What's wrong with these plants? (with pics)

[Wastel]

Hi folks,

i have a problem i can't identify. It starts at the bottom of the plant. At first there are blotches on the leaves. Then the blotches expand an turn greyish/black. The leave wrinkle up dry and drop. Some fan leaves just dropped still beeing green?!? This is going on for about 7-10 days. By now it starts affecting new growth too...
Have a look at the pics. The pics have been taken with a flash so the green is darker than it looks.

Method:HYDROPONICS

What system are you running? Top Feed-Water Farm, recirculating
What STRAIN are you growing? 1.Afghan (Nirvana)
What was the establishing technique? seeds
What is the age of your plants? 81 days of 18/6
How tall are the plants? 45"-50" about 15" have been pruned a while ago.
What PHASE are the plants in? vegetative
What substrate/medium are you using? RockWool cubes in Hydroton hydro-planters
What is the Water temperature? 25°C (ca.74°F)
What color are your roots? White, no slime
What Nutrient's are you using? Advanced Hydroponics Dutch Formula (Grow Bloom and Micro)
How much of each if using multiple? According to AH scheme 75%strength
What is the TDS/EC/PPM you are using? EC= 0,95 (beginning with EC=0,3 50% RO/50% Tap water)
What is the pH of the "Tank"? 5.6-6.4
Are you sure your calibration is correct on your equiptment? Yes, i calibrate them weekly
When was your last watering? 11am
I water 7 times a day for 7min. During the watering airstones oxigenate the water
What is your water temps? 77°F
When was your last feeding change? none so far
How often do you clean your system: every 2 weeks
What size bulb are you using? 110W OSRAM 6500k Dulux LSR = 8.000 lumens
What is the distance to the canopy? 11"-13" (very hot LSRs)
What is your RH Factor(Relative Humidity)? 55-75%
What is the canopy temperature? 24°C (ca. 77°C)
What is the Day/Night Temp? day 73°F night 72°F
What is the current Air Flow? 1200 cfm dimmed to 600 cfm
Is the fan blowing directly at plants? yes
Is your water HARD or SOFT? SOFT
What water are you using? 50%Reverse Osmosis (RO)&50%TAP
Has plant been recently pruned, cloned off of or pinched NO
Have any pest chemicals been used? NO
Are plant's infected with pest's? NO.

 

[stinkyattic]

Things I see potentially damaging:
-Humidity too high
-Ventilation insufficient (pic of the shrivelled dark hanging leaves screams suffocation to me)
-Pot size insufficient for plant mass (can't really see comparison but downturned, cupped-under leaves often indicate pot-bound)
-Calcium unavailable or not present in sufficient quantity

Add circ. fans within the room, increase exhaust rate to drop %RH down to 50-60% TOPS, add CalMag to your feed schedule, check pot size. Even in hydro, I'd never go smaller than a 6" pot for a foot tall (finished) plant, or a gallon pot for a clone that has been rooted, vegged 2 weeks, and then flowered.

 

[Wastel]

Hi stinkyattic,

thanks for your quick answer. But..(there's always a but)

Humidity is from 55% to 75% depending on day. That's pretty much OK for veg.
I'm running a 600-1200 cfm automated LTI fan and i have a fan blowing from below at the plants 18/6. Can't be air related problem.


I agree on the pots. They are kind of small. Roots have grown out of the pots on some plants.

Calcium is low (50mg/liter) in my local water. I hoped the hydronutrients by AH to supply enough?!?

 

[stinkyattic]

Well at least the Calcium is easy enough to supplement. CalMAg either in the res or even as a foliar feed would be one good place to start.
I'd also plug both your exhaust and circulation fans into an outlet that runs 24/0 rather than on the timed one. IMHO air exchange is important in the dark, too.

Is there any way to go to a larger pot, or was your system set to take only a specific size? Is a retrofit possible?

 

[Wastel]

I'sorry i had to be more specific..

The exhaust is running 27/7 i just turn the oscillating fan off at night and it's timed to run for 15min twice at night.

Cal/mag is a problem in Europe. simply not available. I've read dolomte lime should work. I not sure for hydro though.

I am going to increase potsize in the next couple days. Work permitting. My system is DIY and pretty much modifiable according to needs. 2,5gal pots should suffice, right?

