First cycle in Hydroton, are my plants overwatered?

What kind of light do you have? Have you tried putting a cycle timer on your pump?

Thats a lot of hydroton in ea pot,could get away with one watering a day.Also does all the water drain away?Make sure theres no standing water in the bottom of the buckets.

Thank you for your replies!! I already love this forum..

Jypsy Dog said:

You ever track your tank numbers? Haven't seen you mention what your ppm's and pH are doing.

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Sorry I haven’t mentioned this ...So my ppms have been climbing on there own but I have been increasing them further despite this. The reason is I have been running a low PPM anyway as my plants have been “stressed” like this for three weeks. I am currently running at 450ppm and looking to increase this by another 50ppm with tonight’s water change.

The PH I always make sure to keep in the range of 5.6- 6.4, currently at 5.8 but always climbing.. my usual routine is to throw in at least 8 drops of PH down to all three Wilma tanks. Should I test the run off again?


My lights are 4x 600w metal halides (mostly dimmed to 400w) and 2x kind 750 LEDs. maybe I should raise them up as the wilting is only present after the lights have been on for 18 hours ? I will get some distance measurements tonight for you.


Myke - I am now thinking you are onto something here ... when I tip the pots at an angle,there is always water left In the bottom of them. Maybe this is causing the roots to starve of oxygen. It will be very difficult for me to drill more holes in the bottom as the scrog net is already set but not impossible if it where to fix all my troubles. I shall get to it tonight!

I already have my drippers on timers set at 15 min feed once at lights on.

I will post some more pics now.

Just set something under the pots. An inch or two. Then they’ll drain or is it plumbed in with a bulk head?

myke said:

Just set something under the pots. An inch or two. Then they’ll drain or is it plumbed in with a bulk head?

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Thanks Myke for the suggestion but the buckets already sit on a little recess so they are elevated a bit.

I know I have bombarded the forum with picture but there is no better diagnosis tool than a picture. Here are some of the plants as the lights turn on...

Well for sure it’s your system I don’t think this is a npk issue. There was another fella with the same type system that lost it to root rot.tou probably saw the thread?
It has to be environment or you got something in the clay pebbles.

If your PPM's and pH are both climbing, She's still broke. Good luck, glance at the chart when ya want.

I have not seen any other thread on this please post a link if you have the time to find it? I am going to do a water change and also run the light cycle with no feeding. It’s nice for me to hear someone besides myself who thinks it is an environment issue not a deficiency.

Maybe I shouldn’t have done this BUT...Here is a picture of the roots if I dig a little in the pebbles ... nice and white with tiny hairs but also some brown orange tinge to parts of them I presume is from the Hydroton? ...

Or is that rot!!!!!????

If you zoom in to the Hydroton, do you think it looks quite wet? I haven’t irrigated since the lights came on yesterday

Water in the bottom isn’t going to cause them to drown even stagnant water there is so much hydroton that they are getting plenty of oxygen. Why do you have 4x 600w plus leds? Let’s see a pic of your entire setup.

Possible light stress ?

You also mentioned your PPMs rising it means your plants are drinking water and not the nutes I wouldn’t be upping the PPM any more

Are they all the strain strain or clone. Maybe you have a plant that doesn’t like hydro

ToFarGone said:

Water in the bottom isn’t going to cause them to drown even stagnant water there is so much hydroton that they are getting plenty of oxygen. Why do you have 4x 600w plus leds? Let’s see a pic of your entire setup.

Possible light stress ?

You also mentioned your PPMs rising it means your plants are drinking water and not the nutes I wouldn’t be upping the PPM any more

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You don’t think I am overwatering and starving the roots?
I know rising PPMs means they are only drinking but how can they not need more feed when the PPM is so low already? I guess they aren’t growing.. I will leave the PPM at 450 for now then.

I know I do have a lot of light but the LEDs are there for flower and the 4x 600w are set to 400w. I also cannot see any yellowing on the growth closes to the lights. I think I will raise the lights just to see what happens, at this point I will try anything.

This is my first run in this room, so I wanted to have a few strains in there to see which responded best ... so far non of them like it in there. I will try to post a picture of the set up tomorrow for you but if you scroll up a little you can sort of see 2 of the 3 Wilmas in there.

I really hope they pull through and we figure this one out! Thanks.

What’s your temp and RH

the thread is called ^sick plants please help identify^ in grow problems .i cant post a link.go back a few pages.

are you able to isolate one plant from the others?at least then you could experiment on one.
cant really tell how your system works could you convert it to ebb and flow?

The pots look to sit deep into the tray,this Wilma thing sure is weird.Is there a drain under ea pot?

I have almost the same setup, first time using hydroton in 2 wilmas.
2x600hps
2xwilmas xl 8 sites
Sterile diy nutes (0.9ec)
Ph 5.8 drift to 6.5
Feeding 24hrs

auswolf said:

I have almost the same setup, first time using hydroton in 2 wilmas.
2x600hps
2xwilmas xl 8 sites
Sterile diy nutes (0.9ec)

Ph 5.8 drift to 6.5
Feeding 24hrs
View attachment 4396596

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nice!puffy leaves.

Here’s one in dwc. Not sure if puffy leaves is a good thing. But look similar.

auswolf said:

I have almost the same setup, first time using hydroton in 2 wilmas.
2x600hps
2xwilmas xl 8 sites
Sterile diy nutes (0.9ec)
Ph 5.8 drift to 6.5
Feeding 24hrs
View attachment 4396596

Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing this.. it gives me some hope but also frustrating that it is going so badly for me. Can I ask .. are you using drip rings or the stock drip sticks that come with the Wilma? Roughly what drip rate are you running ? I started off feeding 24/7 at a constant flow which is where I went wrong I believe, I have reduced to flow for over two weeks now and despite the plants growing things have worsened.


Myke - thanks for continuing to check in! I don’t know if the Wilma is all the weird, isn’t it just a glorified auto pot? The pots are fed by drippers and the run off is drained back into the main tanks which are circulated trough my chiller and filter. I have root rot in my last DWC and managed to overcome it but wasn’t taking chances this time so I bought a chiller and set it too 22c with bacteria in the tank.
Funny you say about isolating a plant, I took one out last night and set it to one side.. what do you suggest I should change with the experimentee?

I am now getting a new symptom on the older leaves .. some nice yellowing, Great!! Ha.