sick plants ? had bad light. close to harvest

[bdomina]

first hydro grow. Have had little to no real issues till now and i am real close to harvest. been in flower for about 7 weeks. for 16 days they were under insufficient light because i had a bad capacitor and had to wait for a part that got messed up in shipping.

I know that was not good, it was way less intense as youcould easily handle the bulb if you wanted to and the light was dim and orange, probably 40-50% intensity. i thought they were pulling through and i was going to just harvest a lil early and count my losses.

I have a new part on the ballast and it is back to 100% for 1-2 days now. but in the mean time, as i said before i was planing on harvesting in another week. I gave it half nutes ( about ) to "ripen" before i flush w water in another week.

they look like shit. I went from a very full cabinet to getting dead leaves that were starting to creap up the buds. and I am not talking about yellowing. some dry looking blackness almost, some sorta wet shrivel . I got paranoid about having any rotting leaves anywhere around my buds and started trying to trim them out. now you see the result under full light.
(will add pics tomorrow not letting me upload right now)

my question is. should i do something to give these a shot in the arm for another 2 weeks (trichs milky-ish now) under full light and stronger nutes, to try to plump them up a bit ? and if so what would you suggest? or should i go on with the anticipated harvest time?

I have been writing this off to the low light for that long and the under growth not getting any light with a thick canopy. like i said i trimmed it out and moved some of them around a bit to try to open it up some. but could this be something like lockout or some kind of other def. issue ?

my ph is going down or stable at 5.6-5.7 and my ppm went up .
started:
water-15 gal - ppm 220 ph 6.6
FLNova Bloom - 50 ml 6.0 / 770
flor + - 12.5 ml - 6.0 / 780
Liquid Kool Bloom - 75ml - 6.0 / 980
ph downed to 5.8
so 6,0 / 980 start ph / ppm -minus 220 ppm start tap water = 760 nute ppm

now i am about 4 gal down in 6 days 5.6 / 1160 - res temps kinda high but no root rot as far as i can tell. try to cool down once a day w frozen bottles


before the "ripen" changeout my last res was 5.8 / 1320
will post pics on next post

 

[10k]

they look like shit. I went from a very full cabinet to getting dead leaves that were starting to creap up the buds. and I am not talking about yellowing. some dry looking blackness almost, some sorta wet shrivel . I got paranoid about having any rotting leaves anywhere around my buds and started trying to trim them out. now you see the result under full light.

If anything, having to run with much less light intensity than they were used to receiving, will cause an over ferted looking condition from their nute uptake rates when they were still in the bright lighting before your hid quit working.

Having "rotting leaves" or a wet shriveled look like you've described sounds like they're getting soaking wet with transpired moisture during the night cycles and not having adequate air movement and exhaust running to help that excessive transpired moisture evaporate away instead of sitting on the foilage in essence 'foliar back-feeding' large portions of their transpiration when the lights come back on.

Have you been keeping the air moving and exhausting from the enclosure full time during the lights off cycles ?
If not, you can expect a serious case of rotten spongy moldy buds.

my question is. should i do something to give these a shot in the arm for another 2 weeks (trichs milky-ish now) under full light and stronger nutes, to try to plump them up a bit ? and if so what would you suggest? or should i go on with the anticipated harvest time?

I have been writing this off to the low light for that long and the under growth not getting any light with a thick canopy. like i said i trimmed it out and moved some of them around a bit to try to open it up some. but could this be something like lockout or some kind of other def. issue ?

You really cant adjust the flowering time of the plants any, so I'd just stick with the anticipated harvest date. Still looking forward to seeing photos of what the plants are now looking like, but based on what you've already said it sounds like you're on the right path by thinning out some of the overly bushy foliage below the canopy which will help somewhat on the moisture issues, but don't thin it too much as those older leaves make a good food source for the plants to pull some needed mobile elements from if they need any in their final flowering days.

On your nutes, you should be topping off the res daily with water instead of letting it's tds become so much stronger than your starting tds.

waiting for the pictures ???.

 

[bdomina]

If anything, having to run with much less light intensity than they were used to receiving, will cause an over ferted looking condition from their nute uptake rates when they were still in the bright lighting before your hid quit working.

Having "rotting leaves" or a wet shriveled look like you've described sounds like they're getting soaking wet with transpired moisture during the night cycles and not having adequate air movement and exhaust running to help that excessive transpired moisture evaporate away instead of sitting on the foilage in essence 'foliar back-feeding' large portions of their transpiration when the lights come back on.

Have you been keeping the air moving and exhausting from the enclosure full time during the lights off cycles ?
If not, you can expect a serious case of rotten spongy moldy buds.
.

the adjusted nute uptake thing makes sense.. I do have a lot (or what seems like alot) of air movement in there. I have a stanley blower-mod that pulls through a cool tube and a scrubber. I have a 4" AC inlet port, 2 3" PC fans in front of the passive intakes, and like an 8 inch honeywell fan. I do have the homewell blowing above the canopy though. perhaps the 3 inc pc fans are not enough circ for the undergrowth alone, and i should put the larger fan completely under the canopy blowing up..

i threw this temp picasa photo album together. until the uploads get fixed over here.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mightyicculus/LeafRot?feat=directlink

please take a look.
THANKS
~BD~

 

[mexilandrace]

it started when you put the new higher intensity light in there?

 

[bdomina]

i think it had already started a bit before the change probably over a few a few days judging by the amount i trimmed out . I changed the res on sunday to half strength nutes (still under bad light ) , fixed the capacitor on thurs. but by that time it had already been under bad light for 14 days.

 

[bdomina]

tonight's the scheduled night to swap the flower res out. So I either flush w water for a week and harvest. or give them a fat dose of nutes and try to pump them up for another week or two.I guess if I tried to fatten them up for another week or so, I might run the risk of rot. But I could yield a little more i guess. Clones are ready to go down there though. What;s my next play??maybe see if my trimming did any good before I decide?

 

[mexilandrace]

to be honest trimming only causes problems in my experience.

If i was you, I would start the flush now, the plants are already freaking out, the trim likely added to it and then hitting them hard with nutes would compound problems.

Use this as a lesson for later grows and cross your fingers, that's my opinion.

 

[bdomina]

much appreciated