CheeseMouse
New Member
Hi guys,
I'm new to RUI although I've been reading here on and off for a while. I've registered because I've got a problem with an Unknown Cheese strain I'm growing.
I've just got the one plant which has been vegging for around 10 weeks althoug two of those were spent re-rooting after bringing her back from the brink of death when root rot took hold.
Had to trim the whole ball back to nothing and she re-rooted and came booming back
Anyhoo, she's now 6 weeks into flower and is under two 600 watt HPS lamps. Both in cool tubes, one mounted vertically at the side of the plant and one mounted horizontally and I rotate the plant about 1/4 turn daily to ensure the plant gets a decent coverage.
She's being grown in a home made 50 litre bubble bucket and is being fed Genesis 3 part formula. The bubbler is made from one of those 50 litre storage tubs and has no water pumps or anything. She does have a 6 inch airstone which sits directly below the net pot and is fed by a 60 litre per minute air pump.
The problem is, the EC is all over the place and I can't seem to level her off to the point she's happy. It hasn't helped that about a week ago I noticed my PH meter had cracked and was giving me incorrect readings so I've been chasing the PH about with some brewing PH strips while waiting for a replacement. I've now got a replacement PH meter and have settled my PH back to around 5.6 and it usually doesn't rise too much too quick but the EC seems to always be on the rise no matter how weak I make the nute solution.
Up until about a 10 - 14 days or so ago, she seemed happy around 1.4 - 1.5 but then I noticed a horrible smell coming out of the res, like ponds - it just appeared literally overnight. One minute there was no smell (and I'm often sniffing my tank) then the next, it stinks like a pond and I knew what it was. Despite changing the water nearly 3 times in one week there was the smell of ponds. At which point I stopped the feed which I was trying to re-introduce from all the previous upset and put her back on a regime of nothing but water, regenaroot and wiltguard, all at 1/4 strength taking the EC to about 0.9 including background tapwater ec. Incidentally, my tap water EC is already around 0.4 - 0.6 and I include it when I set my EC.
After about 4 - 5 days under this regime (having changed the solution twice in this time to clean it all out) I've tried to put her back on feed but she just doesn't seem to want to know.
At the moment she's even objecting to food at an EC of 1.08 which is not much above my tap water's ec.
For the past three or four days she's been drinking water and leaving the food. If I top the res back up to the original mark in the morning, the EC is back to bang on 1.08.
I've tried everything I can think of but it seems like even on tap water she's raising the EC :S
It's got me so confused I'm beginning to doubt even the basics of growing which I know are set in stone LOL
The odd thing is, the plant looks for the most part very healthy and she's definitely putting on the weight. My aim was to keep her as green as possible right up until the flush before harvest and for the most parts I've done that although I'm now seeing around 7 or 8 large fan leaves which are starting to yellow which I take to mean the plant is eating itself meaning she's not being fed with what I'm giving her.
I know at some point I was running my nutes too high but that was back at like week 3 as I was starting to knock off the N and increase the P and K and I caught that in time as far as I know because it was the very end tip of some of the leafs starting to go white / yellow which made me realise and that's now stopped since correcting it and there is no sign of nute burn anywhere. It is really really puzzling. It's like the EC is telling me I'm over feeding her but she's not acting like it. There's no burning, there can't be a build up of unused nutrients since she hasn't sat in a res full of the same nutes for longer than 5 days since I've been noticing the problem and I seem to be continually backing off the strength only for her to still not be happy.
I've checked the calibration of my EC and PH pens recently and they're reporting in fine so I really don't know what the hell is going on.
I read so many counter intuitive things that seem to make sense like maybe the EC in the solution is too low and the plant is spitting back the crap in the tank in an attempt equalise itself because the EC is higer in the plant than the res but I then read this only applies if the water hasn't dropped... I really don't know what to think.
All I'm doing at the moment is topping up every day with just PH adjusted water which brings the EC back to where it was.
Another odd thing about this strain... The friend who donated it to me (he got it off someone else so he can't tell me much about it) seems to drown his plant in food whether it wants it or not and they do great.
I've seen his plants and he never pulls less than 15 ozzies off a plant under a 600HPS. He vegges for around the same time as me 4 - 6 weeks.
He's always telling me how he set's the EC such and such level and the next day they're way higher (I'm not saying he's the most clued up grower) and the PH is all over the place due to the plant roots usually overtaking the bubblers he's using so they don't hold the volume of water they should. I really don't know how he does it. If he were 6 weeks into flower he'd be feeding his around 1.9 - 2.1 EC whether or not it drinks the water and leaves the food :S
I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. This guy is a good friend (not really too clued up about the technical stuff) not a friend of a friend of a friend.
I'm not saying my plant won't pull any weight being under 1.2KW of light, they're not looking too bad for week 6, got some lovely colas but if I want to pull the most out of this plant, I've got to get her and keep her happy which the res is telling me she isn't. Although she may look green over 99% of her canopy, this will quickly change if I don't sort out what the EC is telling me and I need to solar panels to stay nice n green for as log as possible.
Sorry for the long post but I like to try to cover all the info I can.
Any thoughts / opinions / more info needed???
