Over or under fertilized?

[hitchhiker21]

Well my plant's leaves are starting to yellow. It all happened, I believe, when I accidentally put no bloom nutes in the reservoir about a week ago. Instead, I must of put extra "grow" nutes from the GH flora series. Unfortunately, a few leaves are showing a little bit of browning. Some stems are turning a purplish color that even runs from the stem into the leaves. The yellowing isn't as much yellowing as it is the leaves going pale. A few days ago, I picked up some Maxi-grow and maxi-bloom from general hydroponics. I made a reservoir change yesterday, and started foilar feeding with a little bit of Epsom salt as well.

The pale or yellowish coloring is on about 50 % of the plant. The bud sites look basically un-affected, but the buds haven't really grown for about a week. Am I going about this the right way and is the plant worth saving. Oh and by my calculations, i should of had just about a month of flowering left. So do problems like these stunt auto-flower strains or will it severely hurt my yield if the plant is savable. Thanks for any help.

What is your experience level? (novice)

Your Equipment:
.1) Type and wattage of lights. 250 watt hps
.2) Distance from tops? 18 inch
.3) Reflector type? standard
.4) Is there a consistent fresh air supply? yes
.5) Do you have an exhaust fan and a circulation fan? yes 120 cfm exhaust & standard desk oscilating fan for circulation
.6) What are the bulb wattages, kelvin ratings, and schedule? Right now the lights are on a 24/0 schedule

Your medium:
.7) Specific brand and type of soil, (coco, peat based soilless...) and anything you've added to it? Hydroton
.8) Size of container. 10 gallon
.9) Did you use peat pucks (or similar) to root clones or germinate seedlings? No, after the seeds cracked, I put the seed in ph'ed rock wool cube.

Your nutrients and water:
10) Source of water? Tap is my source. What's it's ph before adjusting? Before adjustment, the ph is about 7.7-8.0
11) Method of checking water ph. aquarium test kit
12) Method of adjusting water ph. PH UP & PH DOWN
13) Specific brand and N-P-K ratio for each bottle. List dosages (quantity per gallon) and current feeding schedule. MaxiGrow (10-5-14) & MaxiBloom (5-15-14). Currently on early bloom feeding schedule (half tsp of maxigrow and 1 tsp of maxibloom per gallon.
14) How often are you watering between feedings, and how much per watering? Maybe once between reservoir changes with a couple liters of ph'ed tap water.
15) Any additives or tea's? No additives.
16) Are your ph levels stable, or do they fluctuate? Pretty stable with a trend towards slightly higher at the end of a feeding cycle.
17) What is your ingoing water's ph? tap at about 7.5-8.0. comes out at about 6.5
18) Do you foliar feed? Just now started a low dosage epsom salt foilar spray, once per day.
Your growroom:
19) Indoors or outdoors? Indoors
20) What size of closet, room or hut? Closet is 3X4X8
21) What are the temps and humidity levels while lights are on? ...With lights off? Ligts on= 78 F and 40% humidity.
22) Have you seen signs of insects in the growroom? No

Your strain:
23) What strain are you growing? Automatic Ak-47, indica
24) From seeds or clones? seeds
25) Is this an autoflower strain? yes

hitchhiker21 Reviewed by hitchhiker21 on 12-13-2009. Over or under fertilized? Well my plant's leaves are starting to yellow. It all happened, I believe, when I accidentally put no bloom nutes in the reservoir about a week ago. Instead, I must of put extra "grow" nutes from the GH flora series. Unfortunately, a few leaves are showing a little bit of browning. Some stems are turning a purplish color that even runs from the stem into the leaves. The yellowing isn't as much yellowing as it is the leaves going pale. A few days ago, I picked up some Maxi-grow and maxi-bloom Rating: 5

[Charbud]

Dont have any experience with hydro but common cause of yellowing leaves is nitrogen deficiency. So give them some nutes with a high amount of nitrogen in and that should stop them yellowing further and make them nice n green again!

[Prodaytrader]

Here are my two cents since I know sometimes it can be hard to get an "expert" to respond here.

The purple veins, spots and yellowing kind of indicate a low fert issue in my opinion. You mention several different varieties of plants so the purple cant all be genetic across all the plants, at least it's unlikely. The purple veins are caused by phosphorus deficiency and the yellow leaves, especially if they are on the newer side of growth, indicate Nitrogen deficiency. Since you have both issues and your doing hydro, I am leaving towards you not putting in enough nutes in the res. Did you increase nute levels from the last water change? I'm pretty sure, each week you need to be increasing the nute leaves. When my plants first started to look the healthiest they ever had, all of a sudden my plant shot out a huge set of yellow leaves. I totally ignored it for some reason but it was a sign that I wasn't putting enough nutes in the water. I later discovered purple veins on the stems that wasn't uniform.

The spots on the leaves might be front from the foilar spray. I have a 600 watt HID that so very easily burns my leaves the second a drop of res water touches the leaves. Since those leaves tend not to fall off for some reason, now 6 weeks into the process nearly half of my leaves have spots on them since I didn't figure out what I was doing wrong until much later. Any kind of water from the res on the leaves will cause a brown rust spot to show in about 2 to 3 days after the incident. Since your intentionally spraying, I have to seriously wonder if that is a smart thing to do given your using HID lights.

[BobBong]

Here are my two cents since I know sometimes it can be hard to get an "expert" to respond here.

The purple veins, spots and yellowing kind of indicate a low fert issue in my opinion. You mention several different varieties of plants so the purple cant all be genetic across all the plants, at least it's unlikely. The purple veins are caused by phosphorus deficiency and the yellow leaves, especially if they are on the newer side of growth, indicate Nitrogen deficiency. Since you have both issues and your doing hydro, I am leaving towards you not putting in enough nutes in the res. Did you increase nute levels from the last water change? I'm pretty sure, each week you need to be increasing the nute leaves. When my plants first started to look the healthiest they ever had, all of a sudden my plant shot out a huge set of yellow leaves. I totally ignored it for some reason but it was a sign that I wasn't putting enough nutes in the water. I later discovered purple veins on the stems that wasn't uniform.

The spots on the leaves might be front from the foilar spray. I have a 600 watt HID that so very easily burns my leaves the second a drop of res water touches the leaves. Since those leaves tend not to fall off for some reason, now 6 weeks into the process nearly half of my leaves have spots on them since I didn't figure out what I was doing wrong until much later. Any kind of water from the res on the leaves will cause a brown rust spot to show in about 2 to 3 days after the incident. Since your intentionally spraying, I have to seriously wonder if that is a smart thing to do given your using HID lights.

I approve this Prodaytrader message. :thumbsup:

[hitchhiker21]

Thanks for the responses.

In regard to the spots. Those were starting up before the foilar spray was ever introduced.

The plant looks about the same as it did 3 days ago. A bunch of yellow leaves and the bud sites are all green still. But, those buds haven't been growing alot lately So I don't know if that is a good or bad thing that the plant looks the same. I have no real ideal as to how long it takes for a plant to show recovery. But in the 3 days, the plant has been living off of a brand new resevoir of nutes, a light foilar feeding of epsom salt, and hope.

Im pretty sure that my nutrient malfunction of a over a week ago caused a multitude of problems. Not only was some nutrients forgotten, but the incorrect mixing could of caused a nute lock out of the nutrients that were there. Thats why I originaly diagnosed my problem as a Mg defiency when seeing the leaves.

Right now, recovering enough to have any harvest at all would be a moral victory to keep me growing. It would suck if it were to end like this considering all the effort that growers have to exert to keep their op in tip top. Many have mastered the arts I guess, but it is alot of work.