I’ve not grown in over a half decade and thought I remembered what I was doing but I’m stumped at trying again. My environment has changed also as I used to live in the city and now out in the country, east Ok, on a well which is fairly acidic. The general layout!
Genetics:
Four autos and one photo
Age: (date of post …4 weeks)
Environment:
Air:
Temp 75-80F
Humidity 50-60%
Airflow with multiple fans
Light:
5600K bridgelux strips at night
Media:
Coco
Nutes:
GH Maxigrow 400ppm
calmag 2ml / gal
protek silica 2ml / gal
Water:
well mixed with house filtered water
PH 5.8-6.0 avg 6.0
The coco is NF brand and is pre buffered and certified so I didn’t wash it or anything. The solo cups they are in have holes on the bottom to allow them to drain off excess. But, maybe they are holding onto too much water. I didn’t have perlite to mix in which I normally do so it’s just coco. Normally at three weeks I’d have much larger plants that look healthy but these look sick. They look stunted to which I’ve never experienced.
The water is a mix of well water and water from the house which is on a filter to raise the ph up, I assume it’s a calcite filter which should be calcium carbonate. It raises the well water which is 4.9 to 7.5. So, I mix my nutes in half a gallon with the house water + 2ml of calmag and 2ml of protek silica. Then I fill up the remaining half with well water which gives me about a 6.0 ph. The well water is 40 ppm and I’m guessing some of that is sulfur since it’s so acidic even though it doesn’t have a smell and is very clear. The house is 100ppm …I assume 60ppm of Calcium carbonate from the filter. I add calmag because I used to add it in the city and city water has calmag and half my water src ,well, does not have much of anything. And, coco in my experience needed it.
So, I have about a end ppm of solution around 500ppm which I guess is 400 ish since don’t we minus out the water ppm? I don’t have a par meter but did calibrate the ppfd app with a lux meter I have and they are getting 450-500 ppfd per the app and 35K on the lux meter. Maybe 400ppm was too hot to early? Maybe a nute lock or def? Too much water? I’m stumped on this because my usual issue in the city was not enough calmag and light burn. It’s too early to tell but it looks like they might be greening up a little in the last two days.
All I can do is guess without a soil test and more parameters, but given the undergrowth deficiencies and drooping, I would guess it’s what I recently went through with a bunch of solo cups (though with soil). After transplanting, I realized the roots were not happy from excess water. It may also just be too humid, or was, for the temperature. What’s the temp/RH or VPD reading? I know you mentioned, but was that through birth?
I wouldn’t suspect light intensity or spectrum to be a factor here given what I see, though I could be wrong.
as you already stated pots could be holding onto water, easy remedy is jsut place them on a towel/cloth after watering and the towel will wick away any that may be creating a perched water table.
Also 400-500ppm is quite low on the feed side even considering using maxigro, what do you figure the maxigro is by itself ?
You might consider upping that to 6-8 ml a gallon. Even with high calcium in your water you will want to add more calmag in a coco grow. I have between 300-550 ppm tap water and I still add roughly 6-8 ml of calmag every feeding.
What’s the economical way of doing this? I don’t want to buy more water nutes unless necessarily as they are so expensive. A bag of calcium carbonate and Epsom salt is cheap, for example 50lbs of Carbonate is $10. Or is there something special to those bottles of calmag?
Not trying to be difficult but on a budget these days as everything is just so dam expensive.
Before I posted my personal thoughts were something to do with nutes…too much or too little or a def / lockup. Other thoughts were that the coco is retaining too much water even with the holes. I’ve used solo cups before but put in perlite. But, I also used to run hempy buckets and there are basically the same thing a container with a hole.
In any event, where can we src small buckets for cheap? I was wanting to find some one gallon and two gallon buckets but dam they are so expensive.
If I remember correctly a 1/2 tsp / gal of maxi brings me to about 750ppm. The water is about 100ppm so I guess 650ppm for the maxi? After adding calmag and silica I’m about 900ppm. I take and cut that down with just plain ph water to the 500ppm range.
