppms? 7 is way too high, it needs to be kept as stable as possible only allowing for a .5 max change.......

 

[Weedninja]

What is the TDS/EC/PPM you are using? I have issues with this, it's confusing, metre is reading 850ishppm with starting point of 190 on my water. The other measurements available to me on my meter are microsemens, but I don't get this interchangeability and haven't understood yet what I should be doing, just keeping it consistent presently.

Microsiemens are a measure of electrical conductivity(EC). There is a direct relationship between EC and TDS, but the conversion factor is different with different meters. It's very confusing shit, so just stick with TDS(ppm).

I had a similar problem with a similar system and I just ran an airstone into the res, problem solved.

You're in good hands with Stitch, so my advice is to answer her questions and follow her advice.

 

[Homegrow3r]

WHat is the water temp, you say grow room temp.... what is the water temp that is in the bubblers? It's reading the same as the grow room 24c(70f)

Is there any brown patches anywhere on your roots... does not have to be slime.... just brown areas....... did you check the entire roots? I've just had a good look, no brown

Cause it looks like your plants may not be getting enough air they act like they are overwatered.....Aeration seems to be pretty good, don't see how I can get more air into the system

what are you using for air? how big are the air pumps and stones? You say your water is on the hard side...... have you tested the water out of the tap? ppm/ec? Well I've just worked out that my meter is on a 0.5 conversion factor, gonna have to bare with me, was using ppm before, gonna change to the microsiemens, ppm is too abitrary
Ya, microsemiens is confusing to me also

Why do you flush out your system once or 2 times a week????? That is waste of good nutes.... you can do it once every 2 weeks or once a week if you want to be paranoid I'm just a beginner with this hydro stuff, trying to get it perfect when the pH is going pretty strongly up and down, sometimes it's easier to just change the whole lot, I only got my new large prestorage bin recently so I should have it well stable going in in future.

How often do you test your pH and ppms? 7 is way too high, it needs to be kept as stable as possible only allowing for a .5 max change....... Checking pH and ppm every one or two days until I'm used to this

quoted

 

[Homegrow3r]

OK I checked the advice on the greenhouse website for this strain.
I've just changed the pH to 5.5 as they reckon that's correct, the other thing is I checked the meter and it has a 0.5 conversion factor and read 1650, which means I think that the EC is just over 3 and probably way too high for the variety also according to greenhouse who say it should be about 1.7-8 throughout bloom, so probably overfeeding too. I'll cut it back next time, but the Afghani is loving it.

 

[MynameStitch]

Thanks for the props weedninja!

Yes, you are most definatly overfeeding her! You will need to change your system out if you can't top it off with enough water to wean the strength of the nutes down.
Cut back on them ppms, when you grow with 2 different strains like this you will run into problems where one strain needs more food and the other is too high already... so you have to either pick or try to find a median to where both can be happy...... no easy task.

How big is your pump you are using and your air stones?

Yes, your pH was too high like I said in my previous post, remember don't like it swing like that your range for hydro should be 5.5 to 6.3 do not let it go over or under those ranges......

You should check the ppm and pH everyday, sometimes multiple if you added something new to the setup.... like topping it off and such.....

You wil find out that if you have hard water it's a little harder tocontrol your pH and ppms do to the amount of micronutrinets in hard water..... using RO water will help out a ton and has low pH like you need too.

Higher pH will show your water is hard and it's hard to control the pH when there is so much micronutes in the tap water.
If you don't have problems keeping your pH stable you won't need to worry about the RO.

 

[Homegrow3r]

Pumps are ones that were used numerous times by my brother with the same setup with no airstones in the res. My understanding is that the aeration will happen when the water is first bubbled up the tube and then when it's running back through the stones into the res...am I way off?

My water is starting at 370micros when it comes out of the tap, I have the ppm of the solution down to 1400 now, that's a base level of 1030 when you take off the starting point, plus I added some silica which will have pushed the reading a bit higher.
I added a few capfuls of 6% hydrogen peroxide to the res too, just in case. I'll change res tomorrow for the new batch, too late to do it now tonight. Thanks for the help, and I think I understand EC now and how to read it.
Starting with an EC of 0.7 the solution should be in the correct space at the moment EC wise at about 1.8. I'll see the feedback on the plants soon enough anyway, might have to up the dose a little on the Afghan as it seems to be mostly liking the high nute levels, but all reports say that Afghan Kush should, it's just that EC thing had me stumped, reading the actual ppm reading instead of doing the conversion from microsiemens to EC.

Thanks for help, I'll let y'all know.

 

[Homegrow3r]

I think maybe that I've called them bubblers when they're really a drip system. You think DWC when I say bubblers right?

Anyway, I changed both reservoirs this morning, The Afghan was showing signs of rippling too, so I thought maybe it was a little high for that too, I'm dialling it in slowly. I'll get it right, thanks for the help Stitch, it's much appreciated.

 

[MynameStitch]

Yes, bubblers is also known as DWC....... you say you are running a drip system?

How long and how often do you have it dripping?

h202 is not good to add to hydro system unless it's ment for dipping root zones..... it ends up killing both good and bad bacteria and the bad bacteria that is left over comes back and can come back worse than what it was before.......

 

[Homegrow3r]

Basically these things, or at least very similar.

I have them running 24/7 isn't that the way to do it? I couldn't really see the res getting enough air otherwise?

OK, I've read other reports on using H2O2 on here and thought it was a good thing to do. Is it only good in the case of problems already, to clean things up?

 

[MynameStitch]

it's only good to clean things up and being used for a dipping solution for when your trying to rid of slime or rot.

Take a picture of how your setup is...... the setup above in the picture is a water farm.. is that how your setup is?

 

[Homegrow3r]

Yeah it's a waterfarm, I said hydrofarm earlier, easy mistake
The same principle with what I have just that the pots are a different colour and material and shape is slightly different.

 

[Homegrow3r]

Pic of the setup presently, trying to power these mothers for a while, they're off under a 250w cfl after the weekend when I put 25 jack herer clones in the table.

 

[MynameStitch]

If I remember correctly I am not aware of any system where you need to drip 24/7 it's just not natural.

Your better off trying to get a schedule going..... that is why your plants look overwatered, too much water on the roots.... how much water is dripping at a time how much estimated goes on the roots at once?

You need to invest in a timer that comes on ever so often to drip and then say every 4 hours for 10 min is an example......

 

[Homegrow3r]

I have a few timers still lying about, looks like the big bang could definitely benefit from not running 24/7. I just read some instructions on setting up the waterfarm system and it says it depends on the strain as to whether or not they run 24/7. It advises for non-water loving varieties to run 1/2 on 1 off during lights on and pumps off at lights out.
So I'll set up the big bang on that schedule tonight when I get home, it appears the Afghan is hardier and likes lots of everything.

Interestingly, I think you can already see an improvement in the plants from the first pic to the latest with the plants not being as gnarly and as curled, so something I've been doing has already been helping, thanks for all advice.

 

[MynameStitch]

Did you cut back on the length the roots getting wet?
Also you cut back the nutes too.... that was a big part the other part was overwatering.

 

[Homegrow3r]

I haven't cut the times yet, gonna do that in a few minutes when the lights come on.
I cut back the nutes big time, diluted the solution a lot.
Just asking the questions here forced me to go look at the microsiemens thing again and I think I have that sorted.
Again thanks for the help, I'll report back in a week or so once I've seen if watering less makes much difference.

 

[MynameStitch]

Cool, please make sure ya come back with an update