Droopy Plants Hours Before Lights Out

This is my first post on this forum so I'm assuming this goes in this section, but sorry if it belongs somewhere else.

I'll try to give as many helpful details as I can while leaving out the unnecessary stuff. This is the first time I've grown in 15 years and the first time I grew it was super basic and nothing like a "real setup."

I've got 4 White Widow Autos going in a 4x4 tent with an HLG 550 v2, 6-inch exhaust fan with a carbon filter, and fans galore all set to low settings. The light is hung about 30 inches above the plants and it started turned down to minimum power and over the last month I've been turning it up a little bit each day and just a couple days ago it made it to max power. 18/6 cycle.

Temp on the low end is 70 and 81 on the high end. RH stays between 45% and 55%.

Seeds were planted in 5-gallon fabric pots after germinating about a month ago. I started out by over watering because I didn't realize the pots weren't drying out. I've also found a total of 8 fungus gnats so while a nuisance, I don't think they're the source of the problem.

I wait for the plants to start drooping to indicate that they're thirsty, usually about 3 days after the last time I watered. I feel the soil and water only when the top couple of inches are completely dry, usually about 4 days since the last time I watered. Right now, each plant is getting a half gallon every 4ish days. I use an expensive pH meter and water is usually at 6.4 to 6.6. First nute feeding of the grow was done last watering with veg nutes at about 775 ppm. I water with carbon filtered tap water that starts at 150ppm.

In the image I've attached, the plants on the right were watered last night and were happy and perky until about 4 hours before it was time for the light to turn off, and now they're all droopy and sad, but that happens every single day, no matter whether I watered last night or not. The plants on the left side of the picture were watered on the night of 9/18 and it's now 9/22. They weren't as perky looking as the plants on the right this morning before the picture was taken, but they're drooping a lot more now than they were then. Plants on the right are trained, plants on the left aren't.

Is this just classic over watering, fungus gnats, or something else? The plant on the bottom right of the image is noticeably far more yellow and taller than any other plant but it hasn't been receiving any different treatment, if that matters. Thanks in advance for any advice.

i suspect that fan on the floor is drying those fabric pots out too much. try putting it up on a milk crate, topping those off with a little more soil and giving them a little more water ( maybe not more water if they seem waterlogged)

I haven't work with Auto strains, so I'm interested in your post. I've seen plants "droop", when they "sleep" in the evenings. Good luck with your grow, and Welcome.

Another possibility I've noticed on my outdoor girls is to much light. On extremely bright days, they will all droop in the afternoon but perk back up as the sunsets. Perhaps they are cringing at the number of photons of light your fixture generates.

Nizza said:

i suspect that fan on the floor is drying those fabric pots out too much. try putting it up on a milk crate, topping those off with a little more soil and giving them a little more water ( maybe not more water if they seem waterlogged)

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Thanks I'll give that a try and see what happens.

GBAUTO said:

Another possibility I've noticed on my outdoor girls is to much light. On extremely bright days, they will all droop in the afternoon but perk back up as the sunsets. Perhaps they are cringing at the number of photons of light your fixture generates.

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I've actually noticed that the problem has been getting worse as the light has been getting brighter. Before it was at max power it was more like an hour or two before the light went off that they would start to droop. At full power at 24 inches it puts out about 975 PAR in the center, but since flowering started I keep it at 30 inches to spread it out. I thought it might be heat stress but the temp has never gotten over 81 and everything I've read says as long as the humidity is high enough, 81 shouldn't cause heat stress. If raising the fan off the floor doesn't stop the droops, I'm going to play around with lowering the light about 6 inches and turning it down around 30-40%.

Most plants learn when lights are going out, they will droop.

WinterSoldier89 said:

Most plants learn when lights are going out, they will droop.

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But I wanna party!

It is not a problem, as a lot of strains droop a couple of hours before lights go out then perk back up again when lights come back on. Don't think that it is an overwatering/underwatering problem because it is not.

- humidity is a touch low for veg, if you are pumping out too much light this could be the issue (as they heat and can't pump enough water into the leaves they start to sag)
- those 2 bottom ones don't look healthy. Chlorosis in the leaves...
- if you see 1 gnat, I'd get on the preventative maintenance, full blown infestations don't show themselves until they are beyond full blown.
- just make sure you aren't overwatering, wait till the pot is light, keep your fingers out of the soil that doesn't work, especially when you have fans blowing across the soil bed.
- overwatering causes droop that is very similar to overall stress, and overwatering can lock nutes out, which would explain the chlorosis(other things could as well)
- my 180PPM tap water required CalMag supplement, maybe this?


