Leaf tips curling up, hard!

I had what appeared to be a magnesium deficiency a few days ago, using Dyna-Gro nutrients, and after having trouble with pH, I decided to switch back to General Hydroponics; this looked much better, but then today I noticed some serious leaf curl on a few.

The first two are the two with curling leaves, the second two are showing damage from last time.

2.5 gallons R/O
7.5ml Pro-Tekt
20ml FloraMicro
40ml FloraBloom
7.5ml CalMag+
2.5ml Floralicious Plus

pH: 5.9 (has risen from 5.7)
Air temp: 78F
Water temp: 68F

All that comes to mind is that perhaps they were still a little deficient, and I didn't compensate for that when refilling the reservoirs; I'm probably going to hit them with a foliar, add 2.5-5ml CalMag+, and this microbial tea which pretty much literally just finished brewing.

I did notice a little brown on the roots of some plants, but not the two in question, and it came off by simply swirling them in the nutrient solution; I'm betting it's probably from the Floralicious, but either way the tea should take care of it.

Would it be possible that it is light/beat stress dude ? Gotta explore every alternative haha as they say
Shagg

Quit adding the calmag+. You already have enough calcium and nitrate from the micro. Lucas formula already has a pretty low K:Ca ratio as it is, why would you want to make it even lower.

This is why the green bottle "grow" was made. It's potassium nitrate based, and has more K than N by mass. The "micro" bottle and calmag+ are both calcium nitrate based, so they do the same thing, short the magnesium.

Hi man, your plants are very hungry for base nutrients esp nitrogen

shagg909 said:

Would it be possible that it is light/beat stress dude ? Gotta explore every alternative haha as they say
Shagg

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I don't think so, air flow is good, and I'm using a 420W induction light that's about two feet away.

churchhaze said:

Quit adding the calmag+. You already have enough calcium and nitrate from the micro. Lucas formula already has a pretty low K:Ca ratio as it is, why would you want to make it even lower.

This is why the green bottle "grow" was made. It's potassium nitrate based, and has more K than N by mass. The "micro" bottle and calmag+ are both calcium nitrate based, so they do the same thing, short the magnesium.

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I'd read about using CalMag+ with Lucas, and people seemed fine up to 5ml/Gal; however, this all started when substituting CalMag+ for MagPro, which are actually very different, so perhaps there's a bit too much calcium? I haven't added the extra CalMag+ I mentioned, as I was waiting to hear back from people, but since magnesium seems to be the issue, perhaps Epsom Salt would be a better fix?

EDIT: Perhaps flush and refill with the same solution, substituting Epsom Salt for CalMag+?

indikat said:

Hi man, your plants are very hungry for base nutrients esp nitrogen

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Maybe, but Nitrogen deficiency doesn't present like this; they might want a bit more, but that's not what's causing the problems, though it may be contributing.

Epsom salts is would be better than calmag+ in this case because it would provide magnesium and sulfate without calcium and nitrate. At least if you were wrong about it being Mg, you wouldn't be nailing it with Ca, which I just can't see anyone getting with lucas formula since it's so "micro" based. (mostly calcium nitrate)

Mg and K deficiency are sort of hard to tell apart. A good rule of thumb is 4K:2Ca:1Mg in general for most plants, so the cations don't antagonize each other. Mg is over-diagnosed imo.

bibbles said:

I don't think so, air flow is good, and I'm using a 420W induction light that's about two feet away.



I'd read about using CalMag+ with Lucas, and people seemed fine up to 5ml/Gal; however, this all started when substituting CalMag+ for MagPro, which are actually very different, so perhaps there's a bit too much calcium? I haven't added the extra CalMag+ I mentioned, as I was waiting to hear back from people, but since magnesium seems to be the issue, perhaps Epsom Salt would be a better fix?

EDIT: Perhaps flush and refill with the same solution, substituting Epsom Salt for CalMag+?



Maybe, but Nitrogen deficiency doesn't present like this; they might want a bit more, but that's not what's causing the problems, though it may be contributing.

Click to expand...

churchhaze said:

Epsom salts is would be better than calmag+ in this case because it would provide magnesium and sulfate without calcium and nitrate. At least if you were wrong about it being Mg, you wouldn't be nailing it with Ca, which I just can't see anyone getting with lucas formula since it's so "micro" based. (mostly calcium nitrate)

Mg and K deficiency are sort of hard to tell apart. A good rule of thumb is 4K:2Ca:1Mg in general for most plants, so the cations don't antagonize each other. Mg is over-diagnosed imo.

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I agree that magnesium is over diagnosed, and, likewise, there are certainly people who believe epsom salt is some snake-oil cure-all; looking at the lower leaves, it reminded me a bit of a sulfur deficiency, so when using Dyna-Gro I dosed with Epsom; however, thinking back, if Dyna-Gro calls for the higher-mag, no-calcium MagPro, and I was using CalMag, this whole thing could be a mag deficiency turned calcium toxicity, in turn locking out magnesium... shit, that's almost certainly the case, now that I've compared labels.

I think the best solution is going to be redoing the reservoirs, adding Epsom Salt instead of CalMag+, and probably in a lower dose, then doing a foliar; I recall wondering why I had so much CalMag+ left while setting up this grow (it's been a year), this must be why.

Thanks for sparking this train of thought, I should have had it sooner. <3

It's calmag+ that's the snake oil. Epsom salts is cheap as hell, and pure magnesium sulfate heptahydrate. calmag+ is some calcium nitrate, magnesium nitrate, and a tiny tiny bit of chelated iron dissolved in a ton of water with a fancy label slapped on it. There's your miracle tonic.

Here's my calmag. The epsom salts + this 50 pound bag of calcium nitrate.

bibbles said:

I agree that magnesium is over diagnosed, and, likewise, there are certainly people who believe epsom salt is some snake-oil cure-all;

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Hah, nice! I definitely saw some CalMag v Epsom Salt conflict, but I found my old journals and they definitely used Epsom; have to say, CalMag smells nice, though. :3