Thanks!!!
I'm new to RUI although I've been reading here on and off for a while. I've registered because I've got a problem with an Unknown Cheese strain I'm growing.
I've just got the one plant which has been vegging for around 10 weeks althoug two of those were spent re-rooting after bringing her back from the brink of death when root rot took hold.
Had to trim the whole ball back to nothing and she re-rooted and came booming back
Anyhoo, she's now 6 weeks into flower and is under two 600 watt HPS lamps. Both in cool tubes, one mounted vertically at the side of the plant and one mounted horizontally and I rotate the plant about 1/4 turn daily to ensure the plant gets a decent coverage.
She's being grown in a home made 50 litre bubble bucket and is being fed Genesis 3 part formula. The bubbler is made from one of those 50 litre storage tubs and has no water pumps or anything. She does have a 6 inch airstone which sits directly below the net pot and is fed by a 60 litre per minute air pump.
The problem is, the EC is all over the place and I can't seem to level her off to the point she's happy. It hasn't helped that about a week ago I noticed my PH meter had cracked and was giving me incorrect readings so I've been chasing the PH about with some brewing PH strips while waiting for a replacement. I've now got a replacement PH meter and have settled my PH back to around 5.6 and it usually doesn't rise too much too quick but the EC seems to always be on the rise no matter how weak I make the nute solution.
Up until about a 10 - 14 days or so ago, she seemed happy around 1.4 - 1.5 but then I noticed a horrible smell coming out of the res, like ponds - it just appeared literally overnight. One minute there was no smell (and I'm often sniffing my tank) then the next, it stinks like a pond and I knew what it was. Despite changing the water nearly 3 times in one week there was the smell of ponds. At which point I stopped the feed which I was trying to re-introduce from all the previous upset and put her back on a regime of nothing but water, regenaroot and wiltguard, all at 1/4 strength taking the EC to about 0.9 including background tapwater ec. Incidentally, my tap water EC is already around 0.4 - 0.6 and I include it when I set my EC.
After about 4 - 5 days under this regime (having changed the solution twice in this time to clean it all out) I've tried to put her back on feed but she just doesn't seem to want to know.
At the moment she's even objecting to food at an EC of 1.08 which is not much above my tap water's ec.
For the past three or four days she's been drinking water and leaving the food. If I top the res back up to the original mark in the morning, the EC is back to bang on 1.08.
I've tried everything I can think of but it seems like even on tap water she's raising the EC :S
It's got me so confused I'm beginning to doubt even the basics of growing which I know are set in stone LOL
The odd thing is, the plant looks for the most part very healthy and she's definitely putting on the weight. My aim was to keep her as green as possible right up until the flush before harvest and for the most parts I've done that although I'm now seeing around 7 or 8 large fan leaves which are starting to yellow which I take to mean the plant is eating itself meaning she's not being fed with what I'm giving her.
I know at some point I was running my nutes too high but that was back at like week 3 as I was starting to knock off the N and increase the P and K and I caught that in time as far as I know because it was the very end tip of some of the leafs starting to go white / yellow which made me realise and that's now stopped since correcting it and there is no sign of nute burn anywhere. It is really really puzzling. It's like the EC is telling me I'm over feeding her but she's not acting like it. There's no burning, there can't be a build up of unused nutrients since she hasn't sat in a res full of the same nutes for longer than 5 days since I've been noticing the problem and I seem to be continually backing off the strength only for her to still not be happy.
I've checked the calibration of my EC and PH pens recently and they're reporting in fine so I really don't know what the hell is going on.
I read so many counter intuitive things that seem to make sense like maybe the EC in the solution is too low and the plant is spitting back the crap in the tank in an attempt equalise itself because the EC is higer in the plant than the res but I then read this only applies if the water hasn't dropped... I really don't know what to think.
All I'm doing at the moment is topping up every day with just PH adjusted water which brings the EC back to where it was.
Another odd thing about this strain... The friend who donated it to me (he got it off someone else so he can't tell me much about it) seems to drown his plant in food whether it wants it or not and they do great.
I've seen his plants and he never pulls less than 15 ozzies off a plant under a 600HPS. He vegges for around the same time as me 4 - 6 weeks.
He's always telling me how he set's the EC such and such level and the next day they're way higher (I'm not saying he's the most clued up grower) and the PH is all over the place due to the plant roots usually overtaking the bubblers he's using so they don't hold the volume of water they should. I really don't know how he does it. If he were 6 weeks into flower he'd be feeding his around 1.9 - 2.1 EC whether or not it drinks the water and leaves the food :S
I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. This guy is a good friend (not really too clued up about the technical stuff) not a friend of a friend of a friend.
I'm not saying my plant won't pull any weight being under 1.2KW of light, they're not looking too bad for week 6, got some lovely colas but if I want to pull the most out of this plant, I've got to get her and keep her happy which the res is telling me she isn't. Although she may look green over 99% of her canopy, this will quickly change if I don't sort out what the EC is telling me and I need to solar panels to stay nice n green for as log as possible.
Sorry for the long post but I like to try to cover all the info I can.
Any thoughts / opinions / more info needed???
Thanks!!!
