UH oh...

[evilgunny]

So, something is killing my babies :[. To start with some info on my system...

Started out with seeds in paper towel, 19/19 germed, moved to rapid rooters soaked in ph neutral water (I use distilled). Gave nutrient solution few days later. Everything was looking good until I moved them to the basement. Did have the ozone generator running, thought that might be the reason...but it should have stopped if I turned it off, right? I turned it off a few days ago, cut all the problem leaves off, and its still coming back... Then thought it might be mag deficiency, but I gave them a good dose of that too...

Currently Im growing under a 600 watt HPS. Bout 1 1/2 - 2 feet away from them. Last feeding they received (in one gallon) 5ml AN Sensigrow, parts A and B, 5 ml AN Voodoo Juice, 5 ml AN SensiCal, 10 ml Hygrozyme, and a small scoop of soluble Plant Success. PH of solution has been 5.5-6.5. They are currently just under three weeks from seed. Temps have been stable, 60-70 F, and humidity has been 30-50%. Currently on 20/4 cycle.

And now for the pictures...

[syde00]

whats your watering schedule/technique?

are there holes in the bottom of those cups to allow excess water to run out?

also, if you are always watering with distilled, I believe you need to add something like calmag to it, as distilled water i do not believe contains these elements (calcium and magnesium). Tap water is almost always fine to use for soil grows btw, but it also doesn;t hurt to leave it sitting out for 24+ hours to allow chlorine to evaporate first.


fyi, I have read several posts by stinky that also says that generally clipping leaves is a bad idea, and they should only be removed if they fall off by themselves... the might look like crap, but until the plant is willing to give them up, they are probably still doing something.

at any rate, my first guess, especially giong by the 3rd pic, I would guess they are being overwatered... as that is exactly what mine looked like when i overwatered... followed by the leaves that were most affected turning yellow/brown and falling off a week or 2 later... but theres not really enough information to say that for sure... you might want to consider filling out the trouble shooting form that is in the sticky post at the top of this forum and posting it here.

many of them in the 4th pic look perfectly fine though, aside from their size for their age

[evilgunny]

I water when the top layer of soil, about 3/4 of an inch, is completely dry. Been like twice a week? There are drainage holes in each cup. As I said before I am using SensiCal. The water quality here is very poor, thus the distilled :] The reason I clipped them was because I thought they might be diseased, and wanted the plants to put more energy into making new growth than trying to fix whats broken. Very possible my train of thought was flawed on that one :P I did use the troubleshooting form, just answered as many questions from it as I could in my first post (not in same format). Do you think maybe they need to be transplanted?

[evilgunny]

Oh, and by the way I used Light Warrior for my medium. Also, I'm using a cup inside of a cup (bottom one has no holes, just for catching runoff water). Could that maybe be impeding the drainage? Theres plenty of runoff water in the bottom cup, I drain nearly immediately after watering, then a few hours later after more has runoff.

[syde00]

Ah, i didn;t catch the sensical thing... not that i;m familiar with that product, but the name does make it obvious that it has calcium at least :) are you adding something for Mg as well, or is that also in sensical?

as for the drainage and your watering scheduling, well, i think that kinda blows my thought out the window... twice a week doesn;t seem excessive.

when i started reading about the double cups like you mentioned I thought for a second that was going to be the ticket.. that water was sitting in the outside cup keeping the bottom layers of soil wet/mud like... but if you are emptying them of the run-off, then i don;t think thats it.

i;m kinda out of ideas, but there are several others that know far more than me that check this forum, hopefully one of them will come help ya :)

[8182KSKUSH]

HEy, just a thought.
Sounds like you have everything started well, I would just add that seedlings do not need any nutes. While your plants look tall, they are not mature enough for the nutes yet IMO. That length I think is stretch because you are using an HPS right now, causes more stretching. I would flush them out w/ RO WATER, no nutes, I do add some calmag and 1 drop/gallon of SuperThrive, but you don't even need that. Be sure that everything that goes in is ph'd to 6.5-6.8 whatever you like. And be sure that it is runoff at about the same. It doesn't have to be exact. When I do add calmag, it's usually just 1 or 2 ml/gallon, but it is not necessary by any means, and I would keep it simple and just not add it to start.
Starting them in small containers is the way to go, much easier to control and correct issues if you have them. For instance, just one of those cups, to flush, flush w/ 3 full cups of the same size and bang done. To be honest, you may not even need to mess w/ flushing, but just back off the nutes for now. Be sure that you are watering w/ ph correct RO WATER, and continue to do so until they mature a little more. Don't mistake the size for a sign of maturity. You shouldn't need to water w/ nutes until they are re-potted I am guessing.
Take all this w/ a grain of salt, just my experience, I have done very similar things to what you are doing now. You are headed down the right road. Keep it simple! Read, alot, this is a great place to learn, lots of smart folks here.:jointsmile:

