3rd Time Grower Seedling Problem! Plese help!

Hi everyone!
Been a while since I last visited, but this site taught me a lot. So i'm back with a bit of a problem...
I'm at my 3rd grow and don't know what the problem is. Basically I started 10 Sensi Black Dominas 2 weeks ago and 3 Sensi Afghani #1. These are supposed to be killer quality, (the black dom at least). I'm having severe problems with these and I've never had these problems with seedlings before. Please take a look at the pics. These are 2 weeks old, they're pitiful for that age. Only one showed a 2nd 1 inch real leaves. Others just have the beginnings.
So to give a little background as to what I've been using and still using for this grow.
I grow in rockwool only, had great success all last 2 grows. I use a single 600W electro ballast conversion MH and regular HPS (i use MH for veg and HPS for flowering).
I pre-soaked the starter cubes in 5.5 Ph water as always. I'm using an RO system and I'm suspecting this might be causing this problem, b/c the water is too clean and lacks certain minerals found in tap water.
I'm using Superthrive vitamin, I added just a bit to a bucket of 5.8 pH water. The EC is at 0.03 (that's about 20PPM). That's all. After that I mixed a bit of tap with the RO water to get a ppm of 150-170 which is normal for seedlings.
The temps are constant. 70-80F. Humidity at 40-55%.

The seedlings started fine and slowly started to yellow and the growth totally stopped. There was a good root formation when I transplanted the 1" starter cubes.
I'm not a noob, i used this before. I'm trying to figure out what the heck happened to the leaves, looks like a PH imbalance. What do you guys think? My MH conversion lamp is about 2 feet away (i had it at 1.5). Anyone seen anything like this? What should I do? Please help, hate to see $120 seeds go to waste. (btw my last 2 grows were Nirvana seeds, first time I bought expensive ones and I get this

PS
The two green ones are the newer ones I hatched. They look fine. Compare them to all the rest.

I think your light is way too strong for your seedlings at this stage.
If you have a shop light, this should be sufficient until they get their 2nd set of true leaves.
Try flushing your cubes with nothing but RO water, and squeeze out excess water. Then mix up a new batch of RO water with 4 DROPS/gallon of Superthrive (Your TDS should be 60). Then water the cubes lightly. Next put the cubes in a Humidome. Then keep your plants on 12 hour light cycle for about 2-3 days or until you see improvement.

BongJuice said:

I think your light is way too strong for your seedlings at this stage.
If you have a shop light, this should be sufficient until they get their 2nd set of true leaves.
Try flushing your cubes with nothing but RO water, and squeeze out excess water. Then mix up a new batch of RO water with 4 DROPS/gallon of Superthrive (Your TDS should be 60). Then water the cubes lightly. Next put the cubes in a Humidome. Then keep your plants on 12 hour light cycle for about 2-3 days or until you see improvement.

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Regarding the lights. This is what everyone recommends and I've used this my last grow (Nirvana WW, ak4. I have them 2 feet away from the seedlings. The air temp is 74F. I had the light at 4 feet away before, but they stretched, that's why I moved it closer. I can try moving the light to 3 feet away I supposed. The MH is a conversion 600W, so it's not at full blast. It's about 50,000 lumens new, I used it for about a year, so take away about 20%.

The humidity dome will stretch them bad at this point. I never used one and they grew strong and short.

I will definitely mix up a new batch of water and flush them. I dipped the cubes 2 days ago, so they're still pretty full of moisture.

The 12 hour cycle....hmm could that possibly send the wrong signal to the seedlings this early in their life? I use 24/0, I'll switch to 18/6.

Thanks.

Well, I had the same thing a little while ago. I bought some nicer seeds, (Sensi WW) only used a bit of superthrive, and I got yellowing ugly seedlings. I didn't use RW, but I used those biorootersand I have a 600W HPS with a digital ballast. After messing around with it, I found that my pH was off, and for a little bit I was adjusting it daily. I think that when the plants use nutes, the pH swings a bit. Once I had the pH set at 5.8 constant, I started seeing beautiful lush green growth. Maybe it's your pH, but that was just me. Have you checked it recently?

Oh, and I was using a 24/0 light cycle just fine too.

gigabyte I think you nailed it my friend! Turns out, I have a Milwaukee Instruments 802 Ph/TDS/EC meter combo. It's a great meter and all but I made the mistake of plunging the probe completely inside the nutrient solution during previous grows and this one, too. I checked the top of the cap and there was some water that seeped inside. So needless to say the meter still tested fine with the 4 & 7 Ph test solutions but it was 2 points off on the water.

