Drooping, doubt its overwatering

Hi

This is my first time growing and I’ve never had a problem up until now... I started growing it in November. Using three CFL’s on a timer, the day/night schedule consists of 16 hours of straight light, then 3 hours of night, 1 hour of light, and 4 hours of night. I’ve been feeding her with filtered water up until last week, when I started introducing a 25-10-10 formula (1/2 teaspoon to a gallon of water). The first time I used it, the plant didn’t react negatively. A week later, I decided to change the soil for the first time. Once it was all changed, I fed her for the second time using the same formula and concentration (it was from the same bucket of water).
Since then, the leaves have been drooping a lot, starting from the bottom leaves. Also, I’ve noticed that a few leaves are either turning yellow, having brown tips and curling up oddly.
So now I’m wondering what could be the cause..?
Bad drainage? I doubt it as the water is flowing through the bottom hole when I feed it
Overwatered? Maybee, but I haven’t watered it since Saturday and I see no improvement
Underwaterd? Defenatley not
Nitrogen burn? According to pics I’ve seen online, it doesn’t seem to be the problem... Defiency maybee?
Weak plant? Doubt it, before re-soiling, it was strong and never droopy.
Root bound? No, not when I resoiled it...
Root damage? Maybee?

Any suggestions as to what might be the problem and solutions that I could try?

Thanks!

I can have higher quality and detailed pictures later on tonight..

stress from the transplant? maybe?

i could simply b in shock from the transplant,new soil,nutes all at once ya know. did you pack the soil down when u transplanted? if there inst oxygen in the soil the plant will react almost like its over/underwatered. or maybe a deff, i kno if the plant gets alot of one kind of nute it will use up all the other nutes and casue nute lockout.. like adding MG can cause P deff i think. im not a pro, and not real good with nutes.. but im betting its just shock from all that happening so close together ya kno. and whats up with ur light cycle?? i think that may stress ur plant and make her turn hermi... iv never of any body with a light cyle like that.. whats the point of it??

jumboSWISHER said:

i could simply b in shock from the transplant,new soil,nutes all at once ya know. did you pack the soil down when u transplanted? if there inst oxygen in the soil the plant will react almost like its over/underwatered. or maybe a deff, i kno if the plant gets alot of one kind of nute it will use up all the other nutes and casue nute lockout.. like adding MG can cause P deff i think. im not a pro, and not real good with nutes.. but im betting its just shock from all that happening so close together ya kno. and whats up with ur light cycle?? i think that may stress ur plant and make her turn hermi... iv never of any body with a light cyle like that.. whats the point of it??

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The soil was from the same batch as when i planted the seedling; and I didnt pack it, i just dropped the soil around the roots without compacting it whatsoever.

Nute-wise, I'd be surprised by a lockout considering the amount I put, but I'm no epxert so that could be it.

Concerning my light cycle, I read on many different sites that its a good idea to interrupt the night with an hour of light.
(ex: http://howtogrowmarijuana.com/)
(excerpt : At least eight hours of light a day must be provided. As you increase the light, the plants grow faster and show more females/less males. Sixteen hours of light per day seems to be the best combination, beyond this makes little or no appreciable difference in the plant quality. Another idea is to interrupt the night cycle with about one hour of light. This gives you more females.)



Thanks for the quick replies

im not totally sure bout the lockout thing, iv just read it a few times. and damn iight ill check out the link lol

When you say that you changed the soil, you are talking about a transplant, I hope? Just checking, because I've seen some pretty strange habits before.LOL Well, my first question is...did you PH the fert before you used it? I doubt that your problem is just one specific thing, it's probably a combo. Most likely, it's a combo of root stress/damage and being fed at the same time. Is that fert mixture full strength, mixed at 1/2 tsp per gallon? Is it a fert like MG, where you are supposed to use every week or two? If so, that stuff is about 4X stronger that 'weed specific ferts', and would be rough on those stressed roots. And, if the PH was low, that would only add to the problem.

Sounds like a classic overfert problem, with those 'tell-tale' burnt tips. You could either just start feeding it straight water, then wait for it to come around, or flush it, then do the same. Flushing it would stop the damage from getting any worse, and get your problem under control faster, so that's the best option. It wouldn't have to be a full flush. Just water the hell out of it until you get like a gallon of runoff, and that should be plenty. Then wait for it to dry up, and continue to water as usual. It might take a week for it to perk back up, so be patient. The flushing might even make it droop more at first, so don't panic if it does. Then, next time you feed it(7-10 days) go with a lighter mixture, at least half strength.

