Ph is rising, can't seem to stabilize

Ok...good to hear. :thumbsup: I would add RO water to dilute things down (stay under 450 for now....adjust ph after adding) and you can change the rez in 3-4 days and up things by a hundred (50/50 of each) etc etc...and simply watch them. If that's too fast just dilute things back for a bit.

Realize that even though the numbers seem "stagnant" to you we are no longer sure what those numbers are. The plants are drinking water and taking up what they need so all we are seeing here is what is left......and really.....that could be anything. (Remember your tap water at 400ppm? How much of our number would that crud be taking up? :eek:) We can only see the TOTAL number....not how much of what nute/mineral of each there is. This is where balance and ratios come in to play for me and frequent rez change are a good way to make sure those two things stay that way.....especially when you have young plants.

I would just add your nutes etc....then adjust ph very last. So many things will change your ph that you'd be readjusting it nine million times if you didn't.

PS....checking and adjusting ph twice a day is fairly standard practice in hydro so sounds like all is good there. ;) As the plants grow and you are using larger amounts of nutes your ph will remain more stable due to the buffers in the nute solutions. But when they are small.....everything has to be watched and checked more often.

Thanks for the reply Weedhound :)

I diluted the reservoir to 410 ppms and lowered the ph to 5.5. I am pretty sure I can see new growth forming on the top and sides of the plants so that has to be a good sign. I also peeked at the roots and they are now out the bottom of the net baskets by maybe a quarter of an inch :) When I first planted them in the net baskets I placed a layer of hydroton on the bottom, then the rockwool cubes; so the roots have grown over an inch downwards in the past day or so. Another good sign :)

I have attached a couple more pictures :)

Gotta love hydro! ;) They do look much better. Whats the plan for flowering those? How big are you going to let them get before you turn them? What kind of clones are they? I ask because I wonder if you will run into problems later with them crowding each other out...... BUT....i just don't know enough about clones to be able to tell you. If those were from seed I could see you having pretty big space problems about 1/2 way into flowering.

Weedhound,

I am going to start flowering as soon as possible. However, something bad happened yesterday :(

I got home around 9 pm to find my roommate fairly concerned. He is a very cool guy and knows that I have a recommendation for medical marijuana and such, but is still a bit cautious because of Federal law.

He said that the apartment manager called him and told him that the family below us had called the manager saying they had a leak in their small bedroom closet. Fuck!

What happened was my fill indicator tube that tells me how many gallons of water are in the reservoir had fallen over somehow and then the reservoir began to siphon itself out...onto my carpet...through the floor...down into the poor family's closet. All 15-16 gallons.

My roommate told the apartment manager that I had an aquarium in my closet (lol?) and that it had started to leak everywhere. Fortunately the manager wasn't mad but instead gave instructions on how best to dry out the carpet.

The manager is going to call sometime this morning to check up on things and I am going to say that everything is drying up real well (I've been trying to dry everything I can through most of the night.)

I am going to go and sincerely apologize to my neighbors tomorrow and tell them that I will pay for any damages that might have occurred. Maybe I should offer to wash their clothes that got wet.

My babies are in my tub right now and I have jerry rigged a 16 watt flouro and a 24 watt cloning flouro and set the time to the same as the HPS so hopefully their internal clocks aren't too fucked. The humidity outside the reservoir in my bathroom is at 70%, and I'm positive it's almost 100% humidity inside the reservoir.

I guess I did my res flush a couple days early, as soon as the water store down the street opens I'm going there and picking up another 15 gallons. I would have done this last night but I needed $5 in quarters for the 24 hour water machine but I didn't have more than a dollar or so.

I am hoping that my babies can survive for 13 hours without being sprayed with the nutrient solution. They are in RockWool that is still saturated as of now. Only about 4-5 more hours until my babies are fed again actively.

I can't believe what happened. Last night was definitely a rough night for both me and my girls. Hopefully it was harder on me than them, I feel so bad!