[8182KSKUSH]

Also, forgot to mention this, the temps sound a little low. I would have them up to 75 at least w/ lights on. This may have nothing to do w/ anything just a misc. thing that I saw. Really to veg from seed, and I have no idea what your plans are, but really you can veg under the T12s, T5s, whatever, and that will reduce your stretch significantly. Much cheaper, wal-mart, 60-70 bucks, 2 2x4 t12 fixtures, then the bulbs, and that really all you need, save that HPS for flower. Another thing though, is that if you are running a 600 watt HPS now and your temps are that low, you may need to figure something out to compensate for the lack of heat you would be putting out w/ a floro set as compared to a HPS. Just a thought though good luck.:jointsmile:

[evilgunny]

Ah, i didn;t catch the sensical thing... not that i;m familiar with that product, but the name does make it obvious that it has calcium at least :) are you adding something for Mg as well, or is that also in sensical?

as for the drainage and your watering scheduling, well, i think that kinda blows my thought out the window... twice a week doesn;t seem excessive.

when i started reading about the double cups like you mentioned I thought for a second that was going to be the ticket.. that water was sitting in the outside cup keeping the bottom layers of soil wet/mud like... but if you are emptying them of the run-off, then i don;t think thats it.

i;m kinda out of ideas, but there are several others that know far more than me that check this forum, hopefully one of them will come help ya :)

Yeah, SensiCal is AN's version of CalMag. I was thinking maybe the double cups, since they fit so tightly together, were creating a vacuum and not allowing water to drain. Maybe just the free standing water, but perhaps not the water thats soaked into the medium a bit. And no biggie, you tried, and thanks for that :thumbsup:

[evilgunny]

HEy, just a thought.
Sounds like you have everything started well, I would just add that seedlings do not need any nutes. While your plants look tall, they are not mature enough for the nutes yet IMO. That length I think is stretch because you are using an HPS right now, causes more stretching. I would flush them out w/ RO WATER, no nutes, I do add some calmag and 1 drop/gallon of SuperThrive, but you don't even need that. Be sure that everything that goes in is ph'd to 6.5-6.8 whatever you like. And be sure that it is runoff at about the same. It doesn't have to be exact. When I do add calmag, it's usually just 1 or 2 ml/gallon, but it is not necessary by any means, and I would keep it simple and just not add it to start.
Starting them in small containers is the way to go, much easier to control and correct issues if you have them. For instance, just one of those cups, to flush, flush w/ 3 full cups of the same size and bang done. To be honest, you may not even need to mess w/ flushing, but just back off the nutes for now. Be sure that you are watering w/ ph correct RO WATER, and continue to do so until they mature a little more. Don't mistake the size for a sign of maturity. You shouldn't need to water w/ nutes until they are re-potted I am guessing.
Take all this w/ a grain of salt, just my experience, I have done very similar things to what you are doing now. You are headed down the right road. Keep it simple! Read, alot, this is a great place to learn, lots of smart folks here.:jointsmile:

I didnt think they're seedlings anymore, are they? They're growing new shoots like mad, and are over half a foot tall, and about three weeks old. Repotting is going to happen soon, the roots are beginning to find their way out of the drainage holes. As for RO, unfortunately I dont have access to RO water ;/. Distilled is the best it gets for me.

[evilgunny]

Also, forgot to mention this, the temps sound a little low. I would have them up to 75 at least w/ lights on. This may have nothing to do w/ anything just a misc. thing that I saw. Really to veg from seed, and I have no idea what your plans are, but really you can veg under the T12s, T5s, whatever, and that will reduce your stretch significantly. Much cheaper, wal-mart, 60-70 bucks, 2 2x4 t12 fixtures, then the bulbs, and that really all you need, save that HPS for flower. Another thing though, is that if you are running a 600 watt HPS now and your temps are that low, you may need to figure something out to compensate for the lack of heat you would be putting out w/ a floro set as compared to a HPS. Just a thought though good luck.:jointsmile:

The temps are something I can't really do anything about unfortunately. They're pretty steady at 70 lights on, 60-65 lights off. It will definetely warm up soon with summer, probably have the exact opposite problem in no time :sadcrying I'd like to use fluros or a MH, but my cash supply is completely tapped. I have the HPS and that's it for now. I just took them out of their bottom cups, and put some extra drainage holes in em.