Don't change too many things at once, usually that turns into killing the girls.

Lastly, I'd suggest not using autos for your next run, photos will allow you to fuck up 100x over and you don't have to put them into flower until they recover.

Good luck!

@Therrion called it circadian rhythm. Check out this thread I just read the other day. I'm also running HLG lights now and they're powerful. Mine are maxed, but around 20-24". I had them too close when I brought them in from the t5 tent, but they are fine now. I'm beginning to figure these lights out.

https://www.rollitup.org/t/light-intensity-stress-drop-some-knowledge-on-me.996799/

PadawanWarrior said:

@Therrion called it circadian rhythm. Check out this thread I just read the other day. I'm also running HLG lights now and they're powerful. Mine are maxed, but around 20-24". I had them too close when I brought them in from the t5 tent, but they are fine now. I'm beginning to figure these lights out.

https://www.rollitup.org/t/light-intensity-stress-drop-some-knowledge-on-me.996799/

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I checked out that thread and one problem I'm seeing is that my plants never "pray" anymore.

I just took this picture. The light has been on for about 12 hours. The plants on the left were watered about 12 hours ago. They'll continue to droop like this for the next 48ish hours then the happiest they'll get is like the plant on the back right for about a day then they go back to drooping and their soil feels dry.

MJCanada said:

- humidity is a touch low for veg, if you are pumping out too much light this could be the issue (as they heat and can't pump enough water into the leaves they start to sag)
- those 2 bottom ones don't look healthy. Chlorosis in the leaves...
- if you see 1 gnat, I'd get on the preventative maintenance, full blown infestations don't show themselves until they are beyond full blown.
- just make sure you aren't overwatering, wait till the pot is light, keep your fingers out of the soil that doesn't work, especially when you have fans blowing across the soil bed.
- overwatering causes droop that is very similar to overall stress, and overwatering can lock nutes out, which would explain the chlorosis(other things could as well)
- my 180PPM tap water required CalMag supplement, maybe this?


Don't change too many things at once, usually that turns into killing the girls.

Lastly, I'd suggest not using autos for your next run, photos will allow you to fuck up 100x over and you don't have to put them into flower until they recover.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

I figured this is over watering. I've never started plants in a 5-gallon pot before and I don't think I'll do it ever again.

My problem with lifting the pots is I can't remember how heavy they were the last time I lifted them. I can tell when one pot has less water, but that's about it. They always feel close enough in weight that I feel like I'd have to get a scale to know if they changed at all.

I've already ordered some regular seeds and I'm never going to touch autos again as far as I care at this point. When I grew bag seed I grew 3 random strains that all were more robust than these expensive seeds. If I grow autos again, I'll get seeds from a reputable breeder like Mephisto, but these seeds came from Crop King. Yep, the noob wants to blame the genetics, couldn't be the mistakes he's making... Seriously though, these plants have all gotten the same treatment and they look anything but uniform. I'm 99.99% positive that the plant in the bottom right isn't flowering yet and today is day 34 since it broke the surface. If I had unlimited tents and space to work with it would be fun to just let it grow and see if it ever flowers without changing the light cycle, but I'm afraid it's not going to flower at all and I'm not going to have a place to flower a White Widow that's been vegging for 90ish days. I'm frustrated and I want to blame the seeds because it feels like I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to do, so I will for now

Seriously though, next time I think it's time to water the plants on the left, I'm going to wait at least an entire extra day. They seem to have a harder time of bouncing back and they don't really have the biomass to soak up the water.

Also with the fungus gnats, I'm just going to see what happens with them this grow. They were in the soil when I bought it and there aren't many at all. I've had sticky traps up for 3 weeks and in that time I've caught a total of 8 fungus gnats. When I water all 4 pots, I find a single new gnat on the sticky trap within a couple of days. From what I've seen, they've got to be a lot worse before they can start to compromise root health on a level that really matters. Next grow though, if I even think I see one, I'm getting that neem oil out as fast as I can.

Thanks for the advice

I see at least 3 large fans in that one photo. Are they all running all the time?

Skunk Baxter said:

I see at least 3 large fans in that one photo. Are they all running all the time?

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Yep. All set to the lowest setting. On the lowest setting the small fans move about a quarter as much air as a hurricane clip-on fan on the low setting. The tower fan in the corner moves air about half as fast as a clip-on fan on the low setting.

OK. That helps. Thanks.

Well, in most basic terms, what's happening is that the leaves are transpiring water faster than the roots are able to take it in. There are probably several reasons for this.

