AK-47 in E&F - rockwool/clay medium (First Grow Log)

@subzero - I took a look at your post and plan on looking at that link you posted as well about this. I feel like I've damn near exhausted most of the possibilites of what could be causing all of these issues. Its beyond frustrating. I know I'm a new grower so I know it could be as simple as me just not knowing what the hell I'm doing but more and more I'm starting to feel like this may possibly be the issue. The biggest problem is that I lost the receipt for the intial purchase I made of all the equipment and threw the shoddy instructions that came with the tent because they WERE shoddy so I have no clue what make my tent is. Also, it has no label on it so again I don't know what type of tent it is. I would like to mention that the tent gave off a hardcore plastic type smell for a very long time until just recently its not noticable anymore. Infact the room had a real plasticy type smell for many months before it finally kind of dissapated. Also, everytime so far it always seems like its either a difficiency or nute burn. When I get home today I will water the most punked looking plant and see what happens to confirm if they are being underwatered at the moment. But again, this really may be a tent issue. SO, if that is the case, what do you recommend I do? Just take the actual tent portion off, leave the bars up, and just have the plants under the light like that for right now? I actually have two tents, both the same so I would have to take both of the covers off and get them out of the room for right now. I'm willing to do that, the only drawback for me right is the lack of money, otherwise I go rush off and buy another tent that I know doesn't have this issue, and I can't return these ones cause I don't have a receipt. So lets say I do at least take the tent covers off, leaving the plants just pretty much open in the room, its carpeted, and the walls have wallpaper that isn't white so I don't have alot of anything to do any reflecting, do you have any suggestions of what I could do? I think if I did this this week the plants are far gone enouph that it wouldn't be a waste of time. I just really really really want to have a successful grow before I close up shop till the fall. I want tear my hair out, seriously.

first off, happy 420!!!
i thought your tent frame was made of metal not pvc? ive never used the tents i just staple the black and white plastic to the walls and floor if needed. im not sure about the advantages of the tents but i can tell you that plants grow just fine out of tents.
i think you need more airflow too. i always make sure there is a fan blowing just over the tops of the plants but never right on them. it helps move some of that hot air under the lights and also helps push oxygen molecules that have stuck to the plants microscopic hairs out of the way to make room for co2. you should also have some fresh air in that room as well.
the PM is powdery mildew. i think thats what you have on the hydroton. letting them dry out a bit should help. if you start to see it on your leaves later on you can use a sulfur burner to treat it.
overwatering is the most common mistake new growers make. and once in a while some pros still do it too... a lot of the people that i have helped think if they give them less water but still feed them the same amount of times a day that they are not overwatering. not true, they need to dry out between waterings. you need to feel the weight of the bag every time you check on them...every time, every bag. and after a while you will be able to feel when the bag starts to get light and when its really heavy with water. this is hard to teach to people that start with coco because they never listen to you or remember what you said about the weight and they look at the color of the coco on top of the pot and think that when it gets light in color that it is dry and if is dark its wet. thats not always the case. also when they are small its like the roots sit in suspended animation until the medium has dried out, then they finally pop. a few weeks back a trainee of mine had grape ape clones and half dried out after the first watering and half did not. after that the ones that dried out took off, the ones that didnt stayed the same size. when i came back to check about 10 days later he could not figure it out because he had watered the ones that never took off so much less than the others so he thought he was not overwatering. but he was still watering every day so they never got a chance to have that first dry out and so they never popped. i think it was 24-48 hours of no watering and they were off to the races. although this extended his veg time by about 2 weeks. :(
i always start with hand water DTW until they are about ready to flip. i also start with feeding 1oz at a time until they really start drying out fast. im now 72 hours into blue cheese clones and they are eating about 1oz every 12 hours. yesterday they started to pop so from today on some will eat more than others and i need to feel the weight of every pot to know which ones to water or not.
im not touching the ionic ppm stuff. like i said, im GH and at late veg am at about 800ppm. my blue cheese clones started at 450ppm and they are loving it. in about another 3 days i'll bump them up to about 600ppm, then to 800, after flip up to about 1000, and by the end im around 1200-1300+, GH says to push 1400 but they just want to sell more stuff.
im not sure whats up with the res but i use 18gal storage containers all the time for a cheap $5 res. for flushing or babies or whatever they work great as a small hand water res.
take pics of your equipment...please! lights, air pump and stones, testers, tent. i got no idea what your working with.
i did some less than perfect hydroton rinsing and it never caused any issues for me. its just clay dust as far as i know does nothing bad.

