Worried about loosing my plant - First time DWC asks for help

[Evell1950]

Hi I need some help for my plant because I don't know how I can help her anymore. At first my plant was thriving but then it went downhill very fast and I really don't know how to stop things from getting worse and loosing her.

When I saw the first signs of problems I started to research and how to fix it and over time I did so many different things to her because I've probably overreacted a little. Instead of asking online for help I was trying to diagnose and cure it all by myself. But there are to many vriables overseen by a First Timer like me so I eventually made everything worse. Now I'm really at my end and don't know what else to do so I try to find somone who is experienced in DWC and probably knows whats wrong over here.

PPMs are at 0.5 scale!

It all began when she was very young. Some days old and she already had her first true leaves. I made a big mistake in calculating the food for her and gave her 2500ppm. Sure this was too much and I almost instantly began to see leaf tip burn so I've checked everything and made a new batch at 200ppm and 24h later it was at 170 so I decided to upp the fert. Next ppm was 235 and then things started to get wierd in my logs. I've constantly (sometimes twice daily) upped the ppms. Over the next 4 days up to 600-700ppm and I didn't see the signs of overferting in constantly rising ppms. I also had heavy PH fluctuations from 5.3 to 7.1 in some hours (i don't know why maybe hydroton changed ph or rockwool something else idk).

Now since I've read so much troubleshooting to help my plant I now know how to really use a EC/TDS pen and PH pen etc. before it was just too much numbers and I didn't know how to interpret them. I was in that newbie mindset that my plants need a lot of food to survive so I constantly upped the numbers because she grew so well and fast... I really don't want to kill her so I need some help what to do.

Last thing I did> Flushed her with 0ppm and 5.8 ph water until there was not a lot of ppms rising in the 0ppm water. And then fed her again at 440 ppm that was yesterday everything was looking better the newest leaves weren't droopy anymore but now about 15-20h later she is drooping again and I thing her deficiencies are getting worse again. PPMs seems to rise again up to 590 ppm

Please if someone know whats going on I really need some help! I try to upload some pictures soon!

Thank you very much for reading and maybe you have some advice for a first timer who knows he knows nothing but is willing to learn

 

[Evell1950]

Here are some pictures. What else do you need to know? I made some pictures of the deficiencies and some root pics. Temperature is about 25 C (77F) and RH about 50-60. Lights are at about 50%.

Plant Top:

Plant Front:

Deficiencies:

Roots:

 

[Evell1950]

Roots look a little discolored maybe due to the nutrient solution or maybe they are dieing? There are a lot of new perfectly white roots comeing out of the net pot are the old ones dead or something? Growth is stunt for multiple days now...

3 hours ago:
PH 5.8
ppm 420

now:
PH 5.9
ppm 420

 

[tobedetermined]

My first advice is slow down! Since the roots are directly in solution, you have to give the plants gradual changes so they are not in a constant state of shock. Slow & easy is best with hydro.

Tap water I assume? What nutes?

 

[Evell1950]

My first advice is slow down! Since the roots are directly in solution, you have to give the plants gradual changes so they are not in a constant state of shock. Slow & easy is best with hydro.

Tap water I assume? What nutes?

Thats what I've learned the hard way I thought they need so much food and that they will suck up everything asap. They were growing fast and I thought they need loads and loads of fert...

No I use Distilled Water 0ppm and I use General Hydroponics. So right now 0ppm distilled water with 420 ppm general hydroponics solution Flora 3 part series. Is this too much ppm for their size? If not what else should I do now? Jut wait some days if they make it? I'm really worried and I don't want to see them die because of my faults

 

[negative37dBA]

For that size I would go with around a 1.1 ec and ssee how it goes. What are your water temps? Very important to control that in dwc, Plenty of air? You for sure over nuted it at the start . 2500 is a crazy number for a plant that size. If you are using R/O then you will HAVE to add calmag as there is none in the start water. DWC is more efficient than soil and the plants don't need huge numbers of nutes to thrive. My full size 5' beasts get 1.4 ec max during peak flower time....of pure salts.
Hope some of that helps. Water needs to be under 69 degrees to help avoid root issues. I grow only in hydro for several years now. I can try to answer anything you have got . let me know.
Peace, negative.

