PH too low

[fhydro]

This morning, i notice that at least two plants had a coloration problem. No green in the center of the new bud. I checked PH, it was 4 ans EC 4 also ! I flushed the containers and i put new nutes. Do you think i should have give them just water with good PH? Or is it good now ?
Fhydro

[Zandor]

I assume you ballanced the Ph with the water change?

Yes that's fine, you don't need to flush for low Ph.

[fhydro]

Yes i put new nutes solution with good PH and EC. What do you mean by "don't need to flush for low PH"? Just that i have to balance with PH plus, something like that ? Thanks Zandor.
Fhydro

[Zandor]

If your problem is just low Ph then you do not need to flush the plants to correct the problem. When there is a problem you normally flush the medium to correct the problem. When the problem is only Ph miss balance you do not need to flush to correct the problem.

[fhydro]

Hum, on 4 skunk, 2 are still weird, the new leaves are only 3 blades, still very light green almost white, they don't produce flower since the problem anymore, nore trichs. Pic 1 shows the main cola of a 4 weeks flo skunk, very thin. Pic 2 shows a leave all curled and weird also. PH and EC are good. Pic 3 shows a neighbour, a healthy AK47 also 4 weeks flo. What can it be ? What can i do to avoid trashing them? Can i recover them ?
Thanks
Fhydro

[gronnh20]

fhydro my suggestion would be to flush with 7.0ph and 0ppm water(distilled or RO) and then take readings of the flush water and see what you get. If you want get a commercial flushing solution I use Botanicare's Clearex. It's basicly glucose and water. Secondly the sick plants leaves look like they are getting shiny which is a for sure indicator of overfertilization.

Also, can you tell us what type hydro system you are growing in, it would help determine if there is other problems happening. It can all be corrected it just may put you back a few days.

check out the nice shiny leaves on this guys grow.

http://www.reefermanseeds.com/chatter/showthread.php?p=16674#post16674

[fhydro]

Thanks gronnh, are you sure i've got to flush with PH7 water and not 5.8 or 6? My set up is bases on bubblers, EC 1.8. Ã? hope this will work ...
Fhydro

[gronnh20]

If you are having fertilizer salt build-ups then it won't take long before that flush solution's ph drops and the ppms go up. You can flush with ph adjusted water its just that the distilled or RO water gives you a starting point to see exactly how much salts got flushed from the medium. I flush mine for several hours before every other resevoir change, which is every 14 days. Haven't had any problems with doing it this way yet.

[fhydro]

OK, thanks, i've got it. I'm doing that tomorrow at wake up. It helps me a lot.
Fhydro

[fhydro]

I flushed my buckets with water of my personal spring. The spring's PH is 8.5 so i added acid to bring it to 6.5/7. Is hard water good or bad ? EC of the spring is O.4. How long must does it take to flush correctly ?
Fhydro

[fhydro]

Hi, i flushed yesturday according to what you told me. Today i check PH and EC and EC drops and PH is going higher. The plants seem to like this flush, they thrived well in 24H. What must i do now?
Fhydro

[gronnh20]

When the EC drops and ph rises then that is a good thing. It means the plants are happy and taking up nutrients. It also tells you can feed them a little more. Just make sure you have plenty of O2 in the resevoir or bubbler. The more O2 the better uptake of nutrients. I change my resevoir every Saturday. The second saturday I do a flush before that res change.

Did you check the flush water for ph and ec? I was wondering how much salts was locked up in the medium.

[fhydro]

Yes i checked the flushed water before trashing it. PH 6.0, EC nearly 4. So now that they have 3 weeks to go, which EC should i choose for 2 weeks before flushing them again definitly before harvest ?
Fhydro

[gronnh20]

There was quite a bit of nute lock-up to get a 4ec. Usually at this stage I would be running an ec of 2.0-2.4. If everything is going good I have managed 3.0 ec. After my weekly res changes I will only add water and only adjust ph. This way my ec either stays the same or drops. After the change I usually see a decrease in ec and ph goes up so I try to start a new resevoir at 5.8 and work towards 6.2 to make sure the plants recieve all nutrients. When I am near harvest I only flush for a week, but I drain the resevoir every day and add fresh new water till the ec is almost nil. Its a little more work, but you can flush without doing that. Just change the res at least once during the flush to remove the initial flush salts.

[fhydro]

Ok, gronh20, you helped me a lot. I keep you informed. I'm going to feed them again, but with low EC. But i think that some strains are more prone to over ferts than others. Example : AK47 don't react well to over feeding, skunk special react better...
Fhydro

[fhydro]

I started to feed them again with an EC 0.9 and PH 6 water. They drunk 2 liters in one day and EC was 0.6 this morning, so they are eating food again. Is that right?
Fhydro

[fhydro]

I started to feed the plants again except one which is still is flushing mode. This one drink much less than the others when they were in flushing mode also. EC decrease but PH also! This morning it was PH 4 ! I stabilzed it to 6, but my question : what can explain that a plant drinks less than the others in the same environnement ? She need more flush time ?
Fhydro

[gronnh20]

Yeah all strains will have different feed patterns. I've never grown AK, but boy I sure would like to.

The plant may drink less from being in a less heated area of the grow, humidity, O2 in the bubbler, the plant may be smaller could be a lot of things.

You may want to increase the EC next time you change the bubblers. I wouldn't continue flushing that plant, go ahead and start feeding it again. As far as the ec dropping and ph dropping, the plant probably took up elements that were locked out from the salt build-up. Once you change the bubblers again then the ec and ph fluctuations should slow down. There will still be daily changes in readings but they shouldn't keep wildly going up and down. It takes a little bit of time for the plants to settle back down.

[gronnh20]

Any way Fhydro I think you have a pretty good grasp of what is going on now. You will be drying buds soon. Some big fat frosty buds.