Biobizz and Autoflower users - I need your help with this substrate!

Hey my beautiful people!

I am stupid. This is the first thing I had to say now. I am losing my mind, I am losing every last piece of hope I have. I cannot for the LIFE of me grow weed. As dumb as it sounds, I kill them all, each and every time, in the early stages.

I’m from a country where Biobizz is pretty much one of the only options I have. I could build my own soil, but it’s so insanely expensive here, it’s something for the future IF I succeed with such a simple substrate like Biobizz. Please try to understand. I wasted around $400 worth of high quality seeds, from premium brands to low quality ones too. In 1 year of trying to grow, I had 2 plants which survived, one severely stunted, the other being 100% fine, no problems at all, yielding 7oz.

My goal is to successfully grow a few autoflowers. I tried photos too, and had the same exact problems. I am talking about severe yellowing at the new growth of my plants. Inside out yellowing, really bright.

I went through hundreds of posts, hundreds of hours of videos, tutorials, guides, I checked every possible growdiary with this exact substrate, but I never achieved success (Only once, with no changes to what I do at all). I did seed to soil germination, I did watercup → papertowel → soil, I did watercup → papertowel → jiffy → soil, the list is long. My germination stage is crazy good now, because I always kill my seedlings later on, which means by the time a successful grower did one full grow, I probably did 10-15 germinations. It takes 3 days from taking the out the package, to showing their first set of leaves after the cotyledons. I trust this stage 100%, I mastered this & don’t worry about this stage one bit.

But afterwards, I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I did pre-soak my Biobizz substrate (tried light mix and all mix) once, with little runoff, 6.5PH tapwater, 0.3EC, then let it settle at 75°F for 3 days until I planted my seeds. 10 days later, my seedlings have new bright yellow growth coming out, severely stunted, then no growth for 10+ days anymore. A death sentence for autoflowers. I then did soil straight out the bag, no presoak, same thing happened sooner or later. My plants look absolutely wonderful, a rich dark green, nice growth for the first 3-4 days, and then suddenly they all become slightly lighter of a green, new growth is suddenly bright yellow, and then just nothing anymore. They die off, with the leaves all suddenly becoming a mushy light brown on the edges and tips, everything hanging down. That’s the end-stage if I wait long enough.

My temps are wonderful, humidity is wonderful. Everything 100% smart controlled and stable, air exchange, oscillating fans, my tent looks like a space station because I am insanely stupid & thought something else may be wrong, but I feel like it’s me. I am the problem.

Does anyone know what may cause this EXACT problem every time? I am almost 100% alone with this. I rarely find images on Google about this problem, and never a solution. Maybe 3 or 4 images altogether on Google, not kidding. It looks 100% like an iron deficiency, but it can’t be an iron deficiency. There are 5000 images for every deficiency, yet only 2 or 3 for my problem, but 99% of my plants died because of this exact problem.

Here are a few example images. They do not look severe, they look laughably boring, but these growths are always a death sentence for my plants, every time. Don’t judge about the lack of severe “problems”, but try to think about what might be causing this. I know how severe these problems are, because all my plants pretty much stopped growing because of this problem, and never recovered.

I will add any detail you need. I am completely hopeless, even had a professional grower check my tent, someone with several successful grows in Biobizz substrate. He had absolutely no clue as to what was going on. I hope someone can help me.

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Help will soon be on the way my friend, just give it time for your post to be viewed. :wink::ok_hand::sunglasses::v:

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What’s your lighting? If lighting is on point I’d say check the calibration on your pH pen and if it’s good, feed em up. 0.3 is super low for an inert soil and autos. My tap is 0.4 but after the first 6-7 days or so I sneak a feed in to see if anyone likes it. And you’re sure there’s no root pest? Gnats, root aphids, etc?

Sorry you’re having these issues repeatedly. I’m building an opinion that biobizz has become a worse product than when I used it last. Rooting for you though :purple_heart: others will jump in soon, I’m sure

Edited to add if you hang around a while and chat with these lovely folks, I guarantee you’ll have much more value than what you’ve lost in seeds

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Great :+1: on the assist @DirtySlowToes, nice you jumped in there to help. Very OG of you! :tophat::tophat::tophat::wink::sunglasses::v:

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G’day matey . When it comes to growing autos I keep it simple . 27 litre pots ,grown in seed raising mix, usually around day 7 to 10 of growth I give them half strength feet or powerfeed or whatever else I have. But I also give them full strength folar spray of Yates trace element mix . The trace element feed is where your plants are starving for . I usually get between 6 and 10 ounces per auto that way. Nothing special just keeping it simple. Hope that helps matey.

