Is this a magnesium deficiency?

Hello..

Our girls are looking fairly happy, but there's something definitely wrong. James is away, and I really don't want his plants to die before he gets home!

*there are pictures attached
*we are growing indoors
*the watering schedule is as they dry, feed, feed, water, feed, water. We're feeding with Botanicare Pure Bend, soil formula Pure Bloom - it's 1-4-5
*the planting medium is some sort of indoor potting soil with vermiculite and sterilized mushroom manure mixed
*we're at day 31 of flowering
*Ph of food and water is always between 5.8 and 6.3
* temp is around 80F when the light is on (presumably lower when it's off)
*there is a possibility that we've not been letting them dry out enough between feeding/watering
*once we went over to flowering we did remove some of the lower leaves to improve light/air circulation

So, the problem: The leaves at the bottom of the plant are curling up a bit, and drying out and turning brown from the edges in. Where they're brown, they're quite crispy. There's also a bit of mottling. Where we removed the leaves, there's some new growth, and these leaves are a bit pale (one of them is actually white in the centre), and also curling up - they don't seem to go brown, although they do dry up. The leaves are not yellow.

I've been giving them epsom salts for a couple of days, but I'm torn between not watering too much and getting the treatment to them.

I wondered, too, about a zinc deficiency and I know that it affects new leavesas well as older ones, but the leaves at the top of the plants don't seem to be affected. If we hadn't removed some of the lower leaves we wouldn't have new growth at the bottom, and I'd be saying the new growth isn't affected at all.

Can someone help, please? I really want to save these ladies!

Thanks a bunch!

your 1st 2 pics are kind of dark, could you retake the pics using flash on this time, or put a soft light above them and retake the pic?

It looks a bit to me to be over nutes brown death with dried up crunchy is a good sighn of to many nutes. You water/feeding cycle should be more like feed ,water,water,feed.
make sure your pots are dry before watering. its ok to under water a little ,its bad to overwater.let them dry out till the bottom sets of leaves are wilting then pic up the pot and feel how heavy it is, remember this and youll know when to water again ithout over watering.Your pots will get that light even before wilting ,but good way to find out how heavy pot should be before watering...good luck.. nice grow by the way!

I had the same exact problem a while back with all my plants I posted pics on RIU in 2 different forums and no one knew what the problem was. A Lot of people were guessing (it was obvious), but there is a lot of people here that do know what they are talking about. Anyway no one couldn't give me a straight answer so I flushed them and I never had the problem again. So to make a long story short..............IMO....When in doubt with something like this always flush. But I'm sure someone will tell you I'm full of it. It worked for me so that's what I do.

Your plants do look awesome by the way.

Yeah I would flush and feed less and see of it helps. Good luck

Thanks for all the great suggestions - and, Old Leave, it's really helpful that you had the same problem. I'll try flushing and watering less. For how long should I flush, a week, maybe?

As for the first two pictures - I tried with a flash in darkness, both on the plant and on the counter , and with a flash with the overhead light on, both on the plant and on the counter, but they were so over-exposed you couldn't see anything. Finally I took these on the counter, overhead on, no flash, but I agree, it is kind of hard to see the damage. If the problem continues (fingers crossed it doesn't), I'll try again with a soft light - thanks for the suggestion.

Finally, thanks for the encouragement on how the grow looks. As I said, James had to go out of town, and I've never done this before, so it's good to know you think they look basically okay

Thanks again for all your replies.

Hi, again.

I flushed them until the water ran clear, and I've been really careful about not giving them too much feed or plain water, and I'm really careful about the Ph. I was away for 5 days, and a friend was taking care of them - this is what I came home to (these are all lower to lower-middle leaves)! I'm getting so confused - I can't tell if this is a nitrogen deficiency, an iron deficiency, a magnesium deficiency, some combination of those, or something else completely. Please help!

The other thing is, this is day 45 of flowering. They're still growing, and there are no real buds yet. Do I just need to be more patient?

Thanks for any help!

Elsie

If you are using a feeding schedule and are using 25%-50% of what it suggests every other watering with a flush every three-four weeks using 3 times the container size possibly w/ a flushing agent then OVER FEEDING ISNT THE DEAL. People are quick to blame that. You may in fact be getting a deficiency in mag. sul. etc. Very tricky and I learned that a good flush usually helps... kinda like starting over.

I had the exact same issue in my last grow, was real cautious with nutes and under fed, I just hit the girls hard with nutes(not too much n) and then flushed. Some responded well and a couple didnt. Plus you can never rule out light deficiency on the lower leaves. Back to trimming PEACE!

This is a pure long shot, but what is the pH of your runoff? Your initial symptoms did sound like overfert, but the new ones are suggestive of a pH imbalance If so, a lime drench (watering in about two tablespoons of powdered calcium carbonate "milked up" in water) would help. cn

Interesting thoughts - thanks. I don't think it's too much feed, because the bottle says to include it in every watering and we only do every other, and then not quite as much as it says. Plus, this recent damage showed up right after I flushed. I'm very careful about the Ph, and I didn't think to check the run-off, but I will next time (if they survive until next time!). I really like the suggestion that maybe it's light deficiency at the bottom (it's pretty thick growth above), and I'd like to believe that's all it is, but I'm worried.

Thanks for your posts.

Elsie