My problem just keeps getting worse. Please help!

Dilan R Wertz

Active Member
I have 2 white widow that are a little over 7 weeks and 6 weeks. One is in Fox farm ocean forest and the other is in Fox farm happy frog. Temps stay around 75 with light on and 65 with it off. I water when the pots get light. Im pretty sure I have a magnesium problem. I haven't been letting enough runoff when I was watering so I had some buildup. I did a flush on her and got the runoff down from 1800 ppm down to 700 ppm. But my issue just keeps getting worse. I don't know what to do. Everything was going so great, had no problems at all and then boom I switched to my 400 watt hps from my 400 mh and topped her and then next day I noticed the problem and its just getting worse.. I don't know what to do.. It's got almost all my fan leaves in bad shape.. PLEASE HELP!!
 

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Dilan R Wertz

Active Member
Im only going to say this once and then your on your own-

The light is too close and was all the problem ever was :-)

Good luck
I had my hps about 16 inches away to start. I've since moved it up but leaves that were shaded and not even receiving light were having problems too..
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Don't listen to that idjit. Posts all sorts of crap. Got nothing helpful then say so or STFU.

Looks like some calmag might fix what ails those plants. A pic of the whole plant would help when trying to diagnose problems. An advanced problem like yours should be affecting younger leaves too if it is a Ca problem. A light too close is only going to toast or bleach the top leaves closest to the light and not stuff further down.

Don't go nuts with Calmag tho. Too much is bad too. If you haven't fed them anything since the flush then I'd advise using about 1/4 - 1/3 strength nutes with a dose of calmag no more than the max they say on the bottle. As most contain N if you can cut back a bit on N in the nutes, like no Grow when using 3-part, that would be good too.

Read this chart carefully as all the clues about each nutrient can help you maybe figure out something different as it's not easy to figure some of this out from a few pics of sick leaves.

DeficiencyChartCervantes.jpg

Good luck!
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
PS: I run my 400s as close as 8" above the canopy with no problems but have a small fan blowing between the light and tops.
 

Dilan R Wertz

Active Member
PS: I run my 400s as close as 8" above the canopy with no problems but have a small fan blowing between the light and tops.
OK I just trimmed off the very worst leaves.. Someone yesterday told me to do that. The ones that were really bad. I just did the flush Sunday night and haven't gave anything since. Not ready to water again yet. But I have been using distilled water with cal mag in every watering but I think I'm gonna try using my tap water. But it did seem like after I put my hps in it happened then over night.. Not saying that's the issue probably just coincidence. Haha but I wanna try to save her so I can at least get a decent little harvest from her. I just switched to 12/12 today cause if I let them go much longer I'm gonna run out of room. My other plant looks good except for like a couple leaves at the very very top. No signs on bottom of plant. That's what I don't understand. But looks like same issue. Yellowing in the margins and some brown spots starting. I did a mini flush on that one also. Didnt get ppm of runoff as low as I wanted but did get it lowered. I'm hoping she will recover. And yeah I can take pics of the whole plant but under the hps it's hard to see colors and stuff.
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Don't take the pics under the HPS if you don't have a manual white balance feature on whatever you are using to take the pic like my digi cam does. I finally bought a Schmart phone and it has a whole page of different colour profiles I can pic to get different light balances but my $100 dumb camera has a setting I can use to calibrate the light to show true colours under HPS, LED etc. Just have to toss a sheet of white paper on top of the canopy and focus on that to calibrate with.

Take a pic or three with the flash just after the lights go out or find a couple of those 5000K LED light bulbs to light up the plants just after light's out to get real natural looking colour in your pics. Would help if you lowered the resolution a notch or two for smaller file sizes too. Takes almost a minute for my slow connection to download those ones you have up but no biggy.

It's really odd that this problem just suddenly popped up. Are you sure it wasn't going on already but not enough to catch your attention?

I like to run the MH during the stretch period to cut down on the stretch a bit then go to the Hortilux Super HPS to finish up the flowering period. Mostly I'm using one of each as there will be too much canopy for just one by flowering time. I break out the 1000W to get serious. :)

I found a great spot to download FREE POT BOOKS. I downloaded a grow bible first and got lots more. Books look great and complete like the real ones I have here. No web site but just a page of links. Just right click on what you want and then "Save Link As" to download so they don't open first as some are 50+ megs. They got lots. Enjoy.

:peace:
 

Dilan R Wertz

Active Member
Don't take the pics under the HPS if you don't have a manual white balance feature on whatever you are using to take the pic like my digi cam does. I finally bought a Schmart phone and it has a whole page of different colour profiles I can pic to get different light balances but my $100 dumb camera has a setting I can use to calibrate the light to show true colours under HPS, LED etc. Just have to toss a sheet of white paper on top of the canopy and focus on that to calibrate with.

