Ph or deficiency problems, need help!

Hello everybody. Heppy new year guys.

I've been having a problem with my plants and it's been driving me mad.

The plants were germinated on the 28th of november. Two OG KUSH and two TANGERINE DREAM.

50% coco 50% perlite.

I started feeding them 200ppm 5.8ph once I saw the third set of real leaves around day 17, before then only 5.8ph 50ppm filtered water.

On the 21st of december the plants started displaying a weird tip clawing down and then a weird burn, not like a nute burn, it grew fast and on the sides and a chlorosis followed, the yellowing is always intravenal and always on the older leaves and moves up. my new growth is fine on all four plants.

At first I thought it was a deficiency since its a mobile problem. It kind of looked like a K or Mg problem, and since I was feeding them very low ppms i upped the PPMs gradually. That made new growth come out beautiful, they clearly loved the elevated ppms. The green looks healthy on new growth and no apparent problem, but the older leaves are all suffering. I upped the PPMs to around 350-450. Always 5.8ph. The problem sort of slowed down but its still there. The older leaves develop either a chlorosis or a dark brown appearance and then it starts to die...

On the last week Ive been paying attention to the Ph. I'm starting to think its a Ph lockdown since I'm feeding them all the nutrients they need.

So I tested the runoff.

If I feed them 5.8ph the runoff is 6.9...7. I'm a total newbie but Its of my understanding that the whole thing should be between 5.5-6.5ph, right?

I started flushing every other feeding with plain ph water... the problem still continues yet the flush runoff did start to come out more clear and with lower ppms, yet the ph runoff is still around 7, sometimes it comes to 6.8.

This is a typical feeding menu of the girls:

2GAL res: 6.5ml Calimagic, 4ml floramicro, 4ml floragro, 4ml florabloom, 2ml budcandy. (i'm on a transition feeding menu) 400PPM - 5.8ph. The order is first calimagic, then micro, then all the others.

Attached are some pictures of the problem once it showed up and some of present time.

I have no idea of what this might be.

What should I do? Flush more often until a decent ph comes out? Add something to the medium that will lower my ph? Up the ppm?

Thanks everybody sorry for the long post like I said this is driving me nuts and I just want healthy plants!

Any help is much appreciated!

Nute burn can mimic K deficiency but it looks like potassium deficiency to me.

Mr.me said:

Nute burn can mimic K deficiency but it looks like potassium deficiency to me.

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Thanks for the reply Mr.me, If thats the case you think If I up my PPMs the problem will be remedied?

Jon_a said:

Thanks for the reply Mr.me, If thats the case you think If I up my PPMs the problem will be remedied?

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Brotha, im not even gonna lie to you, I literally have no clue about that whole PPM stuff. I had the same symptoms when i first started and gave her a little bit extra (nutes) and it corrected my problem haha sorry man! Hopefully someone else can give you a better answer! (im on my first grow)

Mr.me said:

Brotha, im not even gonna lie to you, I literally have no clue about that whole PPM stuff. I had the same symptoms when i first started and gave her a little bit extra (nutes) and it corrected my problem haha sorry man! Hopefully someone else can give you a better answer! (im on my first grow)

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Cool man! Thanks anyway for your time. The thing is, this high PH runoff means something. 7 is too high of a ph for coco I think.

Jon_a said:

Hello everybody. Heppy new year guys.

I've been having a problem with my plants and it's been driving me mad.

The plants were germinated on the 28th of november. Two OG KUSH and two TANGERINE DREAM.

50% coco 50% perlite.

I started feeding them 200ppm 5.8ph once I saw the third set of real leaves around day 17, before then only 5.8ph 50ppm filtered water.

On the 21st of december the plants started displaying a weird tip clawing down and then a weird burn, not like a nute burn, it grew fast and on the sides and a chlorosis followed, the yellowing is always intravenal and always on the older leaves and moves up. my new growth is fine on all four plants.

At first I thought it was a deficiency since its a mobile problem. It kind of looked like a K or Mg problem, and since I was feeding them very low ppms i upped the PPMs gradually. That made new growth come out beautiful, they clearly loved the elevated ppms. The green looks healthy on new growth and no apparent problem, but the older leaves are all suffering. I upped the PPMs to around 350-450. Always 5.8ph. The problem sort of slowed down but its still there. The older leaves develop either a chlorosis or a dark brown appearance and then it starts to die...

On the last week Ive been paying attention to the Ph. I'm starting to think its a Ph lockdown since I'm feeding them all the nutrients they need.

So I tested the runoff.

If I feed them 5.8ph the runoff is 6.9...7. I'm a total newbie but Its of my understanding that the whole thing should be between 5.5-6.5ph, right?

I started flushing every other feeding with plain ph water... the problem still continues yet the flush runoff did start to come out more clear and with lower ppms, yet the ph runoff is still around 7, sometimes it comes to 6.8.

This is a typical feeding menu of the girls:

2GAL res: 6.5ml Calimagic, 4ml floramicro, 4ml floragro, 4ml florabloom, 2ml budcandy. (i'm on a transition feeding menu) 400PPM - 5.8ph. The order is first calimagic, then micro, then all the others.

Attached are some pictures of the problem once it showed up and some of present time.

I have no idea of what this might be.

What should I do? Flush more often until a decent ph comes out? Add something to the medium that will lower my ph? Up the ppm?

Thanks everybody sorry for the long post like I said this is driving me nuts and I just want healthy plants!

Any help is much appreciated!