 

[SCF]

it almost looks like a Potash Deficiency, and or a little nitrogen too.


Also i noticed you said you have not trimmed it or pruned it. This may be some root bound. But being hydro I'm assuming you didn't let that happen. So you probably need to up your nutrients up. At 80 days shes getting hungrier and hungrier. Also try to keep your ph stable.

Dolomite lime is for soil, and its to buffer out a neutral PH in soil. For hydro you want PH up and PH down. Earthdown has a organic version of this. And works wonders. They are crystals.

 

[Wastel]

So you probably need to up your nutrients up.

Unfortunately it get's worse when i up the EC!!! It's not a nitrogen def. If, then a phosphorus def. That's what the guide says.
Actually it's virtually impossible to get a nute def in a hydro system unless you totally screw up the instructions.

My water is actually a bit low in magnesium. Calcium could be a bit higher.
Well some Mg an Ca is in the "Micro" fertilizer.
None of both can cause the symptoms.

After reading the "guide to sick plants" i start thinking about a lockout because of salt build-up or similar. I have to say that i added some galons of hydroton pebbels to the tray so that the roots would be covered and not directly exposed to air. Those pebbels have been sterilized with a chlorine solution...
I have the fear that the chlorine solution was to strong and caused a deposit in the pebbels. This might have caused a NaCl build-up when the chlorine reacted with sodium in the water....
who can confirm this theory? or am i totally off with it?

W.

 

[Wastel]

Ok, here is another pic of a leave from the upper regions of the plant.
Look at the extreem dark green and the purple stem. That's screaming phosphorus def all over the place.

So, is the diagnosis i posted before right or wrong or what else is it?

 

[SCF]

are the stems turning purple?

 

[Wastel]

The leave stems are purple. The Main stems are not.

 

[Capn]

Do you flush your res? or do you do the lucas formula?
I have this happening to my 100day old moms (bcbd purps) in a 36gallon rubbermaid tote dwc. My water temps are probably 78ish. My room temps stay at 80-82 and because I keep the ppm at like 750ish with top-ups and I hardly ever change the RO water in they're res.

I'm pretty sure since I keep my ppms so slow and I never really give them fresh nutes it's causing the plant to be deprived of macro nutes as I use a micro nute supplement.

So maybe try flushing and refilling your res with fresh nutes and see if that helps?

best of luck to ya, stay high.

 

[Wastel]

Hi Capn,

since the beginning i started a fresh nute solution with cleaning of the tank every 2 weeks. I clean the tank with a 70% alcohol spray and rinsing thoroughly afterwards.

Unfortunately it can't be that.


Right now i'm flushing 4 times 4min. a day with a veery low nute-solution of EC 0,2 (netto) just to get rid of a possible NaCl build-up. I also stopped bubbling my solution for to long as i kept having fast raising pH.

Actually i find your situation very interesting as i want to keep my moms in hydro, too.

 

[N. Accumbens]

Increase your light, or decrease your high(t)- 110w will only shine so deep.....It would seem like a lack of N (without light chlorophyll is not abundant- and processes dwindle)- but this is due to a lack of light not a lack of N itself, ..It does not appear to be P, and almost definitely is not the Cal Mag.

Continue with a light feeding schedule...I do not see reasons for flushing (maybe you do ;-)...Mostly add light or trim tops so as to bring down lamp closer to bottoms...if high(t) is not an issue then trim the bottoms it will be easier than rejuvenating them...

Good Luck from ...
...the dopaminergenic pathways

 

[N. Accumbens]

Oh...and BTW Cal Mag is available from both Biogreen and their rival Metrop...both available in Europe and Biogreen may probably be at one of your local grow stores, if you have one. Lime is better used outside. Otherwise Biogreen has a great fertilizer MAM- for Mother plants if you plan on having them be so...I have good experiences with the use of this product and an occasional application of Calmag- This line is Bio-mineral and can be used on most all mediums...coco, soil, hydro...

The Mam fert keeps my P deficiencies down, a must for the best phenos and varieties which suck P like theirs no tomorrow, a correlation dare I say in many cases, but the exception to the rule Dj Short..who has only P loving strains...or is it because they are all so potent...I dare not conclude at this time...Peace and luck...hoping for chlorophyll in your future...

