Aeroponic vert mini-sog

It dawned on me that you may are probably bleeding light through the white pvc. That is a huge problem and can be solved with some mylar or tinfoil Christmas wrapping. Take a piece outside and hold it up to the sun, do you see any light through the wall?

rryyddeerr said:

No misunderstanding. Use of h2o2 to clear out a res in between solution changes keeps things in check. I have no intention of running them at the same time.

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Sorry about the misunderstanding on my part grow on brother!!

My guess is that there are not any leaks through the PVC. I will take a scrap piece and try to see if I can get any light through it. But as you see in this pic, very little direct light reaches the tower.

forcedaspiration said:

It dawned on me that you may are probably bleeding light through the white pvc. That is a huge problem and can be solved with some mylar or tinfoil Christmas wrapping. Take a piece outside and hold it up to the sun, do you see any light through the wall?

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Foil backed duct insulation would be great too and serve to prevent root zone temp swings.

Growth has steadily increased. They are much larger than I thought they would get. Also, I had a light leak about two weeks ago that was never a problem till I needed to be in the same room for several hours during while the plants had night. They began throwing out spiral leaves and single finger leaves soon after. I figured out what happened, fixed the leaks and they are still doing it. It's been about a week. How long does it take for a plant to get back to normal leaves?

curling single leaves...... sounds to me like they have revegged

^ What he said. Could take a couple of weeks to start blooming again. Heat stress can also cause plants to reveg. Did you get your root temps under control?

Spotted leaf pics on the other page look like potassium and phosphorous deficiency. pH fluctuation can cause it, as can root rot: anaerobic bacteria (pythium, which causes root rot) will cause your pH to fall instead of slowly rise and also interfere with nutrient uptake through the roots.

Excess calcium and magnesium will both lock out potassium, so if you are overdoing it with the cal-mag - or have misdiagnosed your problem - you may be doing more harm than good. Could be exacerbated by slight phosphorus deficiency.

It looks like you're not using a dedicated hydro nutrient. Hydro has no buffer - unlike soil and coco - so it is very easy to get your nutrients and pH out of wack if you don't know exactly what you are feeding your plants. I wouldn't second-guess things by adding "a little bit of this a little bit of that" - get yourself a reliable hydro nutrient, stick to what it says on the bottle, and set you pH to about 5.3 and let it slowly drift upwards. Allowing your pH to drift will make different nutrients more or less available at different pH levels. Your plant will uptake and store what it needs, so you don't need to keep your pH dead on whatever it is.

rryyddeerr said:

Started from toward the tips. Ph 5.8-6.2 been running a really weak nute solution for 3 days & they still look pissed. Water is probably 75-80.
Spots are hitting lower fan leaves first.
Im thinking Mg def.
ill shoot more pics tonight

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^ PK. That pH is too high for hydro. I note you later adjusted it to 5.5 - make sure it doesn't creep up much over 6 or fall below 5.

In a healthy system, pH will always slowly rise. If your pH starts to fall, you have problems (root rot etc).

wow. thanks so much for the advice and careful consideration of my grow. obviously, I'm still learning. my first grow is just about ready to harvest, so I'm relatively familiar with soil, but this hydro jazz has me scratching my head on a weekly basis. its been almost three weeks since the photo period got messed up by a light leak bad enough to do so. the leaves outside the window to my basement fell, allowing the sun to pan across my whole flower tent for a couple hours a day. once i figured it out, i remedied the situation, but the symptoms of the problem persist. my first girl that is in late flower has a decent amount of bud that seems to still be developing nicely, even though she is only producing the single, weird leaves.
the other plants in the tower are the ones that are growing at what seems to be a crazy rate. i woefully underestimated the height they would need.
anyway, I'm fairly certain that the spotting and leaf torture in the previous pics were a result of root rot. i have treated the problem with beneficial bacteria cultures, the recipe for which i learned about on Heisenberg's thread in the bubbleponics forum. it really helped to turn around the slowed growth rate, but the spots are still there. my suspicion is that there is still rot in root areas where i cannot reach or disassemble due to the basic construction design of the tower.
Ph is really steady since adding the bennies too. whatever i mix it to is where it stays. i have to add about 1/3 of a gallon of nute solution every day. consumption has dropped slightly since i lollied all but the newest addition to the tower.

I'm fairly convinced that the light leak situation has been solved also. i have added three new plants to the tent since taking action to seal out the light and none of them are showing the slightest signs of stress that the others exhibit. at least, i am very hopeful that is the case.

thanks again.