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First of all - never run plain water through coco - ever. If a flush is required to adjust the pH of the root zone - (and yours is way out of whack) - run 1/4 strength nutes pH'd to 6.0 through until the pH coming out is the same as what's going in. With a 50/50 coco/perlite mix you should be feeding every day to substantial run off. I feed once a day from sprout and twice a day when in flower. Coco is drain to waste hydroponics and fresh nutrients should always be available like all hydroponics - also, never let it dry out - it should always be saturated. Good luck.

MickFoster said:

First of all - never run plain water through coco - ever. If a flush is required to adjust the pH of the root zone - (and yours is way out of whack) - run 1/4 strength nutes pH'd to 6.0 through until the pH coming out is the same as what's going in. With a 50/50 coco/perlite mix you should be feeding every day to substantial run off. I feed once a day from sprout and twice a day when in flower. Coco is drain to waste hydroponics and fresh nutrients should always be available like all hydroponics - also, never let it dry out - it should always be saturated. Good luck.

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Thanks for your help dude. It's been crazy. I think they are mg deficient due to high calcium with micro plus calmag...

I think you should cut your nutrients down as well to 1/4 strength. Also is it an outdoor grow? If its indoor what light are you using? What's the average lights up temperature in and around your plants?

Budgrowguide said:

I think you should cut your nutrients down as well to 1/4 strength. Also is it an outdoor grow? If its indoor what light are you using? What's the average lights up temperature in and around your plants?

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I've changed over to head formula, they are loving it. Its an indoor grow, 400w MH lamp, switching to HPS soon. Lights on temp 26-30 celcius.

Hello!!!

So I started with the lucas formula 1 gram epsom salt , 6 ml mico , 9 ml bloom... the girls started loving it. New growth looks amazing and the deficiency seemed to stop growing. I've been doing a feed feed feed water schedule...

But my runoff PH was still of 6.7-6.9. So this week I started lowering the ph gradually up until my ph was at 5.5 in and finally i got a 6.5 ph out, which is in the coco range from what I've heard. good move?

This new deficiency showed up last night (see attached photos). Do you thing the lowering of the IN ph caused this?

Should I flush? plain ph water?

Should I do a water feed water schedule?

Jon_a said:

This new deficiency showed up last night (see attached photos). Do you thing the lowering of the IN ph caused this?

Should I flush? plain ph water?

Should I do a water feed water schedule?

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The problem looks like the pH is off. As I mentioned in an earlier post, and you can believe me or not - if you flush, always use 1/4 strength nutes and never give plain water in coco. If you continue doing what you're doing, you will continue to have problems.

This plant is 38 day old and has been fed every day with nutes pH'd to 6.0.

MickFoster said:

if you flush, always use 1/4 strength nutes and never give plain water in coco.
This plant is 38 day old and has been fed every day with nutes pH'd to 6.0.
View attachment 4070333

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Hey Mick thanks for the reply. Yeah I hear you man, Its lots of inputs and I'm trying to figure out a route to follow, but I guess you have a point and a plan that seems to work. I'll give it a try for a week and I'll post pics as it evolves.

thanks!

I had ph problems in coco as well. I initially thought it was TMV but after finally checking the runoff ph I noticed that the ph was coming out at a 5.3 I started to water and feed at the far end of the ph zone. So in my case that meant 6.5. In your case i would recommend the converse. Water feed at 5.5 and it will eventually go to the zone 5.5 - 6.5.

Also coco does not want to be wet all the time. If you follow that advice you will have a swarm of fungus gnats to swim through just to see your babies. I had them bad and it was from excessively frequent waterings. The top must dry out just like soil.

Finally when watering I throw a couple of pickle jars worth of un-ph'ed no nute tap water in first before I send the water and cal mag through. I didnt know it would hurt the plant. I just wanted to save on nutes and leach out the old nutes with very low ppm water. In my case this is 30 ppm on the 500 scale. I havent noticed any harm in this. MickFoster do you think this is an issue for me?

Commycharb said:

I had ph problems in coco as well. I initially thought it was TMV but after finally checking the runoff ph I noticed that the ph was coming out at a 5.3 I started to water and feed at the far end of the ph zone. So in my case that meant 6.5. In your case i would recommend the converse. Water feed at 5.5 and it will eventually go to the zone 5.5 - 6.5.

Also coco does not want to be wet all the time. If you follow that advice you will have a swarm of fungus gnats to swim through just to see your babies. I had them bad and it was from excessively frequent waterings. The top must dry out just like soil.

Finally when watering I throw a couple of pickle jars worth of un-ph'ed no nute tap water in first before I send the water and cal mag through. I didnt know it would hurt the plant. I just wanted to save on nutes and leach out the old nutes with very low ppm water. In my case this is 30 ppm on the 500 scale. I havent noticed any harm in this. MickFoster do you think this is an issue for me?

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You try to flush with tap water that leaves the water treatment plant at Ph 8? Wise move.

Commycharb said:

Also coco does not want to be wet all the time. If you follow that advice you will have a swarm of fungus gnats to swim through just to see your babies.

Click to expand...

On the contrary - coco is drain to waste hydroponics and like all hydroponics, the roots stay wet all the time. I have had fungus gnats once and they are easy to control and eliminate. The problem that most people have with coco is that they treat it like soil and it's not. Running plain water through coco messes up the cation exchange capacity and is not advised.

Coco likes 5.8 ph,no flushing plain water, needs water at least once a day, sand on top prevents fruit flys, coco gets high in potassium when to dry, coco is not soil don't treat it like it is.