Fortunately my wonderful girlfriend has been extremely supportive about what happened and has said that if my girls die she will replace the crop with new clones, but I am not going to give up on them. If anything they are going to give up on me, I just hope they give me one more chance! (At least)

Remember how I said I have been working through most of the night? Well, last night when I got home I was super stoned, had 480mg of Dextromethorphan in my system (A dissociative), and had two shots of 80 proof hard alcohol (Last night was the first time I have ever had alcohol in my life, besides two glasses of wine at a birthday party a couple months back.)

I am curious to hear your reactions, impressions, SUGGESTIONS, and other comments because I definitely cannot go back to sleep until my babies are in a good situation again.

Thanks!

:stoned:

What a BUMMER!!!!!!! Wow, so sorry to hear about that. :(

I think your babies will be ok as long as you keep the roots damp with ph correct wter.....don't soak them or get the roots TOO wet...but as long as roots aren't damaged and you are have ph ok you should be good until you can get them back into their normal home.

As long as you have some sort of light on them....any light....you are good with that until you get them back under the hps so no real worries there.

Good luck....wow, I'm still bummed about your unhappy night.....

By soak them or roots too wet I mean SITTING in water (I had visions of them floating around in the tub. :D) but keeping the rockwool wet is ok until you get them back in their home. ;)

Weedhound,

Haha that would would be great to see someone use their tub as a cheap hydro setup where it automatically turned on the faucet and turned it off, then let it drain every so often. :D

I am feeling much better now that my plants are being fed. I have filled a spray bottle with RO water and then put 200 ppm of ProGrow and 200 ppm of calmag. It's funny; after the ppms hit 400 the ph moved down to 5.4 from 6.5 so I didn't even have to add any ph down! That's a first.

After carefully measuring out 5.4 ph 200 ppm calmag 200 ppm progrow I set the spray bottle to the finest mist possible and then sprayed the net pots until they dripped a little bit, mimicking a fogging system. Every 20 minutes I go back into my bathroom and feed my girls with about 2-4 sprays of water. I am also spraying the leaves, but from far away and fairly high up, getting as small droplets on the leaves as possible.

I have faith in my girls, I really believe they want to live as much as I want them to; It's just a matter of my dumbass not fucking things up every 4 days and I think I might have a homemade bud in a couple months.

I don't know about anyone else but I learn best by hands on experience. If this grow doesn't teach me the basics of growing there is no hope for me :D

Thanks for the help and encouraging words Weedhound! You da...woman! :):thumbsup:

Don't overdue.....they'll be fine until you can put them back. Missing a few meals won't hurt them....just dry or oversoaked roots.

I won't EVEN start on all the lovely stuff I have done to my plants....including overfert, underfert, abnormal ph, overspraying, (once I sprayed them with some sort of spray with a ph of 4...that was really good for them...:wtf:) practically fungus-sprayed them to death, overpruned, broken branches, rootbound, had to drill holes in the bucket and rootball etc etc etc.

I'm sure you get the idea....:D. But they always bounce back......especially in hydro.

Don't give up....:thumbsup:

Ya I figured watering every 20 minutes would be a bit much so I ended up spraying every 30-40 minutes 3 or 4 times and then I went to school. I just got back and sprayed them one last time before my "system" is up and running again.

I went to Home Depot to look for plastic trays to hold my res, because the local hydro shops are charging me $45 for a 2x3ft tray and I don't have money for that right now. I found a nice and big rubbermaid lid that they would only sell with the tub for $20. Well, they sure didn't sell me anything but I did get that lid :thumbsup:

I will post pics of my babies once they are back in their home. I also picked up a black shower curtain at another store and that should help out for the dark times (and helping me sleep :D)

Give up? Me? Hah, you should have seen the faces of the people who live below me as they watched me and my girlfriend haul up another 15 gallons of RO water into my apartment. lol.

Hey CM,

How are things going over there?