 

[Evell1950]

For that size I would go with around a 1.1 ec and ssee how it goes. What are your water temps? Very important to control that in dwc, Plenty of air? You for sure over nuted it at the start . 2500 is a crazy number for a plant that size. If you are using R/O then you will HAVE to add calmag as there is none in the start water. DWC is more efficient than soil and the plants don't need huge numbers of nutes to thrive. My full size 5' beasts get 1.4 ec max during peak flower time....of pure salts.
Hope some of that helps. Water needs to be under 69 degrees to help avoid root issues. I grow only in hydro for several years now. I can try to answer anything you have got . let me know.
Peace, negative.

Now after research I would go with EC 1.1 too but I'm extremely worried of overfeeding now since she looks so sad right now... do you think I Should up the EC from 0.8 now to 1.1 when I get home later?

2500ppm was when she had her first true Leave so it was during her first 5 days... she is 18 days old now

Why calmag i thought its in the general hydroponics solution its extra formula for softwater not hardwater so after adding my fert there is calmag in there.

Water temp was little high the last days because I put her in a smaller rez because I didn't want to use 20000 gallons distilled water for flusshing etc since I have these problems now I have changed the water numerous times I wantedto save some money....

 

[Evell1950]

Btw the 2500ppm was not my problem. It was the first mistake that was done but she quickly revived after I stopped feeding 2500 and went down to 200ppm.

I gave her 2500 ppm in the first place because I've made a calculaton error and used 10x more fert than I wanted. wanted 0.3ml used 3ml... And since I'm new to all this 3ml didn't seem like a lot so I didn't recalculate everything to double check that so I gave her 2500ppm. 1-2 Days later I've corrected that mistake and everything went on perfectly till to this state now where she isn't growing for a long time and she develops there deficiencies... so forget the 2500ppm that was stupid mistake but now I don't really know what the problem is and how long it would take her to get back on track...

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

The plant is fine and will recover nicely, you can relax Take a deep breath and let it out slowly... let all that anxiety drain away with your breath. Seriously, I've been where you are and it's only your state of mind giving you issues right now.

Ok, ppm is tied to how much light your plant is receiving, and also how well that particular plant deals with nutrients. Not enough nutrients will have the plants using them up quickly and the ppm will drop quickly. Too much nutrient and the ppm will drop very slowly as the roots become damaged. So... what size and type light do you have?


DWC is a balance between the pH rise of the solution as your plants use the nutrients up, and your adding nutrients at the right time to drop the pH back down. The smaller the reservoir, the faster the nutes are used and the quicker the pH rises. Increase the reservoir size and the pH rise will slow down. You want the pH rise from 5.4 to 6.0 to take about 7-10 days during veg. If your rise is faster, remove plants or increase the reservoir size.

When you make a big error you should dump the res and start over. Give them the correct, or as close to correct as you are aware, feed and pH levels. Watch the reaction over a full day and go from there.

 

[negative37dBA]

ahh the master has arrived...good to see you Douglas. been a hot minute since i've seen you about. Douglas knows some goods about water growing...listen to him.
I am not familiar with the gh line so I did not know they had added goodies for soft water. Thats nice.
Good luck...we have all made mistakes, Hell I did a whole run feeding at the wrong strength cause my meter was on the wrong setting....hahah.

 

[Evell1950]

we have all made mistakes, Hell I did a whole run feeding at the wrong strength cause my meter was on the wrong setting....hahah.

haha it's good to know that I'm not the only one making big mistakes. As a beginner you want to make everything right... things went bad too often and now about 7-9 days and literaly thousands of fixes from some website later my plant still looks not happy anymore

The plant is fine and will recover nicely, you can relax Take a deep breath and let it out slowly... let all that anxiety drain away with your breath. Seriously, I've been where you are and it's only your state of mind giving you issues right now.

Ok, ppm is tied to how much light your plant is receiving, and also how well that particular plant deals with nutrients. Not enough nutrients will have the plants using them up quickly and the ppm will drop quickly. Too much nutrient and the ppm will drop very slowly as the roots become damaged. So... what size and type light do you have?


DWC is a balance between the pH rise of the solution as your plants use the nutrients up, and your adding nutrients at the right time to drop the pH back down. The smaller the reservoir, the faster the nutes are used and the quicker the pH rises. Increase the reservoir size and the pH rise will slow down. You want the pH rise from 5.4 to 6.0 to take about 7-10 days during veg. If your rise is faster, remove plants or increase the reservoir size.

When you make a big error you should dump the res and start over. Give them the correct, or as close to correct as you are aware, feed and pH levels. Watch the reaction over a full day and go from there.

I think that's true I have to calm down. When I first saw that plant so sad I was ok we'll fix that... but day after day without a long recovery from somewhat well to bad again made me think it's over(cuz of all these mistakes that were done over and over again)

>What size and type light do you have?