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Hey @Shaloop58 Welcome to Overgrow!

Sorry to read about your frustrating initial outcomes but folks here will help you get it turned around.

A couple minor points:
I’d stick to cheap/free seeds first until you sort out these issues.
PH test drops are not precise but are a good backup check for your PH pen and reasonably cheap.
Soil amendments can be pricey but part of the fun is finding local cheap sources for substitution.

Now time to get one of our experts to have a look…
@George , what’s your opinion? Does that look like a lockout to you?

Cheers
G

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Hi G, I am facing right now the same problem, same strain (Jagger Hashplant), same feed, same conditions:

So in my case I think it’s just a bad seed, it’s too early for a plant to have deficiencies or lockouts, when it yellows like that on the tips of the new growth it’s Zinc, or Iron in my case if it starts in the opposite, but plant at this stage doesn’t have much needs so I will think of just being a “defective” seed. I will let mine go on to see if it corrects herself, her twin looks good so I think I am not doing anything bad, let’s see what happens… beer3|nullxnull

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You using calmag with added iron ?
Biobiz soil is fine , light mix being best of the two as it has less nutes in it that’s only difference between two ( light mix and all mix )

Learning using autos I would not advise as they are on timetable from seed pops , where as photos give you more wriggle room time wise to sort things out and seam less fussy and can recover easier in general

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Overfed = yellow growing out

underfed = yellow outside

Check everything else though

Overfed = burnt tips and or clawing
Underfed = yellowing on lower leafs ( blanket fading colour not patchy )

Looks like mag and iron def to me

Your tap soft ?

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Hey man please keep your head up and stay determined. I too have had grow after grow after grow go south on me but i am sure if i keep on pushing and growing some day i will be growing the most lush green healthy plants ive ever seen!

Keep on keepin on bro

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They’re overfed

I’ll try to answer everything at once. Thanks already for this huge support, I love this community already!

  • My light is a MarsHydro FC3000, at around 50% strength, height I don’t know right now, but enough to give a steady PAR reading on both the phone app & the physical PAR reader, just in the right range for a small seedling.

  • PH pens - I own 3 of them, and they’re all 100% calibrated with 3 point calibrations, I usually do that weekly. No I didn’t literally buy 3, I bought one really high quality pen (Apera PH20), and got 2 nice ones for free later on.

  • The substrate isn’t inert, I just did try inert substrate once too, with the same results (I used hydro nutrients in that case). My current substrate is BioBizz All Mix / Light Mix, each being pre-amended organic substrate with lightmix having enough for 2-3 weeks, All Mix having enough for 4-5 weeks. Lightmix is usually a wonderful choice for Auto seedlings. Nutrient deficiency can’t usually be at fault here, especially because most of my seedlings show these problems in such early stages, where nutrients are usually not even a thing. Sometimes these issues show up late in veg though, for whatever reason, with enough nutrients available. I’m 100% for advice in the seedling stages though, as I rarely had problems if my seedlings survived past day 20 of veg.

  • No pests, rarely some fungus gnats, but they’re taken care of quickly (BTI, sticky traps). Never had any other pests in my life, luckily.

  • Trace elements - Yeah, this seems like it. It also seems like it’s mobile nutrients that are at fault here, if I learned this correctly. I pulled one severely stunted auto through this horror of new yellow growth, by spraying algae, root juice, literally everything onto it for 2 weeks. It never grew large & kept being tiny, but the yellowing literally disappeared. Usually yellowing stays forever, but in this case, all the yellow leaves turned a rich dark green over 2 weeks of daily spraying again. I was rather impressed & never heard of this before. This might be a very important clue as to what is going on!

  • Cheap seeds - I used them for several months at first, just basic white label seeds with each one being around 4-5 bucks. I then had a horrible but successful grow, and afterwards one insanely amazing plant that yielded 7oz dry. No problems, same biobizz substrate, same water as always, it didn’t have ONE deficiency through the whole grow! It was literally leftover substrate, a trash seed, and just straight up luck. Afterwards I switched to expensive seeds from well known breeders, and I was back to just having the same problems as earlier on.

  • PH Test drops are good, but considering that I own 3 differently branded PH pens, I think this should be fine or?

  • Bad seeds - I sourced my seeds from several different banks, from several different breeders, and they all have the same problems. But yes @George , your seedling on the left looks similar to what happens to me all the time, but your yellowing seems to be a bit more evenly spread on the first set of leaves. It pretty much looks the same though!