Thankfully I bought a Hanna ph meter a while ago as a backup, and I kept it calibrated and all. Tested, calibrated....couldnt believe my eyes, Milwaukee read 5.5 from my RO water, while Hanna read 7.4. Well ordered a new probe, mixed a fresh batch of clean RO water with 4 drops of superthrive per gallon and redunked all my cubes several times to leach the high Ph water. There was a good 2 point difference!

I'm worried that because of this, I never gave the cubes their proper 5.5 flushes....hopefully they'll start recovering now. I don't know how bad an effect this will have on their development. Wish I could see this before. Ph is hard to spot especially in seedlings....took a while to show up.

Hey Man, howz it? Try these guys up in Toronto CAN, I only run with Feminized seeds which I have for years and have had one male in hundreds. Bottom line is START WITH A TOP QUALITY SEED!
Soak the seeds in warm water for an hour, then slide them between two soaked folded over THICK GOOD QUALITY PAPER TOWELS. In the water you soak the paper towel in add a little Rhizotonic and a touch of vitamin B solution, be sure your water is PH balanced between 5.5 and 6.2. Place them under florescent lamps in a tray with dome plastic start set up and be sure to spray them daily to keep the moisture and humidity level up.... A lot of folks do it in the dark , this works well for me you should have some nice starters in a few days max. I always use Rockwool ( BE SURE YOU CURE IT WITH THE SAME SOAK SOLUTION I RECOMMENDED ABOVE PH IS CRUCIAL with the RHIZOTONIC and Vit B SOLUTION) once the seedlings have sprouted be sure you drop them in the hole with that root sprout facing down. Keep them domed and use the same process when they reach about three inches high I drop them into my room and roll....

LivinInBatCountry

livininbatcountry said:

Hey Man, howz it? Try these guys up in Toronto CAN, I only run with Feminized seeds which I have for years and have had one male in hundreds. Bottom line is START WITH A TOP QUALITY SEED!
Soak the seeds in warm water for an hour, then slide them between two soaked folded over THICK GOOD QUALITY PAPER TOWELS. In the water you soak the paper towel in add a little Rhizotonic and a touch of vitamin B solution, be sure your water is PH balanced between 5.5 and 6.2. Place them under florescent lamps in a tray with dome plastic start set up and be sure to spray them daily to keep the moisture and humidity level up.... A lot of folks do it in the dark , this works well for me you should have some nice starters in a few days max. I always use Rockwool ( BE SURE YOU CURE IT WITH THE SAME SOAK SOLUTION I RECOMMENDED ABOVE PH IS CRUCIAL with the RHIZOTONIC and Vit B SOLUTION) once the seedlings have sprouted be sure you drop them in the hole with that root sprout facing down. Keep them domed and use the same process when they reach about three inches high I drop them into my room and roll....

LivinInBatCountry

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Hmm thanks for the info but I don't really think it applies to me. It's my 3rd grow, I know how to germinate, I have Jorge Cervantes's bible for ref and I was tutored by an experienced grower from RIU. I never had to keep them under a humidity dome, that's babying them, they tend to fall over and develop a weak stem b/c of low light and humidity dome kept on them. This was a purely Ph issue.



The Sensi seeds are great, the problem was with a faulty Ph tester probe which I drowned. That's why I got an 80% sprout rate and they aren't growing. I get them from Gypsy Nirvana, never had a problem.



They're already looking better today. I see the 2nd pair of leaves starting to appear. This wasn't like this just yesterday. I took a 5 gal bucket of RO water (0.03EC (30ppm) and added some Superthrive [Vitamin B]. The runoff i measured was 7 which is still a bit high, but that's because I never managed to properly soak the big cubes...


Oh well, I'll be leaching that ph slowly in the coming days with 5.8 water.

That's great RedFox! It's good you caught it early, at least early enough. I must have, since I didn't flush or anything, though they came back and since my last post are growing like mad. Cheers.

gigabyteC2D said:

That's great RedFox! It's good you caught it early, at least early enough. I must have, since I didn't flush or anything, though they came back and since my last post are growing like mad. Cheers.

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Same here. It definitely retarded their growth for 2 weeks, but they're doing great now. I'll post some pics.

I added 1/4 strength Ionic Grow nutes last night and they seemed to have appreciated that a lot this morning.

I just might start a new journal...help newbies with rockwool.

Well here's an update. They all got back to normal. Just shows how truly resilient good seeds are:

Also shows what a lot of Stealth Hydro noobs are missing out on if only they wouldn't rush and spend 300$ on garbage.

Are you planning on training those at all? Topping, LST? I have my plants about 6-7 in high, though they have about 10 growth tips each and are about 14 inches in diameter lol.