you guys ever try the cheese? i heard about it for a while and then a friend grew some, wow, i very happy high!!! not too strong just a very warm happy feeling...and sex is amazing after a few bong hits.
right now i have bubba kush, sour diesel, grape ape, lambs breath, and cheese and i wish they were all cheese...cant wait for the blue cheese...:bonghit:

I know how you feel, I was actually having panic attacks over my tent, really, serious panic attacks. Time was ticking away and I could not resolve my problems nohow.
Here is what I did to finally prove the point of my tent offgassing. Take one out, and get it under a light outside the tent, preferably in another room dont worry too much about fans or reflective surfaces for a minute and obviously handwater. If it starts to recover after a few days it is the tent. I took them out, they recovered, put them back in, they suffered after a few days. back out ok, back in suffered, I was that stubborn it took a month of doing this after trying everything else (throughout about 3months prior,different nutes, tanks, tank changes, different clones,high humidity, low humidity, different lamps, different water, everything!),Then I googled grow tent problems as an absolute last resort and found the link i posted. next day i took them out of the faulty tent and put them in my old one, it has been 2.5 weeks now and the plants that i thought i couldnt save (they were really, really bad, way worse than yours), have easily quadrupled in size and are really, really taking off now, started 12/12 yesterday. The reason I question the tent is that you havent had a successful grow in it yet have you? Growing good weed isn't that hard really, its not. most problems for new growers is overwatering or overfeeding, and with ionic i never, ever had a problem with nutes and we are experimenting with the watering, so i'm pretty sure it is an envornmental problem. If you got it on ebay or searched for the cheapest tent you could get it is almost certainly made of pvc. Hopefully, problem solved. The smell you mention says poison gasses to me. You dont seem to be getting any roots down which is almost more important than whats going on up top (no roots no shoots!) my problem exactly. plants dying from the bottom up? yep

If the plant outside the tent recovers (and it wont take long), take the covers off and get them out of your house, especially if you have pets or children, then get some white/black plastic from the hydroshop and cover the frame in it to make a temporary cover. dont buy pvc plastic obviously, make sure it is from a growshop! (until you can afford a homebox or 2) you should be able to get some stick on zippers off the net too. Don't forget to remove the drip tray as this will be made of the same nasty stuff!

Those leaves on the bottom look suspiciously familiar.

Keep me in the loop,
Subzero :jointsmile:

Ok so now I'm confused about the PVC, is it the reflective plastic that is made out of PVC that is the problem, or is the frame that is made out of PVC that is the problem? My understanding now is that its the white reflective part of the tent that is made out of the harmeful PVC stuff so I've already pulled the tent cover off of one tent and was in the process of pulling it off the other tent here soon...I did see though that the inside of the tent is made with 100% Polyamide in China. I know I'm screwing up alot of things here left and right it seems but even if this isn't the problem I've ruled it out as a potential problem. Got to wait for some help to get the rest of he cover off the grow tent because I can't lift the reservoir with 30gallons of water in it and move that tent cover at the same time.

On the watering thing...this morning the rockwool was still wet, not sopping wet but wet, and this evening its still wet, the plants are drooping more however so I just watered one of them to see what will happen. It seems the rockwool is retaining the water forever, its not drying out like it did when I was hand spraying them in my seedling tray where the rockwool got visably dry. So far in the hydroton they look really wet and when touched on top are varying degrees of wet, I'd say more than damp honestly. Should I let them dry out for a couple day till the rockwool is visably dry?

hi icbh,

It is the actual cover that i suspect is pvc not the poles.

Cheese was a clone only skunk number one, rare pheno from i believe(sensi sb), that was given out as clones, at the manor by the exodus group that organised huge "free parties" all around the m25 that runs around london, back in the good old days, apparently zorro from red eye magazine had to retire the original mother and teamed up or gave a cutting to big buddah who started selling the seeds I guess he selfed it.

