NeerGreen: New Era grow #1

Hey.

Wow, you are one pro-active type grower. I'm pretty sure I can help you, but you need to sit on your hands or something. Hardly one day goes by in your grow when you don't over-analyze and over-think.

Nuting seedlings to 470 ppm is asking for it. And, yes, AS YOU KNOW, White Widow is notoriously finicky about nutes (doesn't like 'em).

Non-stop drip feeding into oasis cubes (!) is asking for it.

Quit messing with them! Maybe you have a compulsion to quantify, but measuring your plants won't make them grow, it's just indulging your OCD side. Have some discipline. The post where you change the res one night and then when you don't see any improvement, go to 'PLAN B' 8 hours later is a real eye-roller. Nothing you do will have a visible effect that quickly, except maybe setting them on fire.

It's possible you broke off a root because your buckets are TOO turbulent, at least for tiny single tap root babies. If your pump is that noisy that you have to enclose it, it's either too powerful or malfunctioning.

I could go on. Sorry, I don't have a very good bedside manner, but I do mean to help you.

Originally Posted by cannabineer

They are growing so slowly!

11 days since I committed the bean to water. Over the last 2 days under the T5s I swear she hasn't grown one millimeter. Am I doing it right!??


Here's the Raspberry Cough from the fat bean. Same basic issue. No apparent growth.

Comments are welcome ... cn

Originally Posted by cannabineer

<edit> I jostled the net pot with Little Widow in it, and the Oasis cube was being pushed up too high. I reset it last night, and was gratified to see an inch of happy hairy taproot emerging from the bottom of the Oasis. I set it into the Hydroton with much care, and went to bed feeling a little better about my planties.

Originally Posted by cannabineer

The bad news is things are ssoo ssllooww.
The good news is that in terms of healthy appearance, they are not losing ground.
Here's "Runter Alice", my widdle Widow. Compared to yesterday, the leaves have grown a thunderous rampaging millimeter. In a drag race with the San Andreas, she'd clean up ... eventually.
Attachment 1840976
Here's my rompin stompin "Halle" Raspberry. Second set of true leaves is displaying breathless head-spinning vegetative velocity ... this one shows real actual change compared to yesterday's image. Note the nutrient solution feed on the left.
Attachment 1840982

Some random stats ...
nutrient reservoir holds 80 liters of 1/4-strength veg formula, but ppm still read at 450 using my Nutra Dip. I use an Oakton meter to keep the pH honest; maybe I should get a standalone ppm/EC meter as well. Ime redundancy in instrumentation is NEVER a bad thing.
pH was 6.1 yesterday evening. I adjusted it down (with dilute sulfuric acid) to 5.1. Now, about 26 hours later, pH is 5.7 (Nutra Dip) and 5.85 (Oakton, freshly cal'd against 7.00 buffer). I will adjust it down to maybe 5.4 ... to give it "headroom" for the upward creep that seems to be occurring. I wonder if the Hydroton is doing some ion exchange.
cn

Originally Posted by cannabineer

Tyler, that is a bit scary. I will definitely read Heis' thread.

My planties are in so-so health. Halle (the Raspberry Cough from the fat bean) seems fine, growing a little bit every day, but Runter Alice, my tiny White Widow, is sickly. The cotyleda show yellow in their outboard half, with brown tips, and the real leaves are barely growing. So I just dumped a fresh 10l bucket of water into the res, knocking ppm back from 470 to (heh) 420. She makes it, or not. Survival of the fittest.
I also hung the T5 light fixture a little higher.
I took two pix of Alice, one under the weird-pink light of the T5s and one in natural sunlight on my windowsill. (I took the net pot out of the bubble bucket lid for that, and took the opp to flush the Hydroton with tap water.)

Here's Alice, the poor dear.
Attachment 1842783Attachment 1842798

Here's Halle. cn
Attachment 1842799

A series for Alice, October 15, 16 and 17. Should it be this slow!?
Attachment 1842810Attachment 1842823Attachment 1842783

Originally Posted by cannabineer

Hello witelightnin
Light cycle is 24/0.
Watering is constant, thin stream from trickle tubing. It'll show in the side of some of the pics.

