Seedlings stopped growing, leaves curving, pale leaves, purple stems

Hi,
I am a 1st-time grower.
I have seedlings that cracked 10 days ago. They have been in peat plugs inside a tray for ~8 days. I had been watering them with bottled poland spring water while inside the tray. I wasn’t testing poland spring’s pH.

Cotyledons Unfolded 7 days ago.
Roots showed up through the plug’s bottom ~4-5 days ago.

2 days ago I transferred them into 5 gal buckets and started feeding them botanicare grow nutes mixed into filtered tap water (not RO though). I also started testing the pH with a noobie liquid drop test kit (I don’t have $ for those $60-90 digital meters).

The buckets are empty, save for a thin layer of the drained runoff. I have been top watering them, as I read that the roots must reach through the basket before you start the bubble setup.

The seedlings stopped growing before I transferred them, and transferring+nutes doesn’t seem to help. Leaves have been curving down.Sprouts became pale.

Stems have been purple since ~5-6 days ago.

The girls are 2 feet away from Feit 240 w (true wattage from the wall) LED light (~400 w HID equivalent according to manufacturer).

Please help!
If I understand correctly, they should already have several sets of leaves.


I tried watering them less, I tried watering them more. Nothing is helping.


Four days ago:
(Fifth seedling died from what seems to be the damping-off fungus—it withered away thin stem with brownish root).








Them now:
(Notice pale and curved leaves; no growth)

P.S. these are Nirvana Northern Lights autos

I always had that problem until I put an oscillating fan in the room.

Forgot to mention (although, it’s probably self-evident):

I was going to do DWC. Right now the sprouts are inside peat plugs submerged in clay pebbles inside 6-inch baskets.

TychoMonolyth said:

I always had that problem until I put an oscillating fan in the room.

Click to expand...

Does it have to be oscillating? If a fan blows on a sprout constantly, in one direction--is it bad?

Oscillating fans blow the air around the room. When it passes by the seedlings, they wave i the breeze a bit, and that's enough. If you have a fan that doesn't move, try to bounce the air off a wall of something. You just want circulation as opposed to a hurricane. Know what I mean?

I'm currently having similar issues with my seedlings. I think i let them get too cold over night. (DYI setup, lessons learned) what's your temps like? I've moved my lights closer and partly domed them to get a more consistent temp on mine. We'll see if it does the trick.

My guess would be a combination of them being stunted from stress from transplant, ph changes and most likely over watering and over strength nutrients (spring water usually has a ph around 7 or higher from my experience) if I were you I’d dial back the nutrients and add a root tonic like A rizzotonic to help establish roots out the bottom and get them into there forever home sooner rather than later, purple stems could be a magnesium deficiency cause from lockout with the ph fluctuations, like others have said your temps and humidity play a very important role as well so get those right sooner rather than later as well good luck

We love those little suckers to death don't we? Life can be hard and.. what is it they say about hardship? "It makes you stronger"? I believe it (until it crosses the line into abuse). That's also true for plants. That means don't do everything for your seedlings. Actually, don't do much for them at all.

Water every 3rd day. Never soak them. Only add food to the water every 3rd feeding starting at 1/4 strength at week 2 (after the first true leaves have started). Increase food to 3/4 at week 3. Keep a space heater to keep the room at 72-78f. Keep the air circulating. That's about it.

At week 4 or 5 you can transplant an Autoflower ONCE into their final destination (pot or ground). Peat pots are great because you don't have to disturb the roots. Just put the pot in the hole. Photos can be up potted often of course.