Seedlings in trouble already

Wolfmoon2682

Wolfmoon2682

Member
Growing in Mother Earth coco. Came in a bag, seems it came with fungus gnats because i have no idea how they would have gotten into my house in March. A little under a week and i spotted one, squished it and was hoping it was a one off... i knew better. Saw another small one today on one of my white widow autos.

Squished it and flushed all the plants with 3% hydrogen peroxide 1 to 4 ratio. I used a gallon and a half but here lies the other problem. How much do you need to water a 3 gallon pot with at LEAST 30% perlite mix, before you see runoff? Iv'e put nearly 2 gallons into one pot that was only up to 2 gallons full and still got barely ANY runoff. I'm using Vivosun fabric pots. How much water am i going to have to dump into these to get runoff?

Do i need runoff every watering? If so, my nutes, when it comes time to use them, aren't going to last very long. Why aren't these draining properly? Coco, perlite, AND FABRIC pots. They are staying heavy for days and don't appear to be letting go of enough water.

Oh and for the record, i know excess moisture causes gnats, these little BASTARDS started before i began watering to try and get runoff. I was only watering a small area around the seedlings, the rest of the medium was only using moisture out of the bag.


S.O.S!!!!!!
 
New Age United

New Age United

Well-Known Member
The perlite is soaking up a bunch of water for the first time, you won't have to use that much water every time. And yes you want to go to runoff every time you water to clean it out, when you feed them there shouldn't be any runoff but a little is no biggie.
 
Wolfmoon2682

Wolfmoon2682

Member
New Age United said:
The perlite is soaking up a bunch of water for the first time, you won't have to use that much water every time. And yes you want to go to runoff every time you water to clean it out, when you feed them there shouldn't be any runoff but a little is no biggie.
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I was told water to runoff every feeding... so much mixed info. I was thinking water to runoff every few weeks to prevent salt buildup, but people said. NO, you'll mess up your soil PH without taking readings, then i hear NO, you take reading with coco you'll kill yourself from frustration lol.

Another problem is the very same conditions that gnats love, are the ones coco NEEDS to thrive. What a damn mess. I need to smoke a bowl and calm my ass down. One day at a time. All i know is these little bastards can't hang around. Pretty sure they are already causing yellowing in one of my plants. Poor thing doesn't even have it's second set of true leaves yet and it's yellowing and appears stunted.

EDIT: If i could i would toss them all and start fresh. But as it is the season is getting late for me, and it's going to be hot where i live. I'm aiming for a late May, early June harvest.

Good tip about the perlite, i hadn't considered that.
 
JohnDee

JohnDee

Well-Known Member
Wolfmoon,
I've used mosquito dunks effectively to treat gnats.

And never flush coco with just water. Always put at least some calmag or 1/4 nutes or something like that. Straight water on coco can undo buffering.
JD
 
JohnDee

JohnDee

Well-Known Member
...and clearly you are a newbie taking advice from other newbies...so I totally understand your need for a bowl. Enjoy.

The runoff thing is a personal choice. I try to feed light enough that I don't build up salts. But many guys swear by 20% runoff with each watering. Water to runoff once a week and check ppm and ph...that's what I do.
JD
 
New Age United

New Age United

Well-Known Member
JohnDee said:
Wolfmoon,
I've used mosquito dunks effectively to treat gnats.

And never flush coco with just water. Always put at least some calmag or 1/4 nutes or something like that. Straight water on coco can undo buffering.
JD
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Yes I agree with this I didn't realize you were using coco

Edit: ok it's the first thing you said damn I gotta pay more attention lol!!!
 
Jimdamick

Jimdamick

Well-Known Member
Wolfmoon2682 said:
Another problem is the very same conditions that gnats love, are the ones coco NEEDS to thrive. What a damn mess. I need to smoke a bowl and calm my ass down. One day at a time. All i know is these little bastards can't hang around. Pretty sure they are already causing yellowing in one of my plants. Poor thing doesn't even have it's second set of true leaves yet and it's yellowing and appears stunted.
Click to expand...
Gnats will go for your plants root system too lay eggs and its the larvae which will do the damage. It takes them a while to establish though, and by that time your roots are so developed they will have no effect

Basically a fungus gnat is just annoying as fuck, but shouldn't really harm your plants.

These work pretty well, sprays, not so much



Good luck
 
Wolfmoon2682

Wolfmoon2682

Member
Jimdamick said:
Gnats will go for your plants root system too lay eggs and its the larvae which will do the damage. It takes them a while to establish though, and by that time your roots are so developed they will have no effect

Basically a fungus gnat is just annoying as fuck, but shouldn't really harm your plants.