I don't know if I'm allowed to name the exact model so I have a 450W LED Light with 2.7 umol/J currently running at 50%.


>You want the pH rise from 5.4 to 6.0 to take about 7-10 days during veg.

Ok I was constantly adjusting my PH because it went from 5.3 to 6.8 in some hours so I was constantly checking my rez and ajusting with PH down. This is where I knew something were off because I always read it should remain stable but it didn't.

Currently she is in a 5 liter (1.3 us gallons) rez because as I said I tried to save money since I don't have any to spent on everything. I use distilled water I buy and I was like I don't want to waste water and money for buying more and more since my rez was ph raising a lot so I dumped it a lot... dumping a big 10 or more gallon rez is about 15$ or something and I don't have 15$ a day since my PH was so off and so on... So would you advice to go back to the big rez ASAP and fill it with water and nutes and ph it and wait? At what EC would you place them in?

This would probably help keeping rez temp down since a 1.3 gallon rez gets to warm easy (and faster swings as u said) so not a good environment for the roots right?


>When you make a big error you should dump the res and start over.

That's what I did in the beginning and that's why I switched to such a small rez to not use 15 gallons a day on my rez since I was changing it so often...

 

[Evell1950]

I am not familiar with the gh line so I did not know they had added goodies for soft water.

I'm no professional either but I know that they sell a softwater and a hardwater set. I bought the softwater which has calcium and magnesium. But what do I know? Is it enough or not I don't know... I've read a lot of people who use it with my feeding schedule and some who don't because it's already in there so I don't really know for sure if it's enough etc.

Status update:
PH 5.98 (rising from 5.90 about 7 hours ago)
EC 0.418 (slowly dropping from 0.420 about 7 hours ago)
210 ppm

In my last update I made a mistake and said 420 ppm. But 420 μS/cm is what I meant... EC 0.42

 

[Evell1950]

Updating:

Look at the roots. You can clearly see there are a lot of new roots coming out of the net pot. All the old roots look darker in color. Maybe light brown but no slimy roots and not smelly either. They feel perfectly nice but dont look good.

The old roots look abandoned and it look like my plant is stunt but she tries to make new roots to reach to the solution again...

what do you guys thinik?

 

[tobedetermined]

Good. Keep doing what you are doing and let those new roots develop. If the old roots feel fine, just leave them alone. The discolouring is just nute stain.

 

[Evell1950]

Good. Keep doing what you are doing and let those new roots develop. If the old roots feel fine, just leave them alone. The discolouring is just nute stain.

Thanks dude! I stressed that plant too much... and a lot of other Problems like light leaks, too high PPM solution, wrong ferts and so on... but it looks like she is a fighter and is going back on track...

Now she looks like as her recovery is going good.

Before whole plant was droppy. Now its just half the plant... the other half is already up in the sky *_*

Roots are still growing good and today even more and longer than yesterday... so i can see changes again... before she was just stunt all the time for multiple days and I didnt know how to revive her.. but thanks to you guys!

Thanks for calming me down! I would have probably done more wrong because of overreaction..

Plant front:

Plant Top:

Roots:

 

[tobedetermined]

Everybody that has ever run a dwc, has gone through exactly what you have. In my 1st grow - it was an overly-ambitious undercurrent dwc with 90 litres of water moving around - I wasted an incredible amount of water, nutes, and sweat just trying to keep them alive.

As they perk up, you can gradually start bringing the ec up until you hit the plant's sweet spot.

 

[Evell1950]

So many variables to manage without experience but that's how it's always is. I just keep on learning that's it.

The first grow is so expensive that's why I started to freak out... can't see plants I should care for dieing...

"As they perk up, you can gradually start bringing the ec up until you hit the plant's sweet spot."

So what can I expect... about weekly upping the EC or faster/slower?

 

[exploziv]

Your plant is recovering. Don't worry, just check on her daily and try to mantain some balance and a proper PH cycling. As others said a bigger reservoir will help. And the nitrient solution waste will be less and less once you know what you are doing.

 

[Evell1950]

Yes that's what I've learned... consistency is key.

I've put her in a bigger rez to keep temps and ph in check. Will insulate the rez soon to make it even cooler because when Lights go 100% instead of 25% right now then the rez will def heat up too much... so insulation will probably help.

 

[tobedetermined]

You don't have to wait a week between changes - just a couple of days - but watch the plant! It will tell you.

I am sure that you know about the poor man's chiller? Frozen plastic water bottles..