It does sound like pathogen growth to me, slowly nibbling on the lower end of the stems.I go with water temps 18C/68F and all light blocked. Also I use EC .5 as well, but that’s not required until the root nodes are forming. I don’t use any rooting hormones. Cloning other species of plant in the same vat seemed to cause failure in some cases as well.
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Yeah ive had that happen with too warm of water. I used to get good results with warm water. Talking 80F +. Even now with warm water its not a 100% done and gone with, but its bad enough that I try and keep cooler water on clones. I found quicker rooting with warm water.
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Well I’ll keep trying. Sooner or later I’ll figure out what went wrong.
My veg is filling up nicely and plants are filling in. I think it’s time to take cuttings- when I DON’T need them- so I can practice.
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Soooooo the exercise of getting things going is leading to motivation to do more. That’s a virtuous circle I can get behind!
I drained and refilled the veg reservoir. Then I spilled some lol
I’ve cleaned the RDWC in veg and I’m rebuilding it so it won’t clog up with roots as the plants grow. The room is almost ready!
Why is this important? Because everything that happens in bloom is the direct result of what was done in veg. I want to grow BIG plants and have big harvests, so it’s essential to grow big healthy girls in veg that have the ability to make that happen.
Things are starting to get exciting…
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Babies. Keeping these a little cool and underlit so they grow more slowly and let the bigger veg get ahead a bit.
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Still bigger, these have been transplanted into netpot bucket lids and from now on they’ll go from one site to another.
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…this row of 5 gallon buckets have spacers and waterfalls because that’s how ladies in netpot bucket lids like it best!
There’s 4 x 270W LED bars overhead to encourage them to grow UP.
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This is the final stage of veg, where the plants get mounted onto a trellis panel (you can see two of them in the background, each square is 4"x4"). I’ve shown the “cassette” style prebloom veg in action above, so you can see how the plants grow on it.
At this point, each plant is getting 330-600W.
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The buckets are painted to keep the light out?
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Yes. The buckets are just a stop on the journey. Once they’re in the 27 gallon tuffboxes, I just cover the lid with panda film.
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Those 7 buckets actually service two stages of the plant’s journey, with a spare in case shit happens. So every stage, I only move 3 of them. The tubs are just across the room so that move is extra easy lol
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heh heh I’ve seen people make that mistake, using translucent buckets, the algae blooms really wreak havoc on the plants root zone.
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Algae, root rot and just plain stunted roots. All bad. Gotta keep the roots in the dark! Even white, yellow and red buckets can be a problem, as can yellow tuffbox lids.
From my experience with RDWC, the water only needs to drop into mid 60s once a day. At least 68. The rest of the time they can be in the low to mid 70s, which increases metabolism and encourages explosive growth! This cuts down on the need for active water cooling, which I will be (re)installing as I get time.
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yah the oxygen saturation is controlled by the temperature… so you only have to worry if the temperature spikes when oxygen usage is high. The lower limit is 7ppm of oxygen before things go to crap for sure. 32C/90F I think is the death zone.
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None of my shit survives for long if water temps hit 80F, so that’s my absolute upper limit.
I discovered that the water temps in my tubs used to wander as much as 6-8 degrees F every day; down to 65-68 at the end of the night cycle and as high as 75 just before lights out. The plants really seemed to enjoy it so I didn’t go out of my way to insulate the tubs.
I’m still wondering if that logic makes sense.
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It’s definitely dependent on how the plants respond to cold temps. When I grew the tomatoes in hydro, if I just filled a fresh bucket with 8C water, the plants would go into a strange shock where they wilted until the water warmed up. Here’s some excellent information on dissolved oxygen levels.
The details in that write-up are so interesting!
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