Ccoco-Perlite: Can Be Overwatered? Wilty and New Leaves Won't Open, Veg

i got some young early veg hindu kush plants in coco, they started wilting just a bit after I installed drips and set them to 4X100ml a day, I thought this was the way to go, I suspended the feeding now gonna let them dry see it helps. what I gave them was HESI coco @ 1300EC (700-800ppm), with supervit at the recommended dosage too, but I think the symptoms may be because I added some organic supplements too... I put 15ml/9L of biobizz root juice and 5ml of bioheaven. they must have not liked one of them or both.

So the symptoms started today after a few runs of the drips, wilting and slightly curling up on the edges, also some wrinkling, and on some plants, the new leaves won't open. They stay up more than they should.

they were fine until I started the drips, although they had been mostly wet until then... they say and i believe that coco esp with perlite cannot be overwatered. I used the organic ferts before on small dosages. This may have been too much, or I dunno. They also have a bit of algae growing there. I also lowered the light a bit yesterday, it's still at least one foot clear of them. I have some plants in soil, some of them are showing bad signs as well. They get different water, of course, just water.

Right now I refilled the res with 15L RO water + HESI coco @ 1300EC + supervit 3 drops + ~40ml H2o2 3%. pH in the color of copper (my digital meter broke, but copper in the liquid GHE tester should be around 5.8 I think). I'm gonna flush them a bit with it now, to see if there's improvement, then suspend the drips . hope it helps.

appreciate advice on this

six hours after the small flush, some plants are showing improvement. some others are in fact getting worse. please help

i wonder what it is about my threads that make people totally not want to comment usually. is it because they don't know?

anyway, they're looking much better now. guess i was right about the organic ferts being the culprit. I'll have to get some mineral root juice.

I wouldn't use the recommend dosage for pretty much any nutes or fertz a lot of the time it can be to strong, but for the lack of answers its mostly just because its a hard question a lot of factors and variables to think about ya know....

Dj1209 said:

I wouldn't use the recommend dosage for pretty much any nutes or fertz a lot of the time it can be to strong, but for the lack of answers its mostly just because its a hard question a lot of factors and variables to think about ya know....

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yeah of course... and it's up to me to decide in the end. i'm not looking for definite answers and instructions - just your 2 cents, is all.

I actually think that 1300EC is not enough for them. They are healthy and green but there is the slightest clue of some mag deficiency I think, especially in the big plants. RO has its price I guess.

The problem was almost definitely the organic nutes. Somehow it triggered a symptom that very much resembles overwatering. Maybe I'm wrong, and it's just because I let them dry a bit (that I did). I'm gonna test that cuz I just reactivated the drips, 100ml every 6 hours.

so in the end... i started a dry cycle routine. I guess coco can be overwatered. Later on when I removed males, I noticed coco plants had weaker and less thick roots than soil, some of them were brownish as well. this is probably pyth dragged from when i was overwatering. lesson learned. however, the plants are fine.

Ive just done my first grow in coco and it went sweet, but my next batch which were started off in coco unlike my first dont seem to like being watered every day, i thought it was impossible to overwater in coco as well but now im not so sure especially when there seedlings and young plants, gonna give em a dry cycle and water every other day and see if that helps. If your gonna use hesi nutes and RO water your more than likely need to add cal/mag i did, got mg def early on in my first grow using hesi with RO so went back to AN sensi nutes as i found this doesnt need cal/mag with RO water.

yep, same here. epsom salt was enough for me to solve that.

i'll know not to use hesi next time.

whats the humidity ad temp?

well this thread is no longer relevant... or actually, maybe it is. but notice that it's from a long time ago (early veg) when I actually had overwatering symptoms. This was while using drips like... 4 times a day. the average daytime shade temp in my room should be about 25. peak is about 30, but pretty rare. humidity has mostly been very high lately mostly, avg 65 perhaps, peaking at close to 80 (77).

wow that's one piece of article. +rep. and thanks for introducing the site to me.
I thought the watering issue might be because of humidity. Though according to the table, I should be cool. But then I do have constant condensation on the leaves.

having the same problem with a few week old plants and a few brand new seedlings. I fluffed the coco with the suggested 1.0EC as the bottle suggested, and think it was way to high (first time sprouting in coco) . I flushed the small seedlings out and will let them dry out a bit to see what happens. They are sort of recovering, but still yellow in the veins of the seedlings so I think the canna in the coco burned them. I doubt it would be Mg after only sprouting 2 days ago? They are 25% perlite and 75% coco, seem to need watering every day in cups under a 300w LED panel. I'll photo these shortly if they survive as it sounds like the same symptoms as the above posts. This was a highly annoying process so I want to put up some sort of recovery process on line as there doesn't seem to be much advice.

The older ones looked like Mg deficiency so I used epsom salts (tablespoon/gallon) to no avail. I think they were over watered without sufficient Mg as well so I think they are all goners. I will dry them out after I flushed them last night with 35% H202 and 5.6 PH water. I think I lost this battle an will have a few casualties . The flush mad the areas of the leaf very dark green where they were formerly yellow, but the veins stayed yellow with the affected area spreading our further from the vein onto the leaf surface. Strangest issue I have ever encountered whilst sprouting with no amount of flushing and resting to recover them

I think you can most definitely over water coco. I never had a problem with Chilli and Tomatoes using coco but this has proven to be a nightmare for me. I think i'll stick with clay or soil if this keeps failing!

hmm. well it sounds like you are having all sorts of problems (like I have had). a few things:

I don't know much about canna coco, I use a local brand (I live in the country where Jesus was born). Basically coco/perlite substrates should come with no nutrients at all, and unlike other hydroponic media, in coco this could be dangerous for the seedlings - as too low EC of the medium can actually suck the nutrients out of them due to chemical imbalance. Thus it is recommended to pre-feed with about 1/4 strength, or 0.200-300EC of nutrients to keep things balanced, and definitely NOT 1.0 - this is way too much for seedlings. So I dunno where you read this, but it's a fail.

The best thing about coco is that it's so easy to control, kinda like a dwc, so if you fed too much all you have to do is replace the water (wouldn't even call that flushing) and the problem is fixed. However at such an age seedlings might take a while to recover from this shock (or not), so you may be better off starting over. either way, make sure that after you flushed the excessive food, you leave them about 0.1 or 0.2 EC of nutrients in there.

That's a very good idea, everyone should be aware of how to start seedlings in coco as many people encounter this problem. Before starting I was looking a lot on online information and could only find contradictory advice - some people say no nutes, others say much nutes, and I did have a friend who grew fine seedlings into veg without giving any nutes in the coco. But I know for me, no nutes was a big problem (which is why after more than a week my seedlings looked like they do in the pics above).

Why did you use H2o2 btw? I guess it can't hurt much but 35% sounds very harsh, did you dilute it? I guess it can help root rot if you were badly overwatered, perhaps this was a good idea. what made you think Mg? did you have leaf blades curling upwards? new springs remain kinda closed? yellowing between veins could be a number of things. and what strength do you feed them with nutes?

I do suggest you keep your plants on a low nute level, according to their age and indeed, let them rest and recover with no more water and the light far above. remember this game is all about balance, so don't be tempted to extreme attempts to fix stuff, everything has to be mended gradually and to a center point, not the far end.

do come visit again and also in my grow journal that's linked in my sig. and post pics. 300W LED sounds way awesome.