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
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
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.
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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 
I hope things get better for you oranje. Good luck and my sympathies, i hope your moms improve.
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.
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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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 ??
Edited I had my numbers wrong for the legal quality of UK drinking water, now corrected!!
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…
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 ??
The good news is that growth rate has picked up and the color is far saner.
Not as good news is that large fan leaves went this route, which looks like a dash of everything 
Anyway, I’d probably be chopping off these big fans soon for training, so little plants can eat up while I figure out how to improve their lives.
My original “GO Box” had all the same base nutrients and supplements, but I think they’ve slightly tweaked the formulas (my original “Root” was NPK 1-1-1, new bottle is 0-1-1). Referenced chart matches my chart almost exactly in terms of schedule/amounts, aside from cutting out some of the supplements earlier into flower (N/A here). Anyway, given that they have two instructions about keeping pH between 5.5 and 6.5, I’m glad their semi-condoning what I’ve been doing all along, and correcting my mistakes by giving me a lower range than I’ve been using. About 75% of the feedings for these two plants have had a pH above 6.5, so if the friendly multinational agricultural company thinks I should feed at a lower pH, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time (as I cook up some super soil and brew exciting teas).
Oh, and in answer to your last question: top water, about 25% at first to moisten the soil (stupid hydrophobic peat moss), and then slowly feed in the rest several minutes later.
Anyway, will give it a few more days to see how things progress and update further.
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I am assuming you had a ph fluctuation and lived thru it. 
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You can use aloe and make sure your soil doesnt dry out and the peat moss will suck up the water like a sponge:) aloe also has lots of benefits in your soil!
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Hi Oranje,
What are your temps and humidity ? Do you have max / min grow meters ?
They appear to have some nute burn on the ends of those fan leaves, also possibly low humidity and high temps can make the leaves curl at the edges like that pic.
As suggested before we are assuming deficiency or lock out from incorrect ph, it could very well be over fertilisation, toxicity.
Question; Are you using ph and ec meters when making your nutrient solutions ??
If those were mine I would be flushing everything out of the soil and starting my feeds from a low ec again and bringing the feed up, a low feed is ok because I would have removed all the fan leaves and only left the growing tips and branches, so they dont need a high feed at that point, I would also be including a root stimulator. I would be chopping / cutiing all those fan leaves of and only leaving the new growth tips. I would be measuring what comes out from the flush, if in an 11-15 litre pot I would be running like 50 litres of water through the pot to rid excess nutrient build up and re - balancing the ph.
The plants will droop like hell after this, so I then use a metal spike to push from the top of the soil down to base of the pot I put the air holes in lines of 5 in an 11 litre pot so 25 holes in each pot, allowing the pot to drain completely I actually use a knitting needle, this enables air and oxygen back into the soil after a monster flush.
Ahem. Just in case future generations stumble across this and wonder what happened…
I repotted my little Space Candies into 3.5g buckets, using Coast of Maine “Stonington’s Blend” super soil topped with Happy Frog, plenty of extra perlite, and 2cm of composted bark mulch on top. So, 4 weeks after my last update, and 1 week into flowering, here’s how the plant above looks
I will, of course, start a thread for my current flowering run once there’s more to show. Thank you all for the advice in helping me get my girls back into good health.
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Thanks for the update. Ha! Ha! It’s not nice to leave a cliffhanger.
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Anything I’v ever read about plant discoloration starting at the bottom of the plant (mobile nutrient )and moving up throughout the top and reverse for immobile nutrients starting at the top and moving down . This is at the top or new growth my assumption would be iron or sulfur. Further observation indicates yellowing around the pertiole first with green tips suggest fe def.
Treatment soil Ph 6.5 or less avoid fert containing excessive amounts of maganese,zinc ,copper which inhibit Fe Also high levels of phosphorus compete with uptake of fe. organic sources of fe include cow horse and chick manure that’s well aged. Hope this helps!
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Just stumbled on this piece of gold! Thank you!
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