Yellow, starting from veins, on new growth?

[oranje]

Hello, I am bad at plant.

Long and short summary: TGA Space Candy, vegging in lightly amended Happy Frog soil (extra perlite, and a dash of crab meal, kelp meal, and earthworm casings), organic liquid nutrients (General Organics) pH adjusted to 6.2 - 6.8, soil pH reads at 6.5. Night temp is about 68f, daytime 75f. Since this started, growth seems to have slowed down quite a bit.

My guess is iron deficiency, but from my reading it sounds like iron deficiency usually leaves the veins green, while this appears to be the opposite. Also, “fix your pH” seems to be the suggestion for iron deficiency – I’ve dropped pH to 6.3 and 6.2 for the last two feedings, haven’t noticed any difference. Aside from mild Mg deficiency, plant looks healthy otherwise.

Any ideas or suggestions, my internet pod nerd friends?

[ryasco]

If you are using GO Cal-Mag it will drop ph pretty low and if you constantly raise ph it causes problems. GO Cal-Mag after a few hours corrects itself. Other than that i am stumped. You seem to be doing things right. Happy Frog has very little nutrients so all your feed should be coming from you like hydro.

[lotus710]

Dont use any of the go nutes. Topdress with good compost. Water it in with aloe, fulvic, silica. Then go grab yourself some stinging nettle and ferment it. Then use that at high doses. While your waiting for the ferment kelp teas every watering. You can even frment dry amendments like crab shell, kelp, neem etc.

[anon6184023]

Hi @oranje, Its my bedtime now, but I will have a think on this for you tomorrow, but I will have to ask loads of questions first to try and narrow it down. For the immediate give it a week foliar feed with a spray mister just before lights off, just a misting not till run off, ideally something seaweed based single part nutrient at 1/4 to 1/2 strength.

Nitrozyme if you have it by growth technology or other stress reliver, loads on market, but i’m not familiar with the nutrients your using, other side of big pond you see, but I will look them up tomorrwow and try to help narrow it down for you.

[oranje]

@ryasco

[…] and if you constantly raise ph it causes problems.

By volume, my largest additive over the past 6 months is “pH Up.” Yeah, the GO CaMg+ smells like vinegar, but even excluding that for a feeding, pH is around 4.9. I should give a guinea pig clone un-pH’d nutrients to see what happens… Did you do away with the GO one in favor of Ca/Mg additives/top-dressing?

@lotus710 - in the mid-to-long term, I’m going to be one of your pupils, but right now, “topdress with good compost” involves renting a car to go find good compost, as I haven’t found a good commercial source and the compost I make in my urban setting is mediocre at best I’ll look into fermenting my dry amendments.

@MadTruka - will gladly answer your questions when asked, and may combine lotus and your suggestion and do a foliar feeding with kelp tea.

[ryasco]

I use the GO Cal-Mag and just acknowledge my plants are going to relax for a few hours before pointing up again. I only add calcium every other watering unless i start seeing rust spots on my leaves then i use every watering. I use a little potassium silicate with my nutes to raise ph and don’t buy any ph up or down. I am of the less is more school and you can tell from my plants. Sometimes i will show a deficiency but i try to relax and fix it.

[anon6184023]

Hi I’ve just got back from having to do my chors etc

I will be looking into your problem soon, I promise.

[oranje]

A bit of an update,

I gave the troubled plants some kelp tea, followed by a concoction of compost tea, some nutrients, and epsom salts. I’m going to try being less aggressive with pH adjusting, but picked up some “natural” potassium bicarbonate to nudge things in the right direction if pH is super low. New growth looks much closer to normal, but a couple fan leaves are yellowing in the margins and curling at the edges (maybe K, maybe Mg?).

I’m also trying out reverse osmosis (but not deionized) water in the hopes that this works better than carbon filtered water or RO+DI.

Anyway, I’m fairly convinced this is a fun combination of pH being higher than my microbes want, and my microbes getting nuked by potassium hydroxide pH up.

[Justin]

If ur ph is off u can cause Cali mag lockout and ur plants will not up take the Cali mag test ph an adjust to between 6.0 6.5 for soil if ur in hydro u want to start it at 5.8an let it go up to no higher then 6.0

[Justin]

Ur ph should be 6.5 to 6.0 in soil ur way to acidic man 4.9 is terrible an can kill ur plant

[oranje]

Just to clarify, the 4.9 pH measurement is before I adjust the pH – I’ve been adjusting the pH when feeding to 6.5 +/- 0.3. Soil pH also reads at 6.5.