Accumbens' dopaminergenic pathway

 

[Wastel]

Hi accumbens,

thanks for the tips. Unfortunately neither of the products is available in Germany. I have to go to the netherlands for biogreen. Edit:nope, just found it. But the CalMag is called CalGel!
Im veery intrested in the Biogreen MaM. That stuff is great!!!

Regarding my plants, i started a diet for them and indeed the drain is higher in EC than the nutrient solution.
I tried to up the EC a bit but i get the symptoms right back.

I also fired up my second 110W battery of Dulux-L. Those CFL are not the usual stuff. Just the fact that the plants easily grow up to 5 feet under these tubes, without stretching, says it all. Osram packs 55W in just 22inches of length. The Dulux-L is actually a folded-in-half T5 tube driven by an E-ballast.

 

[SCF]

i believe its a light issue as well. That's why i mention the trimming bit. on the bottom. I noticed that most of your problems are on the bottom? Its not mobile going to top middle and bottom with no rhyme or reason?

 

[HeadyPete]

Why the swing of ph from 5.6 - 6.4? this is almost a 10 fold difference in ph, as in 5.6 is 10 times more acidic than 6.6. This is not good for plants, plus mag and cal start to lock below 5.8. I would bring the ph up above 5.8, so any fluctuations are still withing range - 5.8 - 6.8 (6.3 ideal).

Dolomite is used to "buffer" soil but what this means in reality is lime is alkaline and slow acting, so it is added to peat based soils to counter the acidity of the peat (around ph 3.5). It acts slow so it is continuously raising ph against acidic peat and normal acidic microbial action. This is what gives it the "buffer effect".

Dolomite is too slow to give as a spot treatment for anything, and foliar feeding does nothing. Dolomite must be mixed into soil at least weeks in advance to allow it to begin to activate and have any effect.

I would think your nutes are too strong for the light you have, as well. Also, the warmer the temps, the less food plants need and use. Give more and they burn.

Definitely the pots are too small, plants are too big and the lighting is not adequate to penetrate tall plants and all this is causing grief, plus that browning is calcium def. I don't see any indication that there is enough cal in your nutes and the RO contains nothing. They don't usually include cal (which is a secondary nutrient, not a micro nute) because most peeps water contains lots of cal.

CalMag is also called CalMax (Grotek), Cal Mag plus, and other names. The Plus usually means it has iron. There are a lot of cal supplements offered by companies, it's just not always obvious from the name. Look around and ask at the hydro store if possible.

I would recommend LST to train the plants to get a better canopy for your lighting and to control the height. With LST all those crappy under branches now grow vertical and become the budsite for a big cola. The trick to LST is keeping every branch at the same height so they grow and bud evenly. If one branches is allowed higher than the others, the plant will start putting it's most energy into the highest branch.

When these companies give nute scheds, you have to understand that their test gardens are going to be bigger and better than yours. Feeding for banks of 1K lights is not the same as feeding for your 110 w floro. That's why you always start at half recommended dosage....besides, the more nutes you use, the more they sell and that is the bottom line with nute companies - same like when the shampoo bottle tells you to lather, rinse, repeat...you don't need to wash twice, but you use twice the shampoo that way. It is pretty sneaky and one of the reasons I hate slimy or deceptive advertising and marketing techniques.

 

[Wastel]

What is the TDS/EC/PPM you are using? EC= 0,95 (beginning with EC=0,3 50% RO/50% Tap water)

That is 66% of the reccomended EC and not really high...

I totally agree on the calcium. I actually added home-brew calmag from dolomite lime cooked and filtred in water until i had an EC rise of 0.1.
Feeding the plants for 3 days by now pH corrected and only calmag added water they picked up growing again and stopped showing the symptoms.

Definitely the pots are too small,

Im using 2,5gal pots now. how big do i have to get...?

the lighting is not adequate to penetrate tall plants

I'm at 220W now and the Dulux-L is about 80% of a MHD

Why the swing of ph from 5.6 - 6.4?

I have to start at 5.6 in order to not end up at 7.0 over the day.
Besides that 5.6-6.4 is closer to the optimum of 5.8-6.2 than 5.8-6.8. I would never give my plants willingly a pH over 6.3 ...?!?

i believe its a light issue as well. That's why i mention the trimming bit.