[video=youtube_share;k2rqUlYN1m8]http://youtu.be/k2rqUlYN1m8[/video]

Root rot has a few tell-tale signs in addition to brown, smelly roots. Because it interferes with nutrient uptake, and because phosphorus is so important to structure and growth, you generally notice a P deficiency first: weak, red stems; brittle branches; purpling leaves; stunted growth; and then yellowing, dying leaves as other nutrients are affected. An early P deficiency then becomes an overall nutrient deficiency (at least, that's how it appears).

I mention this, because severe root rot won't just cause a few spots on your leaves. It will also spread and affect all plants connected to the infected root system.

Far more common is for those new to hydro to have a few teething problems with maintaining pH and the correct nutrient balance - especially in recirculating systems. It's even harder to control these things when you are not using a tried and tested nutrient formula - that's why I suggested using a dedicated hydro nutrient for the first few grows until you get the hang of things.

Until you are familiar with everything you are feeding your plants, it's hard to know what they might be missing, or which nutrients might be locking out others. Hydro can be tricky because without a substrate to buffer any nutrient imbalance, it quickly shows up in the plant.

There are some very good organic-based hydro nutrients out there - I use them myself - so if you prefer to remain organic, that may be an option for you.

So, am I to understand you correctly that you don't advocate the use of Fox Farms Trio? I have heard nothing but stellar opinions about FF products.

I'm not familiar with Fox Farm where I am, but I thought they produced mainly soil fertilisers. What you have may be fine, but if you are adding extras such as cal-mag and teas etc, then you may have inadvertently unbalanced your nutrient ratios. The presence of too much of one nutrient, for example, can lock out others and look like a nutrient deficiency when really you are overdoing it. It can also take a little while to see what works best in a particular set-up and/or with a particular strain, as not all hydro nutrients are created equal. The difference between a good nutrient and an average one can be quite measurable.

Also, there are a couple of other things I've noticed:

rryyddeerr said:

You know what's really funny? With a submersible pump running, my ph pen reads 11-14.5. Hilarious

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^ Are you sure your pH pen is working correctly? They can be notoriously unreliable . . .

rryyddeerr said:

Using calmag. Also using h2o2. Took out the pump I had in the res just pushing water around and put in an air stone. I am a big fan of vigorous water movement from my days as an avid keeper of aquariums. I mixed some new nutes using 4.5 gallons of RO / 8 tsp calmag/ 1tsp of h2o2/ 8 tsp of tiger bloom/ 8 tsp big bloom/ 6 ml of ph up. 900ppm 5.5 ph.

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Now, cal-mag is usually pretty alkaline, and you're also adding a lot of pH Up to get to 5.5. You're using RO water - which should be pH7 - so either those Fox farm nutrients are SUPER acidic, or something is up with your pH pen.

Those plants did look like they were having pH problems, and my guess is the pH may be too high, or you are adding too much cal-mag, or possibly a combination of both.

With the organic-based nutrients I use, I need to use about 5ml (1tsp) of pH Down (not Up) per 50 litres (13 gallons) of nutrient using pH7.4 water to get to about 5.8. My organic hydro nutrients are acidic, but nowhere near as acidic as yours appear to be.

Im going to forego using CalMag for a week and see what comes of it. Not in my soil, only hydro.
Im confident that the ph pen i working properly. RO is 7ph and 18ppm out of the spigot.
The Fox Farm Big Bloom is very acidic. Very.
My DWC plant is doing really well.
I am using the same ph pen and Hanna tds pen for both grows.
As far as the ph pen acting funny as per my previous comment, Its only when there is one particular pump running in the tower res. When I unplug it, the pen reads normally.

I am going to stick with this Nutrient brand for the time being. Many people have had great results from it. I believe there is something besides any possible shortcomings with FF products at play here, causing my plants to stress or suffer some imbalance.
Thank you, again, for such careful consideration of my dilemma. Happy growing!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to find fault with anything, I'm just trying to rule out possibilities. As mentioned, root rot will also lower pH, so that could be part of it. Higher reservoir temperatures can also affect pH.

It's probably worth calibrating your pH pen not just to pH7 but pH4 as well (if you haven't done so already) so that it reads the entire scale properly. Typically, when I calibrate my pH pen it may read fine at pH7, but then it will be slightly out at pH4 (sometimes as much as 0.5pH reading). It's the little things that all add up.