<edit> I've removed the nute feed line from Alice. I'll simply top-water with tap a few times each day. I just flushed her net pot with water to clear out most of the salts.

Originally Posted by cannabineer

Last night I removed the nute feed from my ailing Alice. I poured water over the Hydroton evening, night, 1st thing in the morning. Her condition is worsening, but there is still growth.
Halle is thriving, albeit quite slowly by ordinary standards I imagine.
I pumped 40 liters out of the res and added 30 liters of just water. Ppm (indicated; I wonder about the Nutra Dip) went from 460 to 310. I had to vigorously pH-down to about 5.6.
I put Runter Alice back on the drip feed. I'd hate for her to dry out ... and one never knows - perhaps the horse will sing.

Here are my little pretties:
Attachment 1845005Attachment 1845007cn

Originally Posted by cannabineer

(whinny!) Do re mi fa ...
I think the trend is reversed and things are looking better. Runter Alice isn't getting any worse ... the cotyleda have stopped their dying-back, and the second set of leaves has shown growth overnight. Halle is positively burgeoning. Still no sign of roots coming through the net pots.

I credit dropping the ppms with the improvement. So i added another bucket of tap water to the res, knocking ppm back from 310 to 280 indicated. I downed pH to about 5.5.
Halle and Alice ... cn

Attachment 1846349Attachment 1846351

Originally Posted by cannabineer

I got radical today.
Alice (my poky little White Widow) is showing yellowing of the outboard half of her first set of true leaves. So I decided to do a bit of diagnosis. I took her net pot and a bucket of water ... and floated the Hydroton, so that I could pull the Oasis cube up without trauma and inspect her roots. They had not shown below the net pot yet, even though her healthier tentmate Halle is going great (okay, medium) guns.
The roots are long enough to reach out of the pot, so I allowed a tiny root tip to protrude from the bottom, then gently filled the Hydroton back in. Let's see if Alice survives this handling ... and maybe even thrives.
I also removed the top feeds and their hose, and rigged the "main stage" watering system. This feeds nutes into the buckets from the bottom, while a gravity drain maintains level and returns excess nute solution to the main res. I rigged the pump with a Y and made a ghetto check valve from a but of tubing, a barb and a not-round pebble. Most of the pumped liquid exits that side relief port. The rest is gently circulating into the buckets.

The nutrient solution I made up yesterday shot up in pH to 6.90 by evening's end! I aggressively pHed it down to 5.2, and this morning it was at 5.9. I have it now at 5.4. I am guessing that I am seeing outgassing of carbonic acid. I also punched total ppm up from 290 to 420 ... yeah.
I had a little headslap epiphany last night as a dab of some rather nice extract was helping me fall asleep despite a spell of laryngitis. I am supplying 108 watts of light to two plants, so maybe I cannot expect faster growth. it's full Indian summer here in the 'Stan, with 84 degrees outside today and 80 in the grow room, so as soon as temps drop I will engage the 600W MH conversion bulb. maybe growth rates will jump then.

Here are Halle and Alice today. cn
Attachment 1852257Attachment 1852259

Originally Posted by Metasynth

'neer, my dear, just remember that sometimes less is more. Your babies look great, their growth rate with jump when the roots hit the water...No need to disturb them by de-potting for a root inspection, and I suspect the removal of your top-feed line will cause the roots to stretch towards the reservoir. No, they look healthy, my friend...I suggest you buckle up, because it's about to get very interesting for ya. It's amazing to see how fast they grow once they really take off! I'm sure with the amount of care you take in all things, this will be no exception, and I expect nothing less than greatness from you, Sir.

Originally Posted by cannabineer

Oof! What a day.
Overnight one of my buckets developed a stress/fatigue crack around one of the lower hose fittings. I woke up to a minor flood. Also the drain tube must have "vapor locked", so at one point the Hydroton "floated" entirely up, capsizing poor dear Alice. I gently "floated" her again in abucket of water and righted her. Halle has enough roots that she stayed put.

So I ditched the remaining nutrient and laboriously disassembled everything, relocated the tent onto a patch of dry carpet, and Shop Vac'd what I could out of the "little budwetters'" corner.