I said that the plants had not been trimmed recently.
And i said on the first page:

How tall are the plants? 45"-50" about 15" have been pruned a while ago.

I noticed that most of your problems are on the bottom? Its not mobile going to top middle and bottom with no rhyme or reason?

Yeah dude, that's where deficiencies usually start to show because the plant recalls nutrients from the lower (less important) to the upper decks, where they are needed for growth....
I really don't understand what you are trying to say?

I'll keep you posted, folks.

 

[Wastel]

Update!

The plants are well and exploding right now. (I wanted to post some pics over e 3-day period but the pic-upload doesn't work. Hence, no pics.)
Even partially wilted leaves regained strength an vigor.
Everything i did, with some tipp from here has worked out, BUT for a different reason. I had a local grow-shop owner over and showed him the plants and he identified a beginning root-rot as the cause for the issues. He told me that the light brown of my roots were not because of the AH "micro"'s strong color, but pythium... He also pointed out that the plants were manifesting several different nutes defs and the only reason for that is...
bingo: our all time favourite root-rot!

Fortunately the forced diet, daily flushing and the allmighty selfmade calcium supplement were instinctivly the right things to do. I took his advice and added enzymes to get rid of the dead roots and to create a healthier enviroment for the roots. The base of all this were roots of two plants standing in stagnating nutrient solution in an not visible corner of my hydro table. Since i switched to bigger pots this problem had been solved but still unindentfied by myself. Only when my dealer asked for it it came to my mind.
Fortunately the Nirvana Afghan is a strain with somewhat many phenos but otherwise pretty strong and healthy.

I will add a GHE Biofiltre to get rid of the root-rot for good and once and forever.

I also found Calgreen from metrop just now at my local store and so i can finally solve the local Mg and Ca water issues.

Thanks to all the tips, hints and thoughtfullnes of you guys and let's hope for a rich harvest ))))

 

[bighogg]

Actually it's virtually impossible to get a nute def in a hydro system unless you totally screw up the instructions.

Ah yes, where o' where have i hear THAT one before <<snap fingers>> oh yeah!! ME!!

that thinking cost me more years of semi adaquate (to my standards) crops than i care to mention.

short but true story..

for 7 years i grew awesome hydro crops with just a 3 part GH fertilizer, fair environmental conditions, no pH or TDS testing, limited experience and knowledge and semi adequate irrigation . THEN one day i couldn't seem to get crops to finish easily as i used too...i'd get bugs i couldn't get rid of, i'd get PM that wouldn't go away, everything started getting so sensitive to every little 'mistake' along the way. so i exterminated bugs and pathogens, improved my irrigation sanitation, environmental conditions adding exhaust fans, dehumidifyers, AC units, carbon scrubbers. i ventilated hoods,i changed the hydro recycling to hydro drain to waste systems with massive oxygen and circulators to keep out pathogens. i killed or removed pathogens with HEPA filters, UV light and Ozone generators. i also grew plants in the "best" pre packaged soil to compare to hydro there was NO difference. i tried SM-90, hygrozyme, and hydrogen peroxide. i changed nutrient solutions, nutrient manufacturer's , the pH fluctuation and nutrient additives (to the irrigation tank) ALL TO NO AVAIL!!!!!!!


then one day, a beautiful songbird came along and suggested i might have a nutrient deficiency. no way i cried, it's nearly impossible to have a nutrient deficiency with today's high quality fertilizers.....besides i'm using the same ones that ALWAYS WORKED BEFORE....

then the miracle of all miracles happened. i tried a foliar feed.


the moral of the story is that nutrient deficiencies should not be ruled out.

why?

cause the only method of stoping the progression of 'blight' was to strengthen the cell structure of the plants via a foliar feed (calcium and Magnesium in this case).

for some reason, my plants stopped taking up the all of the proper nutrients through their roots. i have no idea why. but it's true. and it might have to do with the water you are using or perhaps how fertilizer companies manufacture their product, or perhaps something else environmental. Never the less, it seems to be happening and not just to me. other long time growers have noticed the same thing.

so i can't say whether or not your problem is a nutrient deficiency, but don't rule it out. don't waste years of time with semi adequate crops. IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!