Oh, and this should have went with the last post, but I started using the nutes because they were starting to yellow. Thanks for the info and would appreciate anymore.

[headshake]

evil, those are stretching mighty bad. a good way to judge light distance is to put your hand under it. find a distance that you can keep your hand under for about 5 seconds and then back it up just a bit.

also, they are a tad young for nutes. at least in most peoples opinion. minus the sensical, of course, if you contiune to use the distilled. i would suggest that you use spring water instead, as it still contains lots of minerals.

as far as the cups on the bottom, i wouldn't do this for several reasons. the holding water, even for a couple of hours is bad and it might also block oxygen from getting to your roots. what color do they happen to be? they should be nice and white.

i water mine in the bathtub and and let them stand for about 15 minutes before returning them to their home.

it is possible that it could be a pH problem causing a nutrient lockout. your pH for soil should be 6.3-6.8. as you can see from the chart it could be one of many things, including a calcium deficiney.

also, the optimum temp would be about 78 degrees. depending on your fluctuation and drops into low temps, you might want to bring it up or stabalize it a bit.

i think that's about it for now.

is that possibly gunnery sergeant?


-shake

[headshake]

damn, my bad, i never saw most of those responses. what the hell?


-shake

[syde00]

I didnt think they're seedlings anymore, are they? They're growing new shoots like mad, and are over half a foot tall, and about three weeks old. Repotting is going to happen soon, the roots are beginning to find their way out of the drainage holes. As for RO, unfortunately I dont have access to RO water ;/. Distilled is the best it gets for me.

I would probably still call them seedlings... age wise, they are certainly old enough to not be seedlings, but size wise, thats a different story...

as a bit of a frame of reference, heres a pic of one of mine @ day 24, so 3 days past 3 weekds: day 24 (http://boards.cannabis.com/attachments/grow-log/217645d1241923289-california-orange-bud-cfl-grow-dscf2929.jpg)

i couldn;t really say whether mine is behind/dead on/ahead compared to average sizes for its age, as this is my first grow... but just thought it'd be useful as a reference point

[evilgunny]

evil, those are stretching mighty bad. a good way to judge light distance is to put your hand under it. find a distance that you can keep your hand under for about 5 seconds and then back it up just a bit.

also, they are a tad young for nutes. at least in most peoples opinion. minus the sensical, of course, if you contiune to use the distilled. i would suggest that you use spring water instead, as it still contains lots of minerals.

as far as the cups on the bottom, i wouldn't do this for several reasons. the holding water, even for a couple of hours is bad and it might also block oxygen from getting to your roots. what color do they happen to be? they should be nice and white.

i water mine in the bathtub and and let them stand for about 15 minutes before returning them to their home.

it is possible that it could be a pH problem causing a nutrient lockout. your pH for soil should be 6.3-6.8. as you can see from the chart it could be one of many things, including a calcium deficiney.

also, the optimum temp would be about 78 degrees. depending on your fluctuation and drops into low temps, you might want to bring it up or stabalize it a bit.

i think that's about it for now.

is that possibly gunnery sergeant?


-shake


Alright, I dropped the light a little on them. My medium has no nutrient in it (FF Light Warrior) and I was under the impression they needed to be fed within a week or so of transplanting? Gotcha on the cups, had already taken the bottom ones off. They still feel a bit heavy, like maybe theyre retaining too much water? Should I maybe gently squeeze the cups to get a little of the excess water out? The roots are white :] And the PH is good at the moment. The temp isn't anywhere near 78. Last I checked (hour or so ago) it was 71. Think that's as high as it's gonna get at the moment.

And nope, not gunnery sergeant. Just a nickname. I am evil however, BWAHAHAHAHA. See that, that's some evil laugh right there :]

[headshake]

gotcha evil! and that is quite a menacing laugh i might add.

the temp is fine, just might not be "optimum".

you can squeeze them i guess, but it should be used, evaporate fine. get an idea about what your pots feel like when they are full of water and empty. use your fore finger and thumb on each hand and hold the pot by the rim and bounce it up and down gently.

also, watch the leaves as they will start to sag more and more as they show that they need water.

and as far as the nutes, remember, they don't get nutes at all in nature. well not artifically anyway. so when in down, emulate nature!

i hope things start to get better!


