OK, so I have recently transplanted to my aero setup. It's in my bathroom and my girl's farts rival the cat's. Can this affect my plants?
(I'm kidding. seriously tho, please read on...)

It wasn't going too well initially, as I got some bad advice from our local hydro shop -- they told me to use Cocotek liners and fill them with Pearlite, and use that to suspend the plants in the aeroponic setup. 4 plants died in short order from what I can only guess was over nutes... the Mircle grow Pearlite had trace nutes in it. (0.04-0.01-0.06) they tried to hang on, but the pH of my well water was already at 6.2 and adding nutes brought the pH down to a level I couldn't even measure. Then my setup fucked up and my bathroom flooded. Fortunately I have my own place, but I had to fix that. I tried using pH up, but I couldn't seem to give it enough to make it ok (it seriously took more than 10 doses to get it even close.) Now I don't know what to do. It looks like some of my plants are starting to do better. I lost 4. I think the mixture was far too acidic and also that some of it splashed up on the leaves, and combined with the acidity of the water and the direct light it burnt the leaves. But I don't know, and I'd like the opinion of someone with more experience than me (that's practically everyone here.)

I took pics:





The first pic is of a leaf that was particularly damaged and I pinched it off, so that the plant wouldn't devote too much energy to regen.

I am currently flushing the system with purified tap water (it's well water so it doesn't have as much Cl to begin with, but that also means that water softening has taken place -- thus a pH of 6.2). I replaced the res. (it was probably too small, I have a 10 gal aquarium as a res now.)

The last pic is of my finger holding a curled and damaged leaf straight. I didn't pinch it off cause it was bigger and from the first sprout of leaves, so I didn't want to damage the plant too too much. Wouldnt' shock me to hear I should pinch it off tho.

My water temps are fine 64-68deg F. I had issues at first, but I built a cooling tube and that worked nicely. My air temps are right at 74deg F, though sometimes they rise up to 80, but then the fan kicks on and rights it.

Water sched had been 2mins on 1min off, as I was using a condensation pump that required siphoning from the res, and would only kick on when it sensed water in its res. I have added another siphon tube and it now stays on 24/7 due to increased water flow.

I'll be happy to tell you anything else you want to know to help with a diagnosis. Any help I can get would be super fucking awesome. THANKS IN ADVANCE!!!

So, the second hose caused me to loose water at an alarming rate. I thought the plants were just thirsty at first, but I then noticed that there are about 2 gals of water on my bathroom floor. WHO PUTS CARPET IN A FUCKING BATHROOM??!! THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW!!!

sorry.

ANYWAYS, the watering sched is going to have to sit at the cyclic rate of the condensation pump, which seems to be 21/22 secs ON, 8 secs OFF. So, it's on approx 2/3 of every 30 secs.

Once the water level stabilizes I'm going to start adding small amounts of nutes in hour long increments. I'd like to know about how much water the plants are drinking, so I might try to measure that.

I'm thinking it's time for nutes again. My poor babies are wilting even further now that I have been flushing them. The pH of the water I'm flushing with is between 6.2 and 6.8. I'd lower the pH, but I am afraid to do that cause I know the pH will drop dramatically once I start adding nutes.

Le sigh.

And it did! I added 1/4 nutes about an hour ago and now the pH is sitting around 6.2ish. The plants look like they are starting to look up, but I am not sure. I've been taking pics every hour or so to see if I can see a difference. It looks like there isn't as much yellowing now, which is good.

How long should I expect it to take to see a notable difference?

When should I decide I need to add more nutes?
How will I know? What signs will I see that there aren't enough nutes?
(I'm guessing I know the signs of too much... and that's real bad wrong. )

First of all for any hydro related medium the pH should be between 5.2-5.8. So there is your first problem. Get it in that range and the nutes should be absorbed properly.

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so were they actually suffering from lack of nutrients? Also, can lemon juice be used to lower pH?

This is my first grow, but I don't think I should be seeing any crystals forming on leaves quite yet; so I am starting to believe I have a salination problem, as well.

Thanks for responding. I was about to decide I just needed to leave it alone for awhile and let it just do its thing. But the pH hasn't changed since I added the nutes. Should I just add more nutes to bring the pH down, this time. I'm only at 1/4 solution right now, I figure I could probably go to half since they are in week 3-4.

Am I on the right track here?

and thanks again.

answered my own question:
Lemon juice to lower PH??????

do you know how the water is softened? if it is with salt, that will cause so many problems. better to go to a local grocery store and buy purified water or install a reverse osmosis filter before your softener.

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Motivation: Its not that I'm lazy, its that I just dont care.

I am not sure, but I will look into it. I remember seeing a bag of water softener (basically salt I'd guess) over at her parents' house... Since they own the land, I'd bet it's the same over here. Le sigh.

Some of my plants got wet in a few flooding disasters I've had over the last few days. That would account for left behind salt and the fact that the plants never seem to recover in the places they got wet. It would also totally account for brown leaf tips.

Thanks, bro. You're awesome. I bet that's my other problem. ...makes perfect sense.

Having fixed pH, the plants are growing nicely. The plants are growing new leaves, and they appear fine...but the older wilted leaves are not recovering much at all. Once the new leaves grow a bit more I'm going to pinch off the older damaged leaves so that the plants don't devote energy to regen.

that first pic looks like the leafs that are dropping from my plants.

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