Take a pic or three with the flash just after the lights go out or find a couple of those 5000K LED light bulbs to light up the plants just after light's out to get real natural looking colour in your pics. Would help if you lowered the resolution a notch or two for smaller file sizes too. Takes almost a minute for my slow connection to download those ones you have up but no biggy.

It's really odd that this problem just suddenly popped up. Are you sure it wasn't going on already but not enough to catch your attention?

I like to run the MH during the stretch period to cut down on the stretch a bit then go to the Hortilux Super HPS to finish up the flowering period. Mostly I'm using one of each as there will be too much canopy for just one by flowering time. I break out the 1000W to get serious. :)

I found a great spot to download FREE POT BOOKS. I downloaded a grow bible first and got lots more. Books look great and complete like the real ones I have here. No web site but just a page of links. Just right click on what you want and then "Save Link As" to download so they don't open first as some are 50+ megs. They got lots. Enjoy.

:peace:
Yeah I have a couple grow bibles downloaded. But yeah Im pretty sure it just started. I've been keeping my eyes on them like hell. This is my first grow so I have been watching them good. Hopefully it will turn around. Thanks for the help!
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
You're more than welcome! :)

Grew my first buds in '78 then off and on over the decades but haven't had a day since '01 when there wasn't plants growing in the house and I read everything I can get about all aspects of our favourite plant. Leaks out of me so I got to post it somewhere. ;)
 

Dilan R Wertz

Active Member
You're more than welcome! :)

Grew my first buds in '78 then off and on over the decades but haven't had a day since '01 when there wasn't plants growing in the house and I read everything I can get about all aspects of our favourite plant. Leaks out of me so I got to post it somewhere. ;)
Here's some of the whole plants. Sorry I don't know how to make the file smaller. I'm using my phone. Adjusted settings and got color. IMAG0580.jpg IMAG0581.jpg
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Now with the big picture in front of me it looks like you might just have a little toxic salts buildup and some of the older leaves show signs of nute burn. Too much of some nutes screws uptake of other nutes so you may have corrected the problem with the flush. I know the colour in your pics isn't perfect but do the leaves seem really dark green to you under normal light?

I'd go with the 1/4 - 1/3 strength bloom nutes and a dose of CalMag for your next watering and don't worry about the N as they use a lot of N and P during the stretch. They use a lot of everything during the stretch really so you want it all there or you're going to stunt flower and budsite development and impact your yields. After the stretch you want less N but still need a bit at first but less as flowering goes on or it inhibits flower production in later flowering. N is easy tho. As soon as your plants get low they start stealing it from the old fan leaves so if they start going yellow and soft at say week 6 just leave them be and let the plant get the N it needs from itself. It can also steal P, K, Mg and Zn(zinc) as they are also mobile nutrients. Symptoms show in the older and middle leaves before affecting top growth. Ca, S and all the rest are all immobile nutes and if the soil becomes depleted in any of those you will see symptoms appear in the youngest leaves and growing tips first.

After the stretch the need for P goes down and then it wants more K for bulking up the buds and extra S for resin production. I find AN's Big Bud the best thing to start flowering with as it is 0-15-35 with 10%S and a host of other goodies to get bigger colas with lots of sugar on them. I bought a 500g can of the powder a year ago. The liquid has too short a shelf life to buy more than a small bottle as I don't grow tons of pot so this will last me a few years and still be good. I've used it since they first started making it with the inventor's name on the can that I still have. Dr. Hornsby's Big Bud was what it used to be called ad there's some controversy about whether AN stole the formula from him or not. Probably did but sorry Doc I hate to grow without it. :)
 

Dilan R Wertz

Active Member
Now with the big picture in front of me it looks like you might just have a little toxic salts buildup and some of the older leaves show signs of nute burn. Too much of some nutes screws uptake of other nutes so you may have corrected the problem with the flush. I know the colour in your pics isn't perfect but do the leaves seem really dark green to you under normal light?

I'd go with the 1/4 - 1/3 strength bloom nutes and a dose of CalMag for your next watering and don't worry about the N as they use a lot of N and P during the stretch. They use a lot of everything during the stretch really so you want it all there or you're going to stunt flower and budsite development and impact your yields. After the stretch you want less N but still need a bit at first but less as flowering goes on or it inhibits flower production in later flowering. N is easy tho. As soon as your plants get low they start stealing it from the old fan leaves so if they start going yellow and soft at say week 6 just leave them be and let the plant get the N it needs from itself. It can also steal P, K, Mg and Zn(zinc) as they are also mobile nutrients. Symptoms show in the older and middle leaves before affecting top growth. Ca, S and all the rest are all immobile nutes and if the soil becomes depleted in any of those you will see symptoms appear in the youngest leaves and growing tips first.