-shake

[evilgunny]

gotcha evil! and that is quite a menacing laugh i might add.

the temp is fine, just might not be "optimum".

you can squeeze them i guess, but it should be used, evaporate fine. get an idea about what your pots feel like when they are full of water and empty. use your fore finger and thumb on each hand and hold the pot by the rim and bounce it up and down gently.

also, watch the leaves as they will start to sag more and more as they show that they need water.

and as far as the nutes, remember, they don't get nutes at all in nature. well not artifically anyway. so when in down, emulate nature!

i hope things start to get better!


-shake

Hmmm so they don't need any nutrient at the moment? I realize they don't get any artificial nutes outside, but they do pull nutrients from the soil, no? Im using like peat based (I think?) media. Sorry if I sound like a broken record, I just like to make absolutely sure before I mess with em :smokin:

Oh, and grats on 1000 posts by the way :thumbsup:

[headshake]

most people say they don't need nutes until they are mature, or have about 4 nodes (and i think the fan leaves will start to stagger). sorry it's late and i can't remember exactly.

and yes, they do pull nutrients from the soil outdoors. but indoors we are basically trying to stress the plant to the max without damaging it.

peat based, like potting mix? was it store bought? a lot of stuff has fertilizers in it already.

it's okay, as long as people do some research and ask "good", smart questions, i don't mind helping out. it's the people that want to be spoon-fed that piss me off.

oh shit, thanks! i didn't even realize that i had hit 1,000!

thanks again!


-shake

[Rusty Trichome]

Yup...no nutes till 4-5 internodes...then start at half-strength. In the wild, they don't normally get full-strength nutrients handed them on a silver platter. They have to go looking for it. Plus, 'normal' soil nutrient content doesn't even come close to the nutrients we add to our potted plants.
Right now...you are burning your plants root system, and stressing the shit out of them.

Why are you not using tapwater? Unless it's really nasty...it's usually the best/easiest way to go. But regardless...what's the ph of the water you use?

Cannabis prefers a wet/dry cycle. Water them to slight trickle out of the bottom, then let dry before watering again. Squeezing the cups will compact the soil around the roots, and you risk damage. (bad idea)

[headshake]

as always, top notch advice from rusty!


-shake

[evilgunny]

Alright, things are looking better. Thanks, everyone had really good advice. I removed the bottom cups, cut one open and noticed they were badly root bound. The roots were circling, so I trimmed them a little, then put them in some 1 gallon grow bags with light warrior/sunshine 1, some horticultural charcoal and some plant success. Watered with distilled, hygrozyme, and a little sensical. As for the water Rusty, yes, water around here has alot of runoff from agricultural and animal farms. I wont drink the stuff so I dont give it to my plants :). Distilled isn't that cheap though, and I expect they'll start drinking a bit more soon. Maybe I'll get an RO system next time around...

Also, I dropped light down about a foot. They're starting to fill out, the indicas at least. They were a bit older in the last pics than I had thought, alot of their lower leaves had been taken off. I think most are at 3-4 internodes now? Not sure if that's behind or not. I figured out that 4 weeks have passed since I first started germinating. These pics are from yesterday or the day before, so like 5-6 days after the first pictures. Some damage from the "rust" remains, but most has been cut off and it hasn't spread. Haven't been using the ozone generator since I first noticed, though. Hope they'll be able to handle it later ;/

[headshake]

they look like they might could use a 1/4 strength shot of nutes. what you think rusty?

and is that coco coir?


-shake

[evilgunny]

I thought so too. Gave them a light foliar feed with botanicare grow because I had just watered. And yes, I had some extra coco from last grow so I used it on the top. Makes watering easier in my opinion.

[headshake]

gotcha gunny. just wanted to make sure that you weren't using coco only! that can change the whole equation.



-shake

[evilgunny]

ahhh, nope, not this time. my last grow from clone I did half my plants in happy frog the other half in cococoir. my grow shop guy talked my into it, it was my first grow. actually worked out, but didn't get quite the yield off of them as I did the soil. But then again, I just treated them like soil :/