Everything going to hell over and over.

Just got a tent together for first time in 15 years. Tried what a put together then. Basically 4 buckets with sprayers, drained to rez. No medium, a cheap version of aero.

Buddy gave me 4 ready for flower. Killed 2 and ready to chop another dying. Left for vacation and had another friend top off rez. Know it wasnt gonna turn out good. Ph was shit and ppm high for 8 days. 2 were all droopy and bad. Trashed them. This was 2 weeks into flower. The
2 other managed through. One stunted few weeks later. And now I'm gonna chop it after it went like the other 2
Below is the part of one that has survived into week 5 somehow
I realized my ph was dropping from 6.1 to 4..4-5 every 24 hrs the weeks after coming home from vacation. Have been adjusting every day past week. But I'm adding at least 20ml up just to get back to 6. Never had this problem 15 years ago.
r/o water Botanicare bloom, cal mag, silica hydro quars,liquid karma. Lltlle below what they recommend. Silica first then cal mag then rest to rez. Is at 4.5 after that. 25ml up to get to 6. Change every 5 days. Top off with ro water during those 5. Airstone.

Buddy gave me another ready to flower after first 2 died. It's two weeks in flower now., maybe 4 days before I realized it was sitting in 4.4. Been adding 20ml up every day since to get back to 6.1

Now it's doing what my lone survivor did. Yellow lower leaves and die off or turning dark red/ purple. Was full as could be before.


4x4 tent, 720w mammoth 8 bar. 40-50rh temps 70-84. 6in vortex fan. Rez is outside tent, airstone but sits at 74. Spare bedroom. Not ideal situation yet but kinda on budget after initial costs.
I don't remember ever having this much trouble 15-20 years ago with nutes. Ran same stuff as now minus aqua shield. Perpetual run for years. Got busted, did a year. Ten years later it's legal in my state and I can't do it now lol. Have seeds and clones available but want to figure this out before I veg any in smaller tent. Any suggestions would be appreciated. If I HAVE to I could switch nutes. But on budget and have quite a bit left.

My attempt at hydro (dwc) was a fail. Learned a lot but been in soil ever since. That said, I see no mention of what water you're using. Recently saw a video on How Weed Grow at Home (excellent YouTube channel) helping a struggling fellow hydro grower. Turned out municipal water used chloramine. That turned out to be the problem. After changing to non chloramine water, the problem was solved. Maybe check water report for this chemical. I understand there are remedial solutions that eliminate it.
Oops I re-read and saw RO.

You’ve got a good light, you should be able to do much better. Go back to soil.

Hydro too touchy for me. Organic living soil

What did the roots look like? If they appear to be getting the dreaded browning and slimy appearance, baddies are finding an entrace. PH/TDS meters of decent quality and accurate? Also, the How Weed Grow channel has some videos where he failed few times at hydro and nearly wrote off hydro as incompatible for average level growers but stayed at it, learned a few lessons, and in the end, changed his opinion of the discipline entirely. He's an absolute Pitt bull with no quit in his DNA. If you're stuck with your current setup for now, it seems a top to bottom review of your gear, water quality, methods, etc would be in order. I know you said you're using RO but I'd even question your machine's output to eliminate some possible failure there. No stone unturned. Some link in the chain is obviously going off the rails. Hope you are able to find the gremlin and share with the community.
Edit:
Just browsed an article on RO machines and chloramine and saw that the membrane actually doesn't remove it. Instead it relies on the slow passage through the carbon pre filters for this...and these pre filters do have an effective life span. Just grabbing straws here.

Fishmon said:

My attempt at hydro (dwc) was a fail. Learned a lot but been in soil ever since. That said, I see no mention of what water you're using. Recently saw a video on How Weed Grow at Home (excellent YouTube channel) helping a struggling fellow hydro grower. Turned out municipal water used chloramine. That turned out to be the problem. After changing to non chloramine water, the problem was solved. Maybe check water report for this chemical. I understand there are remedial solutions that eliminate it.
Oops I re-read and saw RO.

Click to expand...

My region's water switches between using Chlorine and Chloramine depending on their water analysis. We used to get notifications when they switched but they haven't done that in years. Killed an entire tank of tropical fish one year. I left the water to de-chlorinate for 48 hours, cleaned the fish tank, within 2 days almost $500 in fish were dead, the day after I pulled all the dead fish out of the tank I got the mail notification of the change from chlorine to chloramine. I should have been using RO water but at the time lived on a 3rd floor walkup and hated carrying 60 gallons of water up three flights of stairs.

Running fish tanks in my 20's I had already started monitoring the water from the county every time they released a report. I didn't change the habits when I started plants. I grew up with whole house water filtration and softening as a kid, my first apartment taught me to never trust the water straight out of the tap even for drinking. When I got a house the first thing I did was put on a 5 stage water filtration system on the main, skipping softening because the plants don't need THAT much sodium, but I really wish I had it because we've got mad calcium in out water. I'm curently considering a small under sink RO filter for the kitchen, not sure if I''m going to drop the money for such a low volume system.

As a precaution I use strips from the fish store to the test for both disinfectant additives, and use Microbe Life Dechlorinator + every time I mix my nutes, even though the soil buffer should be fine, it's just extra precation from the county doing county things. It's cheaper per dose than the fish tank dechlorinators as well, so there's that.

Did you follow the schedule or feed at half strength? What are your measurement devices for PH and EC, and have you calibrated them?

Scrap the overly-complicated and finicky hydro -until you are 100% ready and have the time to dedicate to it. Get some garden pots and some kind of potting mix and K.I.S.S.!

Did you say your rez temp is 74f?

My first grow was DWC and I yield over 2lbs dry. It's not that complicated.

Keep it simple
Tap water
PH between 5.8 and 6.2
Armor SI
Jacks 3 2 1
SAG GFF to combat root rot

If I were to guess maybe you got some root rot? Take pics of it.