need help still

[kyolic]

unfotunatly I can't afford a ph meter at the moment. if I flushed them can I just leave them in the bags there are in and just let the water drain out of the holes on the sides? I'm gonna do that as a last resort because I think my light being a couple of inches away from my plants for two weeks has something to do with it hopefully....but thanks for the help guys

[stinkyattic]

It's not the light... Light burn presents very distinctively.
If you had physical damage from the light, I would say, 'yo that's light bleaching'.
But it's not.
It's some combination of fert burn, salt buildup in the soil, and a possible pH problem. pH issues and soil salting go hand in hand BTW. A liquid test kit is less than ten bucks...

[kyolic]

It's not the light... Light burn presents very distinctively.
If you had physical damage from the light, I would say, 'yo that's light bleaching'.
But it's not.
It's some combination of fert burn, salt buildup in the soil, and a possible pH problem. pH issues and soil salting go hand in hand BTW. A liquid test kit is less than ten bucks...

oh sick. I was looking at the wrong ones then. ithe ones at this grow shop were like 80 bucks. so after I dump a shit load of water on them how long should I wait till I add ferts again? and I can't help but thinking that all that water would destroy the roots or make them have root rot or something

[stinkyattic]

The final step of a correct flush is watering with a complete fert mixed at 1/4 strength.
The pH test that's cheap but still accurate is a little bottle of drops and a vial that you mix with a few mL of your water or nute solution and it turns color depending upon pH. It's called an 'indicator solution'.

[kyolic]

The final step of a correct flush is watering with a complete fert mixed at 1/4 strength.
The pH test that's cheap but still accurate is a little bottle of drops and a vial that you mix with a few mL of your water or nute solution and it turns color depending upon pH. It's called an 'indicator solution'.

even though I have been using distilled water this whole time can flush with tap and just strt using that?

[kyolic]

for those of you who told me to flush my plants it didnt work. I used 10 gallons of ph 6.8 water on a 3 gal bag and then added 1/4 nutes at the end and the prob is gettin worse. what should i do.

[stinkyattic]

Have you actually been using the CalMag with your distilled water? Try giving your plants a foliar of it. There's something really odd going on, and the more recent pics DO show classic Ca def symptoms (wide patches of necrosis on the plant edges).

[stinkyattic]

Shit that's just a strange set of symptoms all around. Running the distilled water before is what I think really shot you in the foot. The edge spotting and speckling in the center of the leaves looks like a really bad potassium deficiency or lockout. The tipburn looks like fert burn. CalMag has other trace minerals besides Ca and Mg and will at the very least help halt the spread of the problem until you can identify it.
When you did your flush, did you check the final runoff pH of the water coming OUT of the pots?

[kyolic]

yeah I checked it...it was actually sittinr right at 7. and I thought it looked like either calcium or potassium like I said before. I have some cal mag that I bought a few days ago that I can use to foliar feed. would it be ok to foliar feed today even though I fed them ferts 2 days ago? and one of my other plants has the same shit happening to it. what can I use for potassium? or will calmag do the trick? I don't know if the tiger bloom I used has potassium in it

[stinkyattic]

pH 7 runoff is too high. Get it into the 6.5-6.8 range.
Potassium is the 'k' in NPK and is the last number on the bottle. For example a 6-3-4 nute has 4% potassium.
You can foliar feed at any time. You can even use your tiger bloom along with the calmag, but dilute it quite a bit more than the bottle says.