Wilt to Sudden death

dab, you seem to be a nice guy, you also seem to be a exp grower. from a outside look in you also seem to bet set in your grow routine (7yrs),maybe a bit stubborn.what I got from your post,was that you have been doing this same routine for 7 yrs and have been plauged with this sudden death syndrome. So I reccomend you step out that comfy box and try a new approach,it is the only way to find out what is causing it.(repeating the same action and expecting different results) we all no what that means(insanity).
did you say your using GH soil nutes in Hydro? maybe try a new nutes solution,something thats a bit more tolerent? (forgiving). like I said I'm a noobi and I believe you'll need to try something new to fix this. Your routine has a Flaw,find it too fix or find a whole new routine? open your mind
I have bad memory so my posts are kinda jumbled @ times srry
gtg I've fried my girls they are dying :mad: !!! looks to be a funeral soon

As your skills increase and you find yourself growing larger and more vigorous plants, with the associated big ass root systems, you will find that you have to add more O2 to keep up with their needs.

Seriously... jab an airstone into the MIDDLE of that big ol rootball and see how the droopy bitch reacts. The worst that can happen is that it's too late, and you spent $3 on an air stone.

I am known to the botanicare line so I grabbed some Hydroguard which I have used in the past. I was talking to the store guy about root rot and he was telling me that all the bacillus subtilis products are being taken off the market due to some patent or something. SR90 is off the market, some other brand had to pull their line, and now botanicare has stopped making Hydroguard. what is this all coming to now?

I am also doing a treatment of H2O2 on a few buckets to see if I can tell any difference.

as for my ppm... I think I may be able to resolve why it seems so low. By using Lucas Formula or other manipulations of the orginal G-M-B: 0-5-10 and 0-8-16 for flower, one only achieves around 600-960ppm the whole cycle. It calls for adding the formula and replace each day with ph'ed water for 7-10 days. Well when only adding GH products with RO water and no cal-mag or other products I get around 900ppm. say I add my calmag and also parts of the gro to help balance 'N' more during early veg.

That tops me off around 1250ppm. So, I add that day 1... then each day for 7-10 days before a res change I just replace with ph'ed RO water. That number may go up to 1350ppm in 24 hours due to less nutrient uptake then water (not ready for that high a solution). I replace the lost water with RO and that number will drop to say 1150ppm in the res. The number will still go up each day because the solution is too concentrated yet people pump it full of nutes even when plants dont need it.

So, I keep adding RO to replace the lost res water and each day it will bump that res ppm down to around 500-700ppm when fnished before replacing the res on the 10th day. The plant is really not happy with this I have found so I keep it so the crop is continually feeding and my ppm will drop each day instead of rise. sure this number is suppose to stay constant to show the correct amount of nutrients each plant wants. I know different particles are absorbed by different plants and we must replace a full spectrum of nutrients on a res change.

I have never actually done res changes before, found no need. I will setup my 5 gallon and change the res only when going from veg to bloom. I simply top off each day with the around the same solution that is currently in the res. This way my res is always at a constant number. If a radical drop in res ppm happends I know the plant is needing more food and I bump up the ppm all together. Im full bloom they take in about a gallon a day so I am always replacing with ph'ed 0-8-16 solution. I usually get caught up in things and wont even look at the res for a few days and it will drop 100ppm, I will the replace that 100ppm and add about 50ppm to bump it up a little until I get a constant reading.

No CO2, no sugar boost, 1000w HPS

I have done this with great results everytime. depending on size I usually pull 4-6 oz a plant with around 6-8 under one light.

I usually veg a clone for 25-50 days depending on if I top a few times or just let 'em go. So I get big bushy plants with many top chutes to capture all that light.

The only problem I have faced is the top getting too heavy for the stem in the hydroton to support around middle of bloom. This has been a continually annoying problem as I can not move them around as much. I will use bricks on the lids to hold the stem vertical. I have done a SOG screen before but things became a hassle is a small space.

I am looking to build some tables that have a SOG screen that can be adjusted for height of the grow. This way the screen will be secured to each table and not to a wall or floor. I am still thinking up the plans but if anyone has input... let me know.

So I am wondering if this is why I still see great results. Because even with soil, most people will boost with a 1200-1700ppm solution in bloom and then every other day feed with RO water. The concept is simple to see that the initial solution will be cut in half when the same amount of RO water is added to each soil pot. The same concept will apply for hydro.

I tried to bump a few 5 gal to 900ppm, up from the original 550ppm. and I got dark green leaves, looks like some leaves maybe getting toasted at top on the edges and tip. but it is a test and I will see the results 4-5 weeks into flower. The numbers jumped to 1050ppm the next day so I followed Lucas formula and add only PH'ed RO water and the number jumps down to 800ppm. This is less then I started at and the plant even left extra nutes in the res solution and uptook more water. So, if I continue to follow these directions I will achieve around 400-500ppm or maybe less at a res change needed in 7 days.

maybe this will help clear up why I think many nutrient solutions are started high but really end up low in the end. This is just what i am seeing in my test.