First of all, the root systems never had a chance to develop. You went straight to 5-gallon pots right from Day One. That's a lot of soil, and once you get that much soil wet, it takes a long time to dry out on its own - which is what it has to do, because the plants aren't big enough to draw much moisture out of the soil. So, you have small plants sitting in wet soil, surrounded by all kinds of moisture, and the roots never have to develop because they've got all the water they need. So you don't have a very robust root system.

Your temperatures aren't exactly hot, under normal conditions, but they're hot enough that the plant transpires a fair amount of water - especially with a lot of constant air movement. The root system just can't handle the demand that the leaves are placing on them. By the latter part of the day, they just can't keep up up with it anymore, and start to wilt.

I'd be surprised if you don't have root rot by now, on at least some scale. You could also have a fungal infection of the root zone. I suspect the fungus gnats are worse than you realize, but they're not your problem - not yet, anyway. They probably will get worse any time now, so you'll need to keep that in mind. At the very least, they're certainly not helping matters.

You'll want to get at them sooner than later, but they're not your first priority. Do keep in mind, though, that you could have a ton of the larvae munching away under the surface for a couple of weeks before they emerge as adults - so there may be a whole new generation of them down there now that you haven't met yet.

I think the first thing you should do is determine the status of your roots. When you get down at ground level, can you smell any kind of foul odor from the soil? Have you dug away any of the soil to see how the roots look? They should be white or cream-colored, and healthy-looking; if they're all brownish and limp, it's root rot.

Why don't you do those checks and see what you find. Also, do you use any enzyme products? Beneficial micro organisms? Do you have peroxide? Do you oxygenate your water? How warm is the water you use?

Skunk Baxter said:

OK. That helps. Thanks.

Well, in most basic terms, what's happening is that the leaves are transpiring water faster than the roots are able to take it in. There are probably several reasons for this.

First of all, the root systems never had a chance to develop. You went straight to 5-gallon pots right from Day One. That's a lot of soil, and once you get that much soil wet, it takes a long time to dry out on its own - which is what it has to do, because the plants aren't big enough to draw much moisture out of the soil. So, you have small plants sitting in wet soil, surrounded by all kinds of moisture, and the roots never have to develop because they've got all the water they need. So you don't have a very robust root system.

Your temperatures aren't exactly hot, under normal conditions, but they're hot enough that the plant transpires a fair amount of water - especially with a lot of constant air movement. The root system just can't handle the demand that the leaves are placing on them. By the latter part of the day, they just can't keep up up with it anymore, and start to wilt.

I'd be surprised if you don't have root rot by now, on at least some scale. You could also have a fungal infection of the root zone. I suspect the fungus gnats are worse than you realize, but they're not your problem - not yet, anyway. They probably will get worse any time now, so you'll need to keep that in mind. At the very least, they're certainly not helping matters.

You'll want to get at them sooner than later, but they're not your first priority. Do keep in mind, though, that you could have a ton of the larvae munching away under the surface for a couple of weeks before they emerge as adults - so there may be a whole new generation of them down there now that you haven't met yet.

I think the first thing you should do is determine the status of your roots. When you get down at ground level, can you smell any kind of foul odor from the soil? Have you dug away any of the soil to see how the roots look? They should be white or cream-colored, and healthy-looking; if they're all brownish and limp, it's root rot.

Why don't you do those checks and see what you find. Also, do you use any enzyme products? Beneficial micro organisms? Do you have peroxide? Do you oxygenate your water? How warm is the water you use?

Click to expand...

Thanks I appreciate it. I moved the fans further away and took them off their crates so they're blowing more on the pots than the plants.

I have a really sensitive nose for any kind of rot/mold/stink and I get down to ground level with the plants every day and I haven't noticed any kind of foul smell. The only time there was a bad smell in the tent was when I had a humidifier in it that hadn't been cleaned in a month which I promptly removed.

I've tried to leave the soil and roots alone as much as I can because I thought it would add stress. I've noticed that when trying to feel for moisture, only one plant (back right) has roots near the surface that I could find with my fingers and they're strong but I didn't see what color they are. After the first time I gave them water I noticed the soil was still moist when I wanted to water them again so I waited. It ended up taking 9 days of no watering before the soil was dry enough that I thought they needed water again/they showed signs of thirst. Needless to say, if I ever grow autos again, I'm starting them in solo cups.

I don't use any enzyme products. I use Recharge for beneficial microbes. I have food-grade h2o2 but I haven't used it for growing. I don't oxygenate the water and it's usually around 65-70 degrees when I water according to my pH meter.