Helping hand please am I overthinking this or do I have a problem

View attachment 2611737So as you are about to tell I am a new grower. Here is the story and the results so far please any advice is greatly appreciated.

Ok trying to get all the info in here:
Space = roughly 3.5'x3.5'x6' contained room with 600 watt MH vented with 200cfm~ fan on lights 2 small 6" clip fans blowing on plants 6" inlet fan from basement roughly matches the light outlet fan.
Inlet air tem 57-59 degrees
Room temp thermostat controlled 71-77 degrees
Drip system central res.
water 70-71 degrees ph 5.8-6.2
Nutes GH mix based on there website for mild growth- minus 20%
ppm is 700 .5 scale
Medium is clay pellets
light is roughly 4.5 away at this point. plan to lower this as temp isnt an issue however i didnt want to stress them any more than they already are. see below.

So i got clones from a friend helping me out. Grape Ape and he is established grower but its a friend of a friend thing so not much help. Anyway I expected small new clones and have an aero cloners bucket set up. However when I received the plants they were about 2.5 weeks old in soil. Crap I though I am not set up for this. ( the grower didnt ask me and assumed i was going soil grrr) I did some research and said screw it I can change them and use the aero cloner to get through the next few days. So i did very careful removed soil with distilled water. Put in areo cloner with distilled ph'd water at 5.9 ph no nutes under a cfl. They did great the first day a little dry( spray head clogged and they were underwatered on top of the stress. I fixed that and they perked right up. I gave them a few more days to make sure no issues. They showed little growth but look great. So 2 days ago I transplanted them to the set up described above. Boy they didnt seem to like it. I mean the larger leaves are drooping pretty bad, with some yellowing at the tips. I had my drip system running 24/7 but I have 3 ea - 2GPH drip heads in each pot. I have given them some time to dry out and they didnt respond at all. So back to constant drip we are. So here are my conclusions:

I know: the plant is stressed from the move it should be atleast. I know the plant is probably in mild shock going to nutes from clean water, however I think its strong enough to handle it.

I am curious if i over watered or underwatered. I know over watering with drip heads and hydroton is pretty hard. I tried to dry them out a bit with no response. Then I got to thinking maybe they are underwatered I mean the larger leaves are drooped all the way down almost and they feel kinda dry after turning off the drip. So I started it back up... time will tell.

So i know I should have never tried to change them to hydro but its already done. I know the plants are somewhat stressed and a couple days of some drooping and a little yellow on large leaves would be common. However should I be proactive and try to diagnose this more. Or just let it alone because i am over thinking it, its normal give them a couple days? I am kinda determined to succeed this grow so starting over is not an option till everything is dead. This is a learning experience and a hobby. Please criticize all you like but advice is more welcome. I hope to be an active part of the community going forward. Thanks for the help in advance

Welcome to RIU. Not my area of expertise and I'm sure others are going to chime in but sounds like they were very stressed. They'll want pictures so you should post them up. Good Luck.

you can see the change in a couple days it doesnt look good

Ok like this guy I'm havin a hell of a year but don't know if I should put mine in 36 hours of dark yet have some little branches should I wait till there bigger or go for it I'm just doin one to start but then the rest

Fknrandle said:

Ok like this guy I'm havin a hell of a year but don't know if I should put mine in 36 hours of dark yet have some little branches should I wait till there bigger or go for it I'm just doin one to start but then the rest

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Should have started your thread and need photo's my friends!!

yeah not sure what you mean there FKNrandle but you should start a separate thread.

Also I got pics up now, you probably just missed them on the third post.

Just another though could this be a root issue? The roots are much thinner coming out of that soil then I have seen on many hydro plants. I didnt really spread them out in the hydroton but just dug a hole and let the roots lie roughly how they were for the cloner. Could that be an issue?

Scorlan said:

yeah not sure what you mean there FKNrandle but you should start a separate thread.

Also I got pics up now, you probably just missed them on the third post.

Just another though could this be a root issue? The roots are much thinner coming out of that soil then I have seen on many hydro plants. I didnt really spread them out in the hydroton but just dug a hole and let the roots lie roughly how they were for the cloner. Could that be an issue?

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I tried to play it safe cut watering on for 30 every 2 hours after letting them get 0 water for about 6 hours. I also took them directly out of the light so they are still in a room with the 600 but shaded.

2 look better this morning although still same symptoms just a little better and no worse. the last looks like its dead. Its still got some fight but I have no idea. I just got home i took the one in bad shape to clean water independent system just ph'd correct to give it a good flush ill let it sit for 15 mins then pull it out and manual flood drain it for today and see how it goes.

any help still appreciated?