Go with the canna line for root products. Rhizotonic to treat it and help your roots grow.

Cannazym will take your dead roots and keept them FROM BECOMING root rot by turning them into some sort inert material or something like that....Stinky knows the real story behind it I'm sure and can elaborate with much more intelligence than me.

Forget hydroguard and that stuff.....I use botanicare as well and and love it but trust me......go with the Canna line for root health. ;)

I dont really understand your ppm thing but that's me and not you. I think part of is that you don't use CalMag....minus some ppms numbers there.....and if you don't use LK and Sweet you can minus some ppms there as well......my actual nutes for blooming are 500ppm Cal Mag and 800 Pro Bloom so my ACTUAL BLOOM NUTES are at about 800 through the whole blooming part of the grow. The rest is CalMag and supplements so

Regardless Dab ppms DO matter. I threw in some photos here to show my point.

Pic one is a strain called Brainstorm. This plant was fed a total nute solution
of 1350ppms through late flower (that includes CalMag and supplements) and her final yield was 6.85 oz. (I don't use C02 btw just fyi)

The second photo is two plants I'm growing now. The one on the left (with the yardstick) is the same strain....Brainstorm. Same seeds, same bucket, same lighting. There is one difference between her and the first one.
She is getting a nute solution of 1550 instead of 1350. Her final yield will be almost DOUBLE FOR THAT ONE REASON ALONE.

PPMS MATTER!

PS....also tossed in a few root photos of a plant that grew very successfully (Master Kush......yield was around 6 oz) but this is what the roots looked like when all was said and done. NO ROOT ROT......thank you Cannazym.

If the OP is not doing res changes, towards the end of bloom, ppms don't mean diddly, as plants do NOT use all components of the nute system exactly at the ratios at which they are provided.

The ratios in the bottle are an 'idealized' ratio for cannabis the genus; differences among species and of course strains will cause unused components to build up, giving a level of 'junk' ppms, that the plant just doesn't need and can't use, when the res has gone too long without a changeout to start back at the idealized ratios.

If you were to have a sample of your res solution tested at a lab for individual components, you would find a NON-ideal ratio among them, with a lot of the conductivity being added by components in excess, leaving less 'space' left over for stuff your plant actually needs at this stage in its life.

The moral of the story is, change out your res for a nice freshie as often as it is practical. Otherwise, yield and plant vigor suffer.

Epsom salts, by the way, are NOT a substitute for CalMag. Epsom salts are MgSO4- that's IT. There is no other necessary mineral content in there- the Calcium is missing- and plants do not use enough Mg to justify adding the level of ES to bring the base ppms to the same level you'd use CalMag for, as that is a broader nutrient, with minerals, not just a metal salt.

I love Stinky. :thumbsup:

I love BEING stinky. Ask anyone. I cut brush all weekend and tore out carpeting, and worked a shift at a restaurant that apparently has a goal of sending all the grease out on the clothing of the customers and staff, rather than up the extractors...
Stinky? Yes! :D

looking nice weedhound...when you said you had the one at 1300ppm and boosted the other to 1500ppm, was that just more N-P-K or more cal-mag also?

so ya I think the problem of the low ppm is solved... we are both using around 800ppm for our bloom nutes then you just add 500ppm of cal-mag.


Stinky: Ya i know epsom salt is just for the Mg. GH Micro has 5% calcium, which seems to be standard in most other solutions, so I figued even with the RO process taking it out all I would need to really replace is some Mg since that is low in the nute formula. But I have started to add cal-mag and hope to see some great result :thumbsup:

Ya and I know that my res solution will give me a "false reading" due to the different nutes being uptaken by each individual plant and those left behind. Ya i know all the N-P-K could be used up and I still get a decent reading. I usually have a 5 gal, wait until the plant uses up 3 gal and then replace that with fresh solution. So really I am technically replacing 3/5 of the total solution with good. the rest may be leftover crap but this has always worked for me in the past so I stuck with it.

I should really get into the habit of changing them out on a weekly rate but I an pulling water from a natural spring and ya lets just say its been pretty dry and I gots no water :mad:

thanks for all the input to the post. Gave me a better overlook of hydro information I could not find when looking over all the great information.

It's funny, I have been realizing that a lot of the info on this site is geared towards dirt growers, since it is the medium of choice for a lot of NEW growers- and the site as a whole is really geared towards newbies... although that's obviously not to say that people don't stick around even after getting our feets wet ;)