Blackbird is the word...

Your issues has nothing to do with it being an auto. My tap water ( well + spring ) kills cannabis plants! Autos or photos. I have to use RO water. Makes a big difference. I add 40-60 ppms of cal mag to it, and adjust the PH to 6.4 for soil. give it a try.

Frank Nitty said:

What I said was going to happen happened... Hard water has destroyed my plant... Nothing solid about the buds at all, just a bunch of sponge types... I might never grow another auto after this, I'm wasting too much time trying to fix something that's out of my control, because this never happens when I grow photos...

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I think the biggest culprit is Iron. Levels don't need to be terribly high to cause severe issues.

hillbill said:

I use rainwater when I can, but use tap if in a drought. My hard hard water is fine for a few days, but then it’s one deficiency after another.

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pop22 said:

Your issues has nothing to do with it being an auto. My tap water ( well + spring ) kills cannabis plants! Autos or photos. I have to use RO water. Makes a big difference. I add 40-60 ppms of cal mag to it, and adjust the PH to 6.4 for soil. give it a try.

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I'm really curious about this, I had similar problems to Frank's moving from photos to autos. This grow I've backed the light way off, I grew photos with my COBs at 50w/sf, and started autos the same way. It's way too much for 19 hours of light during flower. I moved down to 40 last grow, this grow I'm trying around 32w/sf and the plants seem much happier. I'm also trying to be more disciplined about my feeding. Photos seemed much more resilient to moderate overfeeding, autos don't seem to tolerate or bounce back from it was well, so finding the sweet spot takes some patience.

pop22 said:

I think the biggest culprit is Iron. Levels don't need to be terribly high to cause severe issues.

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Definitely the water, I agree, but only my autos have been affected the worse... I'm definitely not saying anything bad about autos, I'm saying that the water is not good for them is all...

Frank Nitty said:

Definitely the water, I agree, but only my autos have been affected the worse... I'm definitely not saying anything bad about autos, I'm saying that the water is not good for them is all...

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I've had much much more success since moving to filtering water.

But yes, the issue isn't intrinsic to autos...but autos DGAF about timeline...they'll start flowering on their schedule and quickly so you don't have as much leeway to use the veg stage to make sure your plants are at their healthiest before moving to flower. I do my best to make sure a plant is in really good shape and has lots of stored nutrition, etc. before going to flower...because about 3 weeks into flower is when they REALLY get picky and the bigger problems want to start.

I probably do rainwater and lake water 11 out of 12 months most of the time. Livewell water with blood and fish slime is like a magic tonic for my girls.
A week of tap and everything turns to shit.

Hey there, any updates??