These work pretty well, sprays, not so much



Good luck
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You just prevented a potential cardiac arrest sir... seriously though, my wife is a two time cancer survivor and my mother is a diabetic on all sorts of medications and all she wants is a J at night to sleep. So everything is on this grow right now since the prices are too damn high in the market. Yeah i want to get baked, but something about other people relying on this, that makes the urgency even more dire. So it's good to hear they likely won't wipe the crop. These are autos though so i'm still worried about their final performance. I can't veg them out or slow flowering at all, so it's balls to the wall from the moment they popped and i knew that. So the gnats really scared the shit out of me.


JohnDee said:
...and clearly you are a newbie taking advice from other newbies...so I totally understand your need for a bowl. Enjoy.

The runoff thing is a personal choice. I try to feed light enough that I don't build up salts. But many guys swear by 20% runoff with each watering. Water to runoff once a week and check ppm and ph...that's what I do.
JD
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Yeah that's what i want to do, water til runoff only once a week at most. I plan to feed these ladies lightly. Unless anyone objects, i'm growing 2 white widow autos and one super skunk auto. I don't think either strain needs more than the average bear in terms of nutes.

Now my concern is this... i just hammered seedlings with water... tons of water. They are in 3 gallon pots lol. They are NOT going to drink that all. But i had to douse those larvae and i know they were down there man! Will these be alright as wet as they are? As i said, they are in coco, 30% perlite, likely more lol, i went a little crazy with it, and fabric pots. Should i expect root rot or some crazy shit like that?
 
Wolfmoon2682

Wolfmoon2682

Member
Jimdamick said:
I agree.
Your going to get salt one way or the other, so if you run all that water thru you are just adding more salt to the coco in a sense.
Pus dealing with the runoff can be annoying.
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Oh hey, what do you guys think about sand as a top dressing? I hear it can mess up PH though... but it acts like glass so those little bastards can't get under the soil i heard.

Good to know about not flushing without some nutes with coco, i had no idea. Hopefully what i just added is alright. They get their feedings in about 4 days anyways, right around when i suspect they'll begin to dry out from the peroxide soak.
 
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JohnDee

JohnDee

Well-Known Member
Wolfmoon2682 said:
As i said, they are in coco, 30% perlite, likely more lol, i went a little crazy with it, and fabric pots. Should i expect root rot or some crazy shit like that?
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Pretty sure you'll be ok there. Coco, even when totally saturated leaves some airspace for O2 to the roots. On the wet plants...if you can bump up the temp a bit and maybe a little more ventilation. That'll help the coco dry. Right now I have a fairly large plant in 3 gallons of coco and it takes a week to dry out.

To add confusion to the whole coco issue is that aggressive growers never let it dry. Feed it daily because the feeding draws O2 to roots and brings in more nutrients.

With coco, you want to let it dry a bit when young to promote root growth. Once established in final pot, you can probably water (and feed) daily. Read some coco threads and see how others do it.
JD
 
JohnDee

JohnDee

Well-Known Member
...forgot to respond to your question about sand. I've never used a top dressing. Back when I had that problem...I used mosquito dunks. But another option is diatematious earth. It's a fine granular substance that kills the larvae. Better thn sand,
JD
 
Wolfmoon2682

Wolfmoon2682

Member
JohnDee said:
Pretty sure you'll be ok there. Coco, even when totally saturated leaves some airspace for O2 to the roots. On the wet plants...if you can bump up the temp a bit and maybe a little more ventilation. That'll help the coco dry. Right now I have a fairly large plant in 3 gallons of coco and it takes a week to dry out.

To add confusion to the whole coco issue is that aggressive growers never let it dry. Feed it daily because the feeding draws O2 to roots and brings in more nutrients.

With coco, you want to let it dry a bit when young to promote root growth. Once established in final pot, you can probably water (and feed) daily. Read some coco threads and see how others do it.
JD
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Good call, i was just considering turning on the exhaust. RH is up now anyways. Good to know about how to treat the medium, its a little tricky at first since like you said, they need to seek out that water to establish roots, but then it's kept moist at all times, each watering drawing in more nuts + fresh oxygen to keep the flow going. That's GREAT for me since i had BAD luck with soil compaction/saturation my first grow. Also I'm looking into mosquito dunks and neem oil. Diatematious earth needs to be applied dry right? I think i'll try the dunks and neem for now. Thanks for all the tips guys. Really helped me a lot!

Edit: Mosquito dunks look like they work extremely well, added to my amazon cart. Needed more ducting and some binder clips for LST anyways. :bigjoint:wish me luck all!
 