I patched my buckets by cementing (with shower silicone) patches cut from soda-can aluminum over the lower holes left after I removed the hose barbs, and have rebuilt my rDWC two-hole setup with the slow but safe drip feed, which allows a complete exchange of liquid in each bucket about every 2 hours. I also fitted my air lines with straight barbs so I can take everything apart without having to unscrew the lid from my particle-board "shoosh box".

I mixed fresh nutrient ... 60 l tap water and 20 l prepared "Nitro-Vite" veg nute, for a final ppm (indicated) of 470. pH is 5.4 at the moment, but I will be watching it like a hawk as carbonic acid is blown off.

Poor Alice is yellowing a little. Nirvana "White Widow" fem is the finickiest strain with which I have worked so far ... but that isn't saying a whole lot, lol . Look at those fat little leaves ... more Indica than I'd bargained for?
Halle is just happy as a ... weed. cn

<edit> I just checked the buckets, and Halle's FREAKIN MAIN ROOT BROKE CLEAN OFF. argh and damn. cn

Alice ... and Halle
Attachment 1853663Attachment 1853669

Here is the offending bucket ... note stress crack at 9 o'clock.
Attachment 1853662
Here is the new, not improved but at least working setup.
Attachment 1853665

Originally Posted by cannabineer

I am thrashing, and my plants are ailing.
Last night i noticed a sharp decline in the plants' health. I figured maybe the Physan was the culprit, so i changed the res. This morning, they looked worse, and now even Halle is looking a bit peaked. Her first true leaves have gone yellow and purplish/brown blotchy, and they have a weird leathery brittle texture. Since I've been feeding them low-ppm chow, i wondered if maybe I was severely underfeeding them. So i resorted to Plan B and added 50 ml each of the GH Flora liquid nutes (their seedling regimen says use 2.5 ml per gallon, and 75 liters is about 20 gallons), jumping TDS to about 730 indicated.
After 10 hours, not a hint of root growth and they're looking progressively worse. So I dumped 30 liters of nute, poured in 30 l of water, pH'd and am now reading 450 ppm.
At this point, unless someone has a major insight, I'm diagnosing my sickly colors as overnutrition ... no response to proven nutes suggests that my morning diagnosis of N/K deficiency was wrong.

I am at wit's end with these plants. I simply don't know what to do. cn

Halle and Alice today ... in natural light.
Attachment 1857336Attachment 1857339

Halle and Alice under the T5s ...
Attachment 1857346Attachment 1857349

Originally Posted by cannabineer

They are dying.
What I've done today:
I've stopped recirculation.
I've got each bucket rigged as just DWC now. I made reduced-strength nute at 300ppm ... that's almost nothing since my water starts at 170.
There has been no growth. top or bottom.

Halle and Alice. The lower leaves are quite dead ... in plain light it looks worse.
I really do not know what is wrong. They should NOT get nute burn at 400ish ppm.
The only remaining variable is the water, and if that is the problem I am hosed.

i am seriously considering re-planting them into soil.

Halle and Alice, the poor dears.
Attachment 1859216Attachment 1859072

Originally Posted by cannabineer

I have only two variables left to control.
1) My tap water ... it reads 170 ppm. I can't believe that that would be such a killer, but I've ordered a countertop RO system. Oy, momey money money. I've spent over $2000 on this grow already ... and as I am no longer a salaried yuppie that stings a little.
2) My lights. i've been running a 108-watt T5 panel following bulb recommendations available on this site. I decided it's finally cool enough to go to my main light, so "warp factor 6, Mr. Sulu"; i turned on the big 600 MH today.