Anyway, will see how things look in a few days – on the plus side, it looks like the clones of the impacted plants have rooted, so I can always try again.

[anon6184023]

Hi @oranje,

I havent forgotten you, I do appologise just been a bit busy and hectic last few days setting up the cctv systems. I’m going for a shower now then I will compose a reply for you with links, and my thoughts, although it looks like you are on the way to fixing it. Iwill have to google the media and nutes that you are using to try and get some background info.

Again my appologies but you dont want a half hearted off the cuff reply

[ryasco]

I hope things get better for you oranje. Good luck and my sympathies, i hope your moms improve.

[anon6184023]

Ok here we go;

I am going to put in some links as I cant find the old charts I had on my back up drive and scrolling through 4TB is going to take forever. If the links are not allowed in the forum I appologise in advance.

Plant Doctor - Diagnose Your Plants! | Grow Weed Easy

At first I thought possible nitrogen def but then after looking thinking may be sulphur def.

The ph of your tap water is outrageous is that 100% correct you start with tap water @9.5??
Then after adding your nute solution to ttap water it drops to 4.9??

Have you checked your batteries in the ph meter and calibrated ??

Here are some pics of deficient plants but usually if following the nutirent manufacturers guidelines you should be within tolerances. Sulphur def

Calcium def

Magnesium def

Potassium def

Phosphorus def

Zinc def

Nitrogen def

Usually things get locked out by the ph been out or over watering, we can count out overwatering as your leaves are not hung down like a cats claw.

Now Im going to have to nip out to my shed hang on 1 min, I use a granule called hydrolit to keep my pond water at between ph 7-8. This is used by the ultilites (WATER) companies to keep the drinking water at legal levels in the UK must be between 7 & 8 ph. I only put 2 kilos of it into 10,000 litres of water, I place it in the filter in a net sack and it lasts approx 1 year. That may help your problem with the water to start with if you can get hold of it.

Have you tried using the epsom salts or an over the counter (grow shop) flush like what you would at the end of flowering to rinse away any excess nutrient and also free up any locked nutrient.??

Canna do one that prevents loosing all your beneficial microbes and bacteria etc if only flushing with water you will loose a lot of those.

Try foliar feeding at half dose for a week after a flush then continue with the normal feeding watering regime, I cant stress enough how important the ph is, try another ph pen or a cheap liquid ph test kit from a fish shop if you cant get hold of one.

Another option if its possible is repotting into a larger pot and using a root stimulant too, to help with the shock.

Try and answer the questions I have asked and we can go from there, for now foliar feed with something to ensure its getting a basic feed and lets have some more pics. try and foliar feed inlow light just before lights go off, or it goes dark (if outside)

@oranje

[anon6184023]

I wouldnt be too worried about chlorine or chloramine for the moment. Where I am the water companies add more of that starting on thursdays to cover the extra waste water at the treatment plants over the weekend, and stop putting it in on sunday, so the best water for me is on a wednesday, but an air stone and air pump will gas it off in 24 hours if yu can prepare your water in advance.

[anon6184023]

We are all presuming deficiency and not toxicity here so far, by giving a flush and starting to build up the food again will eliminate that, whilst foliar feeding at half dose.

[oranje]

@MadTruka

The ph of your tap water is outrageous is that 100% correct you start with tap water @9.5??
Then after adding your nute solution to ttap water it drops to 4.9??

Yep, pH adjustment of tap water by The Man is in the range of 9.2 to 9.6, very intentionally, using primarily sodium carbonate and fine adjustments with CO2.

Sulfur deficiency was my other guess: my sources (cough google) put Fe and S as my two best guesses, as they impact new growth and turn the leaves fun-and-incorrect colors. I leaned towards iron because yee olde soil nutrient uptake chart suggested that iron is still available at low pH, and I was trying to keep both nutrients and soil in the 6.5-7.0 range. Sulfur seems to be most available in pH 5.5 and up, and I feel like I’d have many more problems if things were that low. Knock on wood.

Per this thread about a maybe-probably potassium deficiency in another plant (still ongoing), @ryasco and @lotus710 expressed fear about my tap water when I told them the pH was above 9, so I picked up an RO/DI filter. I’ve been using a mix of RO/DI and non-deionized RO (which has a pH strikingly close to tap water). If I mix up a full strength batch of General Organics nutrients (the whole kit), with tap water, bottled water, or RO/RO+DI water, my pH ends up in 4.5 to 5. Tested with a calibrated pen, and verified with universal indicator pH test strips (good lab ones, not crappy hydro store test strip).