I havent grown cheese but smoked it back in the late 90s, very, very stinky. Apparently buddas arent anywhere as good as the original. but I think that it is a bit like g13 in the states, everyone is trying to cash in.

:thumbsup:
Subzero

bert,
polamide, I'm not certain if it is pvc or not........ but china, well they have very few standards to adhere to for their exports and hydrohuts were ok until china added a little something to make manufacture cheaper their end, unknown to hydrohut. If the tent is white on the inside and it is made in china, who knows what is really in it? Remember the baby milk that killed all those children? Made in China. as was my tent. also i have heard of tents that are ok but the drip tray is pvc, also a possibility.

Let the r/w dry out, if there is moisture there, the plants will take it up before they wilt from dehydration.

Subzero.

its funny, a lot the club owners and long time growers out here cant seem to find cheese clones or finished bud. but i think thats because its not really in demand out here right now by the general masses and whenever some does come around its snatched very quick by the people that know about it...anything purple is what the masses want and all the people i know that grow it, including myself, dont care for it. this grape ape i have would make most people shit their pants its so dark purple and sweet smelling but for me and most people i know we would rather smoke almost anything else. unless your a Jamaican living in cali you most likely never heard of the lambs breath but its a great high! its time for the rappers to start rapping about something other than "the grapes"
im so over purple!!!
i had to drive 6 hrs round trip to get my clones. i think they are from sensi seed, first cuttings off fresh mothers.

Nobody I know grows anything purple, Check out big buddas seeds for the cheese, and blue cheese, start a trend! Fast sativas are in over here, cindy99
crosses and the like. Cindy 99 is easy to rhyme, mabey you could rap about it too

Have fun with the cheese.
Subzero.

So, I went and bought some white/black stuff like you said and 9 hours (yes 9) later I've finished re-doing the tent. I will say one thing though that the closet where I was doing my seedlings in had water damage on the plywood shelf up top that I had my smaller light attached to for seedlings so I replaced that and got that all set up again, and tore down the other tent entirely (it was ment to be a clone mother tent but thats going to be farther down the road for me I'm afraid and when I get my hands on some good seeds I'll re-builed it again). I also had built the tent wrong because as I said earlier the directions had no words just some illegable pictures on them so I went about fixing the tent so my lights are now in line with my E&F instead of perpendicular and I put those low hanging poles up top and made a ghetto sling for my exhaust fan with some duct tape. Speaking of, duct tape, its not going to create some kind of offgas situation or something is it? Also one big thing I also noticed...after getting those tents out of the house, the lack of smell in that room is almost overwhelming (plastic/sourish smell). I was actually astonished because I guess I've become used to the smell, so I really thing all this hard work really paid off even if it might not be the tents causing my issues. Well, I'm freaking beat so I'm going to hit the sack (started working in there at 5pm when lights kicked on and now its 2:30am my time). Lastly, after hand watering the plants they immediatly started moving with leaves turning and such and then later this evening they had perked up noticably so I'm starting to think its underwatering and I'll tell you why I think it is, including the results after handwater of course...Previously, on X-Men, I was watering them 4 times a day for 30 minute at a time and it NEVER showed signs of over-watering...it always looked like nute burn that started on the bottom leaves and worked its way up. Now, since these plants have been in my E&F for what 3 weeks now I've been watering them 4 times a day for 10 minutes at a time but really they are maybe getting <5 minutes of water because it take about 5 minutes to fully flood my flood table. This is my hypothesis after seeing the plants reaction to being watered today. Lastly, doods at the grow store said I should be using more Ionic than I am right now as well and I think you may have already mentioned that yourself but I have kicked it up to 1/4 strength with the hand watering and the grow store guys were telling me thats still too little. Well guys, tell me what you think about all this wall of text, and here are the pics...

[attachment=o216506] [attachment=o216507]

Bert, those lights are flourescent tubes mate!, drop them down to about a foot above the plants and fill up the ballast with everything you got, you should be able to get them even closer than that without burning them, they hardly put out any heat at all or lumens really. Also are you blowing air through your carbon filter? You should have the can inside the tent attached to the fan SUCKING it through.

Overwatering effects lower leaves if you dont have much of a root system but if they perked up after watering flood them, but maybe only twice a day.


Got to go mate, I think you are getting on track now.
Subzero.