Alice and Halle are alive, technically. The third pic (don't know if it shows) is a constellation of pinpoint "stars" showing through the light's exhaust duct. cn
Attachment 1860352Attachment 1860354Attachment 1860353

Originally Posted by cannabineer

My last entry was four days ago ... the day i threw my back out something fierce. I spent the last three days flat on my back and am now moving slowly, stiffly through the house making noises like a Jewish grandpa. "Such pain, I would wish upon nobody!"
During that time I totally neglected my plants ... and they survived. Halle grew some roots, but today they were coated in the dreaded slime.
I came THIS CLOSE to saying "screw this" and potting them into soil. Heck, i even bought a bak of Fox Farm happy Frog. i asked my hydro store guy if he had bennies to combat the cyanobacteria, and he basically went "huh?". He tried to sell me Hygrozyme, but from my reading here I don't think that'll do for The Slime.
The other Big Change: I now have a countertop RO system. i am somewhat convinced that A LOT of my problems have to do with chloramine, which our water is known to contain.
So i mixed a 50-liter batch of Nitro-Vite "half stregth" which ECs out to 720 ppm. I also added 0.5 ml Physan for a final concentration of 2 ppm. I'll check on my poor stunted kids tomorrow ... if the Physan is bad for them i sould see immediate symptoms, and then I'll hang it up and "go soil".
Here they are, neerDead. cn

camdump 11nov02 002.jpgcamdump 11nov02 001.jpg

shnkrmn, I'm not sure to what you're referring when you mention "plan B" and 8 hours.
I did not know that WW is especially nute-picky.
As for quoting all my posts ... how does that help? It seems like unadorned derision. cn

I received my RO water purifier a week ago ... and mixed a batch of 1/2-strength nutes using known good water.
Laughably, my tap water now is 30ppm! The RO is 0 to 10 ppm, and it has none of the chloriney (chloramine, no doubt) smell.
The roots did not grow one bit after 2 days on that regimen. Then The Slime struck ... heavy clear snot killing Halle's roots. A two-day course of Physan at a whopping 2 ppm didn't remove it., and when I tried grooming it off the exposed root, I just did damage. And the plants were showing no growth, and the next set of leaves was going yellow.

So I swallowed my pride and planted them into Fox Farm "Happy Frog" on Sunday, using much water to flood the roots into place as gently as possible.
Now that the plants have had some time to get past the shock, both are growing in a manner much better than in my hydro grow!!
(Why this is, I don't know. Once I move into a better house, I'll get scinetific about this problem. But for now the goal is "grow some bud".
The soil is drying very slowly, and sometime soon I'll invest in cloth pots to assist root oxygenation. But they're happier than they've been for a month now ... and maybe I'm "on my way" for real now.
I've never seen node spacing so tight. Problem? I don't know, and as long as I see green growth i'll let it ride.
Here they are ... cn
This is Runter Alice, my White Widow saved from slow death.
camdump 11nov11 001.jpg
Here is Halle (Rasp)berry (Cough), showing her vitality.
camdump 11nov11 002.jpg

I said my beside manner was not the best, but unadorned derision was not my intent, although I applaud your vocabulary. I quoted all your posts to highlight how much you were INTERFERING with your plants. As for the PLAN B reference, here is a more succinct rendering:

Last night i noticed a sharp decline in the plants' health. I figured maybe the Physan was the culprit, so i changed the res. This morning, they looked worse, and now even Halle is looking a bit peaked. Her first true leaves have gone yellow and purplish/brown blotchy, and they have a weird leathery brittle texture. Since I've been feeding them low-ppm chow, i wondered if maybe I was severely underfeeding them. So i resorted to Plan B and added 50 ml each of the GH Flora liquid nutes (their seedling regimen says use 2.5 ml per gallon, and 75 liters is about 20 gallons), jumping TDS to about 730 indicated.
After 10 hours, not a hint of root growth and they're looking progressively worse. So I dumped 30 liters of nute, poured in 30 l of water, pH'd and am now reading 450 ppm.
At this point, unless someone has a major insight, I'm diagnosing my sickly colors as overnutrition ... no response to proven nutes suggests that my morning diagnosis of N/K deficiency was wrong.


The point being that you seem to thing you will have a visible response to your crazy res changes overnight. Really? You seem rather intelligent with a scientific background of some kind; I'm not sure you are capable or willing to listen to sound advice though. You took offense at my quoting all your posts, took days to respond to my comments, and ignored all the actual advice I gave you. I'm a pretty experienced hydro grower, and if you don't care for my help, well, I don't usually bother much because it's a waste of time. People just don't listen.

Good luck with your soil grow.