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C

CannaCountry

Well-Known Member
A few pennies:

The challenge you'll face with your coco is the challenge of the Auto plant. It's best to plant them in their final pot as I suspect you have. The issue is managing the large pot vs. the tiny plant at the beginning. Once you get past this balancing act, you should be able to feed (not water, but feed) every day, multiple times a day. Your perlite is only going to help in this case, by adding to your coco's already great ability to drain and hold O2.

As to run off...many here throw the idea around like it's gospel or it has to occur. It doesn't. If you're a salty feeder, you're a salty feeder regardless of the run off. The point being if you feed your plants correctly, you won't need to address salt build up or sweat out another night worrying if you had enough run off on your last feed. I will say this though, if you want to maximize your grow, you certainly want to fully saturate the coco with feed each watering which should provide some sort of run off, even if it's just a few ounces. This way you know you did your best to put as much feed into that plant at that particular feeding time. Long story short, get as much feed into your medium as possible, but don't worry yourself to death as to percentages of run off or what not. Feed at the correct rates and you'll be fine.

Fungus Gnats; much respect to JohnDee and the many others that use the Mosquito Dunks successfully, however, I'll just simply say this. If you read all the small print on the label and pull up the SDS for this material, it clearly states these dunks are not to be used in potable water situations. If this is the case, I find it difficult to water this stuff into my medium, allowing my plant to take it up into its system, of which I will eventually consume / smoke. Perhaps I'm paranoid from my background in dealing with Hazardous Materials for 15+ years, or maybe I'm just too old to change. Never the less, I'm not pointing a finger or telling you not to do what's been suggested to you. I simply stick to the yellow boards, manage my medium moisture the best I can and carry on. The gnats are more a nuisance than anything so don't fret either way.

Hope some of this helps; good luck friend.
 
Wolfmoon2682

Wolfmoon2682

Member
CannaCountry said:
A few pennies:

The challenge you'll face with your coco is the challenge of the Auto plant. It's best to plant them in their final pot as I suspect you have. The issue is managing the large pot vs. the tiny plant at the beginning. Once you get past this balancing act, you should be able to feed (not water, but feed) every day, multiple times a day. Your perlite is only going to help in this case, by adding to your coco's already great ability to drain and hold O2.

As to run off...many here throw the idea around like it's gospel or it has to occur. It doesn't. If you're a salty feeder, you're a salty feeder regardless of the run off. The point being if you feed your plants correctly, you won't need to address salt build up or sweat out another night worrying if you had enough run off on your last feed. I will say this though, if you want to maximize your grow, you certainly want to fully saturate the coco with feed each watering which should provide some sort of run off, even if it's just a few ounces. This way you know you did your best to put as much feed into that plant at that particular feeding time. Long story short, get as much feed into your medium as possible, but don't worry yourself to death as to percentages of run off or what not. Feed at the correct rates and you'll be fine.

Fungus Gnats; much respect to JohnDee and the many others that use the Mosquito Dunks successfully, however, I'll just simply say this. If you read all the small print on the label and pull up the SDS for this material, it clearly states these dunks are not to be used in potable water situations. If this is the case, I find it difficult to water this stuff into my medium, allowing my plant to take it up into its system, of which I will eventually consume / smoke. Perhaps I'm paranoid from my background in dealing with Hazardous Materials for 15+ years, or maybe I'm just too old to change. Never the less, I'm not pointing a finger or telling you not to do what's been suggested to you. I simply stick to the yellow boards, manage my medium moisture the best I can and carry on. The gnats are more a nuisance than anything so don't fret either way.

Hope some of this helps; good luck friend.
Click to expand...
Yep, planted em right into the 3 gallons straight away :) the challenge has definitely been trying to water just what i need. Which went to hell once i drenched with the peroxide solution. It's drying out nicely though. Left the exhaust on all night and the top soil is already half dry. Glad i decided on fabric pots, i'm sure that helps a bit.

As for the mosquito dunks, they seem to use a specific bacteria. Seems safe enough. I'm getting some in case these little bastards explode on me one night out of the blue. But thus far iv'e only seen two adults in the span of a week. Aside from a random bag seed that's yellowing but praying at just under 2 weeks, nothing else seems stunted or lacking. I suspect my nearly 2 week old is in need of a feeding but the pot is still quite wet. That'll have to wait a couple of days until they all get their first feed. My 2 week old is being put on my 4 day old autos schedule, since they matter more, the random is kind of a side experiment lol. It's a photo and i plan to finish it last if its female.

I'm using canna a and b. Planning on 1ml of each and 1ml of calmag. Start off real slow i think.
 
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