Diagnosis unclear... Stuck in oscillating fan

New grower.
Second plant.
First was a (success?) despite monumental mistakes. (cardboard box, miracle grow, etc)

This time im doing it all right. (led + cfl, mylar tent, fans, ph testing water, proper nutes, etc)
Or so I thought.... Plant says otherwise...


So I use tap water. It's 7.5 usually.
I use nutri+ to bring it down to somewhere around 5.8-6.2. I test with an electronic probe tester I got off amazon.
Then I add nutes. I'm using some TNT Grow stuff, and general hydroponics CalMag.

Then I flood the pot with the mixture. 2 litres per plant. I dunno the size of the pot... But a bit trickles out the bottom. Probably not 20%. Seems like a waste to have 20% come out the bottom..

I water as needed, when the pot is super light. Tends to be every few days.
I give calmag and grow nutes every other watering.

My symptoms:
A few (2-4) lower fan leaves have yellowing spreading from the tip of the main finger towards the stem. New growth is very thin fingers, and they're twisting.

I have 2 plants on the go and the other seems fine.
Same watering feeding schedule and amounts. Same strain.


Any ideas? I can provide pics if necessary.

ShitakeShroom said:

New grower.
Second plant.
First was a (success?) despite monumental mistakes. (cardboard box, miracle grow, etc)

This time im doing it all right. (led + cfl, mylar tent, fans, ph testing water, proper nutes, etc)
Or so I thought.... Plant says otherwise...


So I use tap water. It's 7.5 usually.
I use nutri+ to bring it down to somewhere around 5.8-6.2. I test with an electronic probe tester I got off amazon.
Then I add nutes. I'm using some TNT Grow stuff, and general hydroponics CalMag.

Then I flood the pot with the mixture. 2 litres per plant. I dunno the size of the pot... But a bit trickles out the bottom. Probably not 20%. Seems like a waste to have 20% come out the bottom..

I water as needed, when the pot is super light. Tends to be every few days.
I give calmag and grow nutes every other watering.

My symptoms:
A few (2-4) lower fan leaves have yellowing spreading from the tip of the main finger towards the stem. New growth is very thin fingers, and they're twisting.

I have 2 plants on the go and the other seems fine.
Same watering feeding schedule and amounts. Same strain.


Any ideas? I can provide pics if necessary.

Click to expand...

Yes. Ditch the meter, buy cheap accurate litmus paper and do not adjust pH until everything is in the soup.

As hotrodharley is suggesting, I would mix your nutrients up first and then pH. Most likely by pHing first and then adding your nutrients you're simply driving down the pH even further leading to an acidic feed. I suspect once you get this sorted, your plants will sort themselves out.

What kind of medium are you using? And yes, pics would help.

Here's a bunch of photos.

the yellowing here started at the tip of the finger and increased. I suspected low nitrogen so increased my feedings. Also, the tip is curling up. But that means toxicity, doesn't it?

this brown spot .. Wtf ?

the twisting settled down after a back to back feeding. You can see the new growth is mildly twisted still.


just pics of my kids.



The medium I'm using is a mix I got at a hydroponics shop.
Its a mix of peat moss, perilite, dolomite lime I think, maybe other shit. Not hot, not moisture holding, etc. Seems to drain well. The clones liked it.


I will DEFINITELY start making the soup first and then PH adjusting. It makes perfect sense to do it that way. It even crossed my mind once but I assumed (what a fool) that the nutes would be PH balanced already.


Any other recommendations for a healthier grow?

Is a 600w viparspectra led panel and 8 6500k CFL bulbs enough light? Too much? Or could there Always be more?

Cant stress this enough , not nearly enough

Ditch the damn hydro PH crap and get decent self regulating soil like biobizz all mix etc...and a set of nutrients that will not interfere with each other. I use biobizz all mix , grow , bloom and top max personally.

You do not want that shit in a soil medium...

CptBluemax said:

Cant stress this enough , not nearly enough

Ditch the damn hydro PH crap..
You do not want that shit in a soil medium...

Click to expand...

I want to grow in soil for now. I'm not ready to do hydroponic.. Too amateur still.

The soil I'm using is supposed to be good. I wish I could remember what it was..
She sold me a clear plastic bag of it. It came in a white bag with almost no writing on it.

Anyway let's say I ditch the nutri+.
What do you recommend instead to lower my tap water ph?

I should mention I'm Canadian where weed is legal.
Some products are harder for me to get which is annoying. Import costs are ridiculous for us.

Get your pH sorted out and let your girls grow. Your plants look pretty good; remember, one leaf does not a grow make. A yellowing leaf, or a brown spot is not cause for alarm.

Plants adore consistency; use the soil and nutrients you have and make the best of it. If you stumble along the way you'll learn a few things to do and not for your next grow which will make you a better farmer. In the mean time have fun, don't sweat it and take your time...you'll be fine.

So I followed your advice and made the soup, then tested ph. I had to ad 3 drops of acid to bring it down instead of the 18 drops I was adding.... Holy crap I must have been giving the plant water at ph4!!!

Also got litmus strips and confirmed my digital reader is reading as accurately as the paper.

The twisting has stopped and the plants both have increased growth speed!!

Now my concern is the one plant is yellowing several leaves.
Looks like nitrogen def...?
Its only the large fan leaves draining colour, and to my knowledge this is not an autoflower strain.

Im feeding them both the same, but one seed was germinated a month before the other.

Should I be increasing nutes as the plant grows in size? Or is the ratio to water always going to be the same?

I'm giving it what it says on the bottle, which is 12ml of food per 2L of water.

I'd suspect that if you have been pH'ing your water first to 5.8, most of the nutes I've run use buffers to drop the pH to that level if you use a neutral pH water. Since you already had an acid solution it just dropped the pH into the basement and deficiency issues have shown up. Fix that and I suspect your plants will thrive.

I'm doing the mixture correctly now.. But The soil might still be acidic... How do I confirm that and correct it?

I've given it two 6.0 ph feeds since, and the yellowing seems to be continuing, and more rapid.

I know that agricultural lime is used to raise ph but I also read that potassium carbonate is also used. ph-up uses potassium carbonate so a solution could be used to soak the soil to change the ph. I'm not a soil grower but I do use ph-up in my hydro system.

I'm new to gardening in general.
I could mix the soup and add no ph down. The result is about 6.8 ph that way.
If I water with that, it'll bring the soil up slowly.

Is that the best way to do it?

Should I give it a flush of just straight tap water at 7.8 ph!?

Are you feeding in every single watering? Why not just water with proper ph’d water and flush it out a bit? Get the PH back to normal. Throwing more nutes at it will cause you to continually chase your tail.

So flush it, like flood the pot with 6.0 water?

ShitakeShroom said:

So flush it, like flood the pot with 6.0 water?

Click to expand...

Let the pot dry out a little than run a little extra water through the pot until you have a decent amount of run off or until the run off is the close to the ph you poured in. That’s how I do it. I am sure people have their own ways of doing things.

Thanks.
I'll do that asap; Flood it with water and test the run off.

Good soil should be your PH buffer , try if you can to use all the same stuff from one company so they dont interfere with each other. In my humble opinion it will do more harm than good those acids and alkalis in the soil

You really shouldnt need to PH anything with good soil , as it should be somewhat self regulating (like biobizz all mix)