Tek,

I'm about a month into my first aerogarden grow thanks to the knowledge gained from you, Dave, Wow, etc. I bought the fox farm nutes, the EC meter, airstone, fan, ph test, extra cfl 150 watt lights...I mean I'm trying to get this right the first time.

The only problem I have had so far is the same brown spotting on early leaves that you are showing in your picture. Those leaves eventually just dry out and flake off. Fortunately, there is new leaf growth on all plants which looks real healthy and I have even moved my biggest one to a home made bubbler.

I've been driving myself crazy trying to identify the cause for that brown spotting. There's a ridiculous amount of conflicting advice that I've found on the various boards. The most likely cause that I have determined from my own research is that it is a phosphorus deficiency caused by a nutrient lockout from too high ph. I test ph using the GH drops and thought I would be fine with a yellow reading of 6.0 - 6.5. I'm now finding that this problem seems to improve at a lower ph (orange) reading of 5.0 - 5.5.

I first thought it looked like pictures of nute burn, even though I went with about one quarter of the Fox Farm recommended dosage and EC level. However,I changed/flushed the reservoir and used zero nutes with some fresh seedlings and the exact same browning occurred. That's why I think it's the ph.

I'm growing from good (unidentified) bag seed, and this has been the only problem so far.

Hope it goes good from here and thanks again for all the advice.