The plant in the rocks looks underwatered to me. It should come out of it once the roots find the water. I'm not clear on your ppm's though. Are they 700ppm or is your .5 tds meter reading 700 (which would be 1400)? 1400 would be too much for those babies.

Looks too me you broke more roots then she liked. Ph balanced water with 1 part bloom and let heal, hopefully you didn't rip the main off or your screwed!

70's natureboy said:

The plant in the rocks looks underwatered to me. It should come out of it once the roots find the water. I'm not clear on your ppm's though. Are they 700ppm or is your .5 tds meter reading 700 (which would be 1400)? 1400 would be too much for those babies.

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changed to fresh water very light nutes and running more often. No improvement as of yet but no decline either. The little struggler isnt going to pull out i dont think.

It looks like they could use a little more food. Cal-Mag is also important especially in Hydro since the magnetic pumps can remove that stuff from the water. Are they getting decent water flow and also good aeration? What is your water temps??? That is very important in Hydro. If the water is too warm they will not like that at all.

brownie689 said:

It looks like they could use a little more food. Cal-Mag is also important especially in Hydro since the magnetic pumps can remove that stuff from the water. Are they getting decent water flow and also good aeration? What is your water temps??? That is very important in Hydro. If the water is too warm they will not like that at all.

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Not adding cal -mag but will look into that. My water temp is controlled by thermostat also and is always 68 degrees ph is between 5.8-6.1 - try to maintain at 5.9. I think the water flow is fine. I cut my dripper heads off to add alittle water to make sure water was spread out through the hydroton, with that I also cut back the water to 30 mins every 2 hours. The third little one was dead this morning. Just all shriveled and dried up. I pulled her up and the roots looks pretty good and they were wet. I must have damaged more on this one transplanting it then the others. However they looks worse for wear this morning also.

I dont know what it is, although I have a feeling everything is fixing to die if I dont figure it out. - oh and I dont think aeration is a problem. Between just the hydroton, and the 6" airstone i have that runs 24/7 in the res.

thanks,

The problem with Hydro is it's more for advanced users because things can go bad and they go bad very very fast in Hydro. I used to do Hydro but I switched to Sunshine Mix #4 because I can't babysit my plants on a daily basis. My grow is somewhat far from my location. It may just be the transplant shock if you ripped up some roots. As long as all the environment variables are optimal and the nutrients are at the correct strength and formula things should be growing well. What brand of nutrients are you using and at what strengths? I'm just curious. I personally use Advanced Nutrients PH perfect lineup and I get phenomenal results every time without fail. I know some people hate the shit out of Advanced but I can speak from experience and say they are the best nutrients I have ever used hands down. They eliminate all of the nutrient deficiency problems I see everyone constantly having on these forums. I do add Botanicare Cal-Mag at every watering because I use Reverse Osmosis water. I would suggest you try them out but I don't want you to waste your money on them if you don't really know what you're doing and have a good amount of experience growing before you try them out. This stuff is extremely powerful and can easily burn your plants up if you do it wrong.

I forgot to mention if your stems are red or purple then I really suggest a Cal-Mag. Stems should be green even the stems on the big fan leaves. Maybe some strains will stay red fan leaf stems but the main stems should be green. If they are red or purple or have the red/purple stripes running down them you could add more Cal-Mag. That stuff helps so much it's crazy.

brownie689 said:

I forgot to mention if your stems are red or purple then I really suggest a Cal-Mag. Stems should be green even the stems on the big fan leaves. Maybe some strains will stay red fan leaf stems but the main stems should be green. If they are red or purple or have the red/purple stripes running down them you could add more Cal-Mag. That stuff helps so much it's crazy.

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ill get some cal mag tomorrow and give it a shot. They aren't looking much better at all. While the purple stems have been there ever since I received them i think its getting. I am pretty sure they are shocked and have slight root damage, how could they not. I just cant seem to be confident about this watering schedule. I think there overwatered I have a tester in the room right now and after 4 hours with no water it was still nice and wet. Trying to dry them out a bit and then back to watering 15mins every couples hours. I am sure they will need more water as they get larger I am just assume their current roots arent up to the task of any more. I assume this is also safer than back to overwatering.

update

1 dead 1 almost dead last still holding on about the same might make it.

I did however figure out the problem. When the clones were still in the cloner the spray head kept getting clogged from remnants of soil. I just tool it off and the water was splashed against the top of the lid creating a similar effect to the spray head. However what I didnt bank on was the water running along the lid getting inside the neoprene collars. gave them all stem rot. I am hoping adding some H2O2 will allow atleast the last one to survive.