quote=wordsandwich

1) Is it possible for these plants to bounce back? or should I scrap this grow and start over once I get my HID lamp?

Absolutely these plants can snap back. I know because they already have started to. Those top nodes are looking comparatively nice and healthy at this point. Well mostly anyway. I can't tell if I see some beginnings of the yellow spots.

2) what steps would you recommend I take from here? including nute schedule and when to start using the 250w HID. I am thinking I probably want the plants to show significant improvement before I jam them under an HID..

IMHO you are correct about the light. When they are struggling like this I would either not use the HID just yet, or keep it about 3 feet back at first. They're getting stressed 6 ways from Sunday. They don't need light stress or heat stress to add to it. You would have to get the light real close to light stress the plants, or maybe add it over night even at an otherwise acceptable distance, but heat stress is definitely something to worry about.

I'm pretty sure the good nutrients can only be helping. However I'm going to have to disagree about upping the amount of food at this point. They will be just fine at 1/3 strength, but they just might not be if you raise the amount at this point. To be as safe as possible during this recovery I would wait 3 or 4 days, then start upping it slowly if everything else looks good.

I cannot stress this enough: You need to do something about the PH. It is way more important than getting the proper nutrients to the plants. If you expect your plants to thrive or at least survive, there is no way around checking PH. Improper PH, or PH fluctuations could have very easily caused those wrinkled leaves. Be extremely thankful if that's all that lack of attention to PH has brought you. PH in hydro is 5.5 (5.2 - 5.9). I try to keep mine at 5.5, and that seems to work out nicely. You could test your water by using some PH down to 5 or so, then seeing if it creeps back up over night or two nights. If so, you might want to consider starting out aiming for PH 5.2, knowing that it will creep up over time. If you use city water be sure to get something to neutralize the chlorine. You can get drops for this, but I don't know if you need some way to measure chlorine, or just ask your water company what percentage it is, then perhaps use a certain amount per directions on the bottle. Not my deal ya know? If you have well water you will start with 100-300 PPM right off the bat, but no chlorine unless you have something that injects it.

I couldn't help noticing something a little disheartening; you didn't mention anything to do with PH coming with your nutrients. At the very least you gotta get a strip-type test kit with the drops, for about $8, or as I mentioned before, a PH pen for about $25. If you plan on doing much growing in the future just go ahead and shell out the $25. Eventually you will decide that people are correct and you will need something to measure PPM. But I'm thinking these are 50 or $60. If I had it to do over again I would figure one meter that tests both, into my start-up budget. $100? Who knows if the directions on the bottle are really correct. And if they are correct, sometimes they're confusing. It's kinda hard to tell if your 1/3 strength is the same 1/3 strength that it really should be. If we could get a PPM meter in there somehow, we would know if it's under the 900 PPM limit that I recommend for a few days. After that I would raise the amount weekly, or a little less or more often, about 100 PPM at a time while watching very carefully for signs of nute stress, which is yellowing and browning on leaf tips and edges. Without a meter, adjust your changes accordingly. I'll let you get out the calculator if you want it precise.

Also the more air you can get into your solution the better. I would chuck that small air stone that I'm assuming came with the system, and put in not an air stone, but an air wand. These will last sooo much longer than the stones, which fall apart after the first harvest. You can clean the wands after each harvest and they continue putting out the bubbles about as good as new. Plus you can cut the wands to any size, and some types you can bend into irregular shapes. I would have one running the entire length of the res, and get a bigger air pump if the small one (again I'm assuming) doesn't produce a nice boiling effect. Keep the level pretty low so that most of the roots are in air, and getting spritzed when the bubbles pop.

and on, and on, and on...

Hmmm, what else...?

Oh yeah, what about the alleged root rot? Your plants seem to be doing too good for that perhaps. If you do have it, I would not have bubbles splashing on the rotten spot. Try to get as much moisture as possible away from that spot, but don't completely dry it out. Please let me know either way so we can rule it out as a problem or not. Pictures would be wonderful.

And oh yeah, I want to see this work. Taking out the fluoro kinda defeats the idea of the experiment I wanted to see, but that's fine. I think I have a pretty good idea of what the end result would look like. I highly recommend going ahead with the HID as planned. That is unless you don't want to quadruple the yield. Just please add it slowly and gently at first.

Well getting late and hard to think. Lemme know.