After the stretch the need for P goes down and then it wants more K for bulking up the buds and extra S for resin production. I find AN's Big Bud the best thing to start flowering with as it is 0-15-35 with 10%S and a host of other goodies to get bigger colas with lots of sugar on them. I bought a 500g can of the powder a year ago. The liquid has too short a shelf life to buy more than a small bottle as I don't grow tons of pot so this will last me a few years and still be good. I've used it since they first started making it with the inventor's name on the can that I still have. Dr. Hornsby's Big Bud was what it used to be called ad there's some controversy about whether AN stole the formula from him or not. Probably did but sorry Doc I hate to grow without it. :)
The leaves don't seem very dark green. But hopefully my flush worked. On my other plant there is no signs on bottom of the plant just the top couple fan leaves have some yellow margins and a couple brown spots. But no indication on the bottom, just the top. Yeah when I was watering before wasn't letting enough runoff so I'm sure there was build up. Hopefully they will turn around. Do I still need to add cal mag with using my tap water? It's like 160 ppm itself.
 
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OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
I wouldn't switch to tap water. Every time you water you are adding another 160ppm worth of minerals that build up like scale in a kettle and will push your pH way up to 7.5 or more.
 

whitebb2727

Well-Known Member
Gotcha. I've been using distilled but someone told me that could be part of my issue..
Distilled can strip nutrients from the plants. A bit of cal/mag will help that.

Looks like they need a bit of mag. Also looks like a bit of a ph problem.

They look healthy otherwise. What I mean by that they are praying and look good. Don't do a bunch of things at one time.

When a problem occurs and you correct it the damage can continue for a few days.

Whatever you are using for nutes try to work out a balanced feed. Shoot for a close to even NPK. Mix at 1/4 strength and water until good run off.

They look better. Don't over do it on correcting them.
 

Dilan R Wertz

Active Member
Distilled can strip nutrients from the plants. A bit of cal/mag will help that.

Looks like they need a bit of mag. Also looks like a bit of a ph problem.

They look healthy otherwise. What I mean by that they are praying and look good. Don't do a bunch of things at one time.

When a problem occurs and you correct it the damage can continue for a few days.

Whatever you are using for nutes try to work out a balanced feed. Shoot for a close to even NPK. Mix at 1/4 strength and water until good run off.

They look better. Don't over do it on correcting them.
I've been watering with cal mag every watering. And ph my water to 6.5 or 6.6 every time. Had someone mention phosphorous deficiency.. Not sure. I didn't give them grow big last time just big bloom which is low P. But I flushed after that. With plain ph tap water.
 

TacoMac

Well-Known Member
Now with the big picture in front of me it looks like you might just have a little toxic salts buildup and some of the older leaves show signs of nute burn.
That.

Lay off the nutrients. For plants that young to look that bad it's nutrient burn, not deficiency. That's a good sized pot you're growing in with a LOT of soil in it. It's not a hydro grow. There is absolutely no need to feed it every day.

I grow white widow exclusively with nothing but Miracle Grow products. I feed my plants only once in veg and 3 to 5 times in flower depending on the grow and that's it. I net between 4 and 6 ounces per plant every time.

Less is more, man.

And ignore the idiot about light burn. That was flat out stupid.
 

Dilan R Wertz

Active Member
That.

Lay off the nutrients. For plants that young to look that bad it's nutrient burn, not deficiency. That's a good sized pot you're growing in with a LOT of soil in it. It's not a hydro grow. There is absolutely no need to feed it every day.

I grow white widow exclusively with nothing but Miracle Grow products. I feed my plants only once in veg and 3 to 5 times in flower depending on the grow and that's it. I net between 4 and 6 ounces per plant every time.

Less is more, man.

And ignore the idiot about light burn. That was flat out stupid.
Gotcha. I don't feed it every day. Every other watering.. But I am gonna start back with 1/4 strength bloom nutes I guess the next watering.
 

whitebb2727

Well-Known Member
They don't look bad. Don't flush any more. Don't use the cal/mag full strength just use a bit with the distilled water.

Use the grow formula also. It will need N. Try for a balanced feed.
 

Dilan R Wertz

Active Member
They don't look bad. Don't flush any more. Don't use the cal/mag full strength just use a bit with the distilled water.

Use the grow formula also. It will need N. Try for a balanced feed.
Only reason I didn't use the frow was because I had just transplanted into some new ffof. But 10 4. I will Start back at 1/4 strength nutes with good runoff and see where she goes from there. Today is first day of 12/12. I had to start it cause if I let go to much longer I am afraid I will run out of space.
 
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