@ricky6991 --First let me say you got one clean & professional looking room
..read most of the thread, and i'm assuming you are around week5 of flower? And you stated you see some nute burn on the remaining small leaves? Well like UB advised, just
lower the nutrient ppms Since the large fan leaves were removed (the plant's processing sites / factories), your roots are just sucking up "nutes" sending it upwards towards any remaining leaf site on the plant (so those remaining leaf(s) are over burdened with concentrated levels) --hence the nute burns..
About the defoliation thing your friend applied on those plants, it's never been proven to be a working method, the science behind its application doesn't make sense since
you need leaves to process the "energy" needed for the plant to flourish..
The growers who insist that it works may have something that probably wasn't thoroughly examined; like maybe it was the strain(phenotype) used during those grows, which actually thrives under those conditions? Some environmental unknowns that led to certain outcomes? Too many blanks, too many what ifs.. Until someone can actually put some real science behind "defoliation" for cannabis, then for now its just another pseudo method which actually does more harm than good~
This is the advanced cultivation section, ---plucking fan leaves, saying "shits gonna yield more" because buds (floral bouquets) are exposed to the light ---just don't make botanical sense
So ricky6991, just finish out your current run, from the the pictures you posted, they look like they will yield okay (probably better) if you had just left them alone... Honestly, nature knows best, so why mess with that system that took millions of years to evolve
.2s