The reason why your plant handled the last feeding okay, was because it was able to absorb most of what was added. But, it also left the plant 'fed to the max' and was probably borderline overfert. Then when you fed it the second time, there was still fert left in the soil from last time, add in the root damage, and you get fert burn. I hope that helps.

jawbrodt said:

When you say that you changed the soil, you are talking about a transplant, I hope? Just checking, because I've seen some pretty strange habits before.LOL Well, my first question is...did you PH the fert before you used it? I doubt that your problem is just one specific thing, it's probably a combo. Most likely, it's a combo of root stress/damage and being fed at the same time. Is that fert mixture full strength, mixed at 1/2 tsp per gallon? Is it a fert like MG, where you are supposed to use every week or two? If so, that stuff is about 4X stronger that 'weed specific ferts', and would be rough on those stressed roots. And, if the PH was low, that would only add to the problem.

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Well, yes I think it was a transplant, I simply dug out the plant, removed the old soil, replaced it with new soil, halfway through I held the plant and filled the pot.

The fert is a 25-10-10 orchid fert that I got from Canadian Tire (http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/2/OutdoorLiving/FertilizersGrassSeed/SpecialtyFertilizer/PRD~0592261P/Plant+Prod%3F+Orchid+Fertilizer.jsp). It’s the only thing I could find locally that had a high nitrogen concentration...

PH wise... I don’t have anything to test the PH of either my water or my soil.

jawbrodt said:

Sounds like a classic overfert problem, with those 'tell-tale' burnt tips. You could either just start feeding it straight water, then wait for it to come around, or flush it, then do the same. Flushing it would stop the damage from getting any worse, and get your problem under control faster, so that's the best option. It wouldn't have to be a full flush. Just water the hell out of it until you get like a gallon of runoff, and that should be plenty. Then wait for it to dry up, and continue to water as usual. It might take a week for it to perk back up, so be patient. The flushing might even make it droop more at first, so don't panic if it does. Then, next time you feed it(7-10 days) go with a lighter mixture, at least half strength.

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Thanks for the GREAT explanation... I’ll try that later on tonight!

jawbrodt said:

The reason why your plant handled the last feeding okay, was because it was able to absorb most of what was added. But, it also left the plant 'fed to the max' and was probably borderline overfert. Then when you fed it the second time, there was still fert left in the soil from last time, add in the root damage, and you get fert burn. I hope that helps.

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Helps a ton, think I should post more pictures before or just head on with the flushing?

Cool, I'm glad that helped. Um....can I ask whay you decided to 'change' the soil? It sounds like you tried to remove some of the 'old' soil, add some new stuff, then put the plant back into it's original pot? That's a no-no.LOL You should never take a plant out of it's pot, unless you are going to put it into a bigger pot, and even then, you should take care to not disturb the root mass(don't try to knock the old dirt out of it).

I hope it recovers nicely for ya.

Oh yeah...why do you have the lights coming on for that one hour, during the dark period? That's more likely to stress them, than do any good. I could be wrong about that, but I've never heard of anybody ever doing anything like that. Also, I know it'll wreak havoc if you try that during bloom, so i imagine it's not the best thing to do during veg, either. Unless you got that idea from a pro, I'd switch to 18/6.

jawbrodt said:

Cool, I'm glad that helped. Um....can I ask whay you decided to 'change' the soil? It sounds like you tried to remove some of the 'old' soil, add some new stuff, then put the plant back into it's original pot? That's a no-no.LOL You should never take a plant out of it's pot, unless you are going to put it into a bigger pot, and even then, you should take care to not disturb the root mass(don't try to knock the old dirt out of it).

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The plant has been in the same pot since i first planted the seed. I read somewhere that the soil neds to be changed from on e pot to another a few times to avoid rootbound and having new soil so it doesn’t end up compacted. So thats what I did, completely removing it from the dirt (happily i didn’t shake it off lol).

jawbrodt said:

I hope it recovers nicely for ya.

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Thanks, me too lol...

jawbrodt said:

Oh yeah...why do you have the lights coming on for that one hour, during the dark period? That's more likely to stress them, than do any good. I could be wrong about that, but I've never heard of anybody ever doing anything like that. Also, I know it'll wreak havoc if you try that during bloom, so i imagine it's not the best thing to do during veg, either. Unless you got that idea from a pro, I'd switch to 18/6.

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I’m only following what I read from... And I’ve seen it on many different web sites. I don’t have any reliable sources except google search engine haha. I guess ill fix that.

Thanks again

And I did a 4 L flush... lets hope for the best

JohnD said:

And I did a 4 L flush... lets hope for the best

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Wow... not even an hour later and its MUCH better

Looks underwatered. Make sure you totally drench the pot when you water it. Then let the pot dry out. Repeat.

I don't know what good repotting does (if any?).... but when you transplant to a larger pot you pretty much can not overwater the plant, so just go ahead and totally flush it with water. Just allow the excess to run off.

Sounds like you were another victim of the "don't water them til they're freakin dry" warnings that i see quite often.LOL That get's overstressed here, mainly because alot of new guys tend to drown their plants when first starting out. If that was your problem, the flush was still a good idea because you were showing the first signs of overfert, with those burnt leaf tips. Glad to hear that it perked right up. Awesome.