I’m scared of over feeding. I have a personality of doing to much instead of less is better. There so many guides on the net with varying specs. Do we have a guide here that has been tested and respected regarding nute schedules and also one for light intensity.
What ppm would you recommend? Is there a good feed chart and par chart here on OG that’s recommended per the different stages? The differential information on google searches seems contradicted. For example…some sites say only 300ppm for the first few weeks and no more than 200 par for seedlings …and then another site will have something completely different.
Any recommended and respected books on nutrition, lighting and diagnosing issues?
My apologies I missed that it was a hydro setup. I had them backwards. Wow I’m not with it today. Just checked my bags, it’s calcium in the dlime and magnesium in the Epsom salt. Sorry friend
Almost a perfect post to ask opinions, even to the PPFD details ^^ But i missed in the discussion how aged their are, that’s quite critical to evaluate if they’re in late or not.
This would be the fourth (4th) week since they germinated. I will say this which may or may not play a role in why they are stunted. I originally had them in some mother earth coco packed individually in those mesh seed starting bags. I noticed that there was a weird smell, turns out it was the coco. It had a weird smell like some sort of chemical, some said it might be what they buffered it with. I’ve never smelled coco with that smell…almost like a formaldehyde smell. The company, in email reply, said that that was not normal.
While they did germinate I replanted them in some fresh NF brand coco which on the bag and their website says it’s pre buffered so I just re hydrated and didn’t wash like some do. I don’t remember washing the coco I used years ago. This was when they were about a inch and half tall, so I can see a mild shock for a few days but not weeks. I didn’t want to mention this as I don’t think it’s the culprit and didn’t want to perseverate on it and get stuck in the weeds…unless whatever that smell was had something to do with it. I mean they did germinate in that coco just fine, I was just trying to be cautious.
So, again …they are about four weeks since germination.
4 weeks so, you can call Houston at this shape at the first dozen of days if they “freeze”.
On water it’s quite neat how you dialed it for the sweet spot of coco coir. It’s sincerely a factor i will suppress (i guess you don’t need to regulate PH, i don’t see any PH burn anyway). Considering the context, i will keep an eye open to rockwhool grows. They are generally more in ease with this kind of initial water. Less fight against the KH i mean.
Ready to be burnt in public place now ^^ The secret with coco coir is that there no secret at all, or you losing all its advantage in term of speed/yield over a simple soil grow. You take it from the bag, you fill the pot and that’s very all. You get out from this, worries and nonsense perf are starting ^^
It’s not a fully neutral medium, it’s not a fully organic medium, it decompose but isn’t really “composted” … well it’s a singular beast.
Cal-Mag additions is mostly used by those that grow coco coir like rockwhool, without minding much that it’s not that resilient and “integer”. Hardcore PH drift that decompose, that generate a loop and generate the “salts fear” (too) … i tried multiple angles to explain but it always end the same way : “let’s add something more, in case of”.
Dry them for sure, a good cycle to clean the roots. But the watered down colors are more an uptake disorder that a true asphyxia, the first leaves set will be like “bleached” and very much pales if it was the case.
At this stage, and after 4 weeks of minimal activity … i will drench the plants in root booster (or superthrive if you have it) without their cup in a bucket to get back only the plant and its roots, then restart with a fresh clean coco.
They’re fed enough & all that. What you need is some LITFA! (search the forum)
They’re fine. Just over tended too.
And don’t forget to examine them in other light— white LED makes everything look paler than it is & I overfed the shot out of my tent recently. Forgot about that.
As @Mr.Sparkle said your EC is likely too low. I would try at least 2 EC. Don’t be scared of giving them too much you’d be surprised how much they can take. I can hammer mine with 3 EC right off the bat. With coco I’d make sure you have a good amount of runoff every time you feed also.
Ph is 5.8-6.2 which is always what I’ve ran from recollection …but again that was city tap water. What may I ask is your hypothesis of ph lockout formulated from; and more specifically a PH of 6.3 recommendation.
(search the forum)