Originally Posted by cannabineer

shnkrmn, I'm not sure to what you're referring when you mention "plan B" and 8 hours.
I did not know that WW is especially nute-picky.
As for quoting all my posts ... how does that help? It seems like unadorned derision. cn

Please don't get all hot under the collar, shnkrmn!
I have grown hydro before, quite successfully from seed to fruit.
This time something wasn't going well, quite contrary to my prev. experience, and I have been unable to isolate the wrong thing. If you can help me isolate that wrong condition, I'd be obliged.

I was thrown by the "8 hours" reference ... i'm fairly sure I didn't ever mention an eight-hour interval. As for the event in question, I noticed *significant* plant health decline in that short time, which suggested "poison!" to me ... so I looked for the most recent change in conditions that would account for the crash. (Physan became the prime suspect, but I cannot be sure.) Of course I'd do something quickly at that point. I had a sense of urgency that was supported by a slow health decline being followed by a sharp change for the worse. The pics partially document that.

I would like to return to hydro when I am able to set up in a better place. Anything you can tell me to figure out *what* the plants didn't like this time ... that I'd love to hear. cn

My two plants are finally behaving like plants should!
About ten days in soil now ... good robust growth with green leaves. Internodes are stretching a bit; all good. Leaf morbidity has been stopped in its tracks. Now comes the exciting part ... every day something new to see!
I haven't watered since I put them in soil ... there's still a lot of moisture in there. The balance is near optimal now imo ... enough moisture for happy plants, but enough air permeation to give the roots oxygen.

I would dearly like to know why my hydro effort went so badly. I will grow this pair of plants out "the old-fashioned way", providing mild nutes when they get big&hungry enough, but respecting soil for what it is. Next grow ... i will set up for hydro again, perhaps ebb&flood or NFT. I've used those methods with success before, and that will allow me to troubleshoot with more confidence. But for now i'm just happy to be a happy plant daddy! cn
Halle is getting so biiig! Alice is back from the brink!
camdump 11nov15 002.jpgcamdump 11nov15 001.jpg

Originally Posted by cannabineer

Attachment 1834921
This picture was taken on October 09. The beans were committed to the water glass on October 4th. They were then transferred to Oasis cubes on the evening of the 6th, where the skinny one (White Widow) took hold at once. The fat one looked dead, but i gave it an extra day before digging into the Oasis cube to perform a post-mortem. I found a happy healthy taproot, so back into my ultra high-tech germination chamber (formerly a Claim Jumper pie tin with plastic cap) they went!

I swear, that Widow seed was a runty one. When I received my five-pack from Nirvana, I raised an eyebrow ... then decided no conviction without a fair trial. Acquitted! Would it not be awesome if she turned into a half-pound tree! (Hey, a bear can dream, no?) cn

...hey neer! This all looks pretty crazy and detailed. I'll be watching how this turns out for sure. Thanks for the inspiration to do a bit of a journal. Sometimes I think that your polar avatar (or, polavatar) is pushing a nug around with his nose... A fine pass-time, indeed.

must be nice being a chemist... i like chemistry, but i will go only as far as biochemistry...

good job neer and its cool to see some chemistry going on...

Originally Posted by cannabineer

I compounded my micronutrient stock solutions today.
Attachment 1838539

They are in two bottles because acidic and alkaline micros would precipitate each other. This problem is not present at final dilution.
Acidic micros:
Fe from ferric nitrate x9H2O, (final conc) 2.5 ppm
Mn from manganous sulfate xH2O, 0.75 ppm
Zn from zinc nitrate x6H2O, , 50 ppb
Co from cobalt nitrate x6H2O, 20 ppb
Cu from cupric nitrate X2.5H2O, 10 ppb
Ni from nickel sulfate x6H2O, 10 ppb
Cr from chromium(III) sulfate x12H2O, 10 ppb.

Alkaline micros to yield:
Si from K2SiO3, 20 ppm
B from borax (sodium tetraborate dodecahydrate), 0.2 ppm
Mo from potassium molybdate, 0.2 ppb
KOH to stabilize solution.

When I opened my jar of cupric nitrate that had sat on a shelf for nine years, I found this accidental sculpture ... cn
Attachment 1838553

<edit> The logo on the bottles is something from my lab days ... the Cheshire Bat.