As said, I gave some kelp+alfalfa compost tea, with a dash of bottle nutrients and epsom salt, and new growth seems to have greened up a bit. Oh, also, a thin layer of lobster compost mixed into the top (only non-garbage I could find). It is growing, and the new growth looks a bit better – if I can keep new growth going, I have time to fix the rest I’ll look into a friendly foliar feed, hopefully be able to try that tomorrow, and post some pics of the current state of things.

[anon6184023]

Hi @Oranje,

Please can you tell me what the general organics nutrients (the whole kit) is made up of. Pictures of the bottles would help me greatly, front and back so I can see the exact make up of them.

If you can not do this please can you provide me with a link to the website of the manufacturer, also include the names on your bottles please??

Are you in an area that has mains water coming from a deselanated water treatment supply ??

What is the EC of your mains water ??

Can you try filling a reservoir or bucket and aireating the water with an air pump and air stones for 24 hours and see if the PH and EC are the same as your mains water??

“Yep, pH adjustment of tap water by The Man is in the range of 9.2 to 9.6, very intentionally, using primarily sodium carbonate and fine adjustments with CO2.”

Can you expand a little on your comment above as I dont quite follow / understand the comment ??

As I understnad it CO2 carbon dioxide, is used to make water fizzy / effervescent!!

If anything you want oxygenated water not CO2 enriched water, CO2 is generally added to the AIR enviroment of the room this allows you to run a little higher temps in the growing enviroment.

Just for your information, when I use hydroponics NFT (nutrient fim technique) I allow my nutrient solution to vary between 5.2 ph and 6.2 ph with out any problems.

In soil I allow the nutrient solution for watering / feeding to go as low as 5.8 ph at the start 1st week, followed by 6.0ph 2nd week, then at 6.2ph until the vegetaive phase is finished.

I am very curious as to why your mains water is in the Ph range of 9.2 to 9.6 ?? Where abouts in the world are you located geographically. Have you checked with your water companies website what the ph of their mains drinking water should be ??

If that was in the UK we would be able to claim compensation from the water authorities. As it would not be classed safe for humans to even drink. A Ph of 9.5 is the highest allowed by law in the UK to be provided by the water mains companies.

phfactsheet_acc16.pdf

The water quality regulations specify that the pH of water at your tap should be between 6.5 and 9.5. Water leaving our treatment works typically has a pH between 7 and 8, but this can change as it passes through the network of reservoirs and water mains.

Ph values are on the scale power of 10, so it doesn’t seem like a lot but 9.5 to 9.6 is a big difference.

Before going onto the topic of water hardness, lets first try to find out what your water should be coming out of your taps from your water company. A Ph that high would suggest its been stored in a concrete storage tank or facility or something like that perhaps ??

Water

Edited I had my numbers wrong for the legal quality of UK drinking water, now corrected!!

[oranje]

Now I’m the one who has to run, so I’ll try to be fast

• Nutrients are General Hydroponics “General Organics” line – there’s a fun starter kit called the GO Box, which includes everything from this fun feeding chart.
• Water is reservoir/lake water, not desalinated.
• No idea how to measure conductivity, so… shrug. It’s very soft water, if that’s where you’re going with this.
• Sure: tap water, RO water, or both?
• The pH is raised with sodium cabonate, and (I imagine) pushed down slightly with CO2 if the pH is higher than expected. I’m just going off of info in the monthly water quality reports and other PR materials from the water department. They service a few million people, so I don’t think they’re completely clowntown. The pH is very intentional.

On a side note, in finding you the links to the GO nutrients, I noticed that their feeding chart has been updated and says pH should be adjusted to the range of 5.5 to 6.5 (as opposed to the “no adjustments” from before), so at least I know I’ve been been at or exceeding the manufacturer’s recommended pH Learn something every day, I guess…

[anon6184023]

EC electrical conductivity, is measured with a ec / tds / ppm pen, much like a ph pen.

https://www.bluelab.com/products/type/pens/ec-ppm-pens.aspx

http://www.getbluelab.com/shop/By+Category/Pens.html

Make sure the bottles you have are the ones in the specific relevant chart, from time to time manufacturers adjust their recipes or ingredients.

I thought it was the general hydroponics nutrient you were refering too I just wanted to check and make sure I was on the right / same page.

I would be aiming for 6.2 - 6.5 ph in soil for the majority of the time, you can measure the run offs ph and ec to compare it to what your putting in.

Are you watering / feeding from the top and letting it run down through the pot, or from the bottom and allowing it to soak upwards ??