  • PH / feedings / root damage - All in check. Biobizz recommends a PH no less than 6.3, as this isn’t exactly a normal soilless grow. It’s a peatmoss-based substrate with worm castings, organic additives, and perlite. This stuff works like the homebrew soils, just not as good. Microbes feed the roots, rather than the roots just slurping up nutrients. You can pretty much water this stuff with 7.5Ph water, no problem, it’ll buffer everything out again. In my big successful auto grow, I literally just used water straight out of the tap, not even dechlorinated, PH almost at 8,0. No problems at all. I then re-created that exact grow, and only had the same problems again. The root systems are sometimes insanely large, sometimes laughably small, with seedlings not really being stuck to the substrate & being rather loosely attached to it. But generally, my root systems are big & healthy, never had root rot or anything similar. Feedings in this early stage I generally don’t do, the 0.3EC is just my plain tapwater. The substrate is already pre-amended & has enough for the coming weeks, which is why I usually only feed micros and all that stuff (root juice, calmag, algae, bla bla).

  • My tapwater is right between the middle of soft and hard. My last water test gave me 45mg/ml of Calcium, and 5mg/ml of Magnesium, which is why I usually use epsom salts here and there to boost magnesium a bit.

  • Overfeeding - I had these problems with Light Mix too, pretty much a seedling mix. I even mixed an inert peatmoss into the light mix to soften the first layer of substrate, and still had the same symptoms.

I hope I answered everything, and maybe gave some new clues as to what might be wrong!

Edit: One question just to make sure - I mentioned my cal/mag ratio in the tapwater. with 45mg/ml of calcium, and 5mg/ml of magnesium. If I were to add epsom salts, how much would you recommend adding to even out the ratio? I heard it should be 2:1 or 3:1 cal:mag at best, so I should at least aim for 15mg/ml of magnesium by adding epsom salts. How much epsom salts would you recommend adding per gallon or liter to make it work?

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You don’t need the drops with three good PH pens… :+1:
(Most folks only have one and some don’t realize they can drift…)

That sure sounds like a nitrogen deficiency to me. For soil, I’d suggest adding slow release N source or a clover top cover but I don’t know for your setup.

Cheers
G

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Yeah the substrate already has all the nutrients available, so I don’t know if it’d make sense to add N on top of a pre-amended substrate mix early on, especially with autos. That’s the weird thing though, one of my autos grew like crazy, it was worthy of a champions list, and I did nothing differently. Same biobizz substrate, same old tap water, same nutrients, same tent, everything literally the same. It was way beyond what most seedling look like at day 10, day 20, it became huge as hell, and never had one tiny deficiency. For whatever reason, it just worked in that case. Did some heavy LST afterwards & had a huge bush of beauty.

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If you don’t mind me asking, exactly where’s your location? When you attain the ability to PM, I can see getting you some less expensive seeds to aid you in your efforts. Don’t be put off by early failures, it should only strengthen your resolve. Let me know, if interested. Take care, stay safe and, be well…mister :honeybee: :100: :pray: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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i had some bio once reg (all) i think it was called i found it to hot for autos they like a little less nutes these look to me exactly like my first few tries at sub cools super soil before i realized it was really a hot mix i would try to flush out some of those nutes ppm the run off if those are 3 gallon pots then run 3 gallons of ph’d water thur one just to see for future shock lock out is my guess

That’s a wonderful offer, but I can assure you that it’s impossible to get seeds to where I live, to explain it quickly. Let’s just say western Europe. Still thanks a lot, I really appreciate it!

And @thainer - Yeah, I often hear that All Mix is too hot, and there’s just a few people who can do it, it needs some experience and luck, depending on strain. That’s why I usually go with Light Mix, but even that didn’t work.

I might wanna note some stuff I also found out some weeks ago, in my last attempt: I still have a very old thing to measure Soil PH, water content, and fertility of substrate. Was my first purchase back then, and quickly switched to a real PH pen afterwards to measure water PH.

I shoved that probe into the Biobizz substrate mid-grow (with seedlings dying again), and noticed that the PH of the substrate was rather stable at ~6 in the upper 50% of the substrate, but it showed as 4-4,5 in the bottom 50% of the substrate. I don’t know how accurate those probes are, but I felt like that was rather suspicious.

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I think your problem might be a too high pH, if too alkaline Iron and Zinc won’t be absorbed by the plant and will show yellowing in the new growth. Instead mobile elements like Nitrogen and Magnesium will take if needed from the lower leaves, and they will yellow. In your case, as it is on the top I will think about lowering your pH and make your soil more acidic, I am sure that will help … beer3|nullxnull

Soil pH chart

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that’s why i was talking about a flush as that was what i found all the nutes went to the bottom of the pot so i flushed some out to save the plant it worked for the plant was to little to late for flower try a big flush on one not much to lose