Where am I going wrong?

I've only ever grown in dwc and know absolutely fuck all about how/when/what to water when it comes to soil. I've seen people say coco is a kind of middle ground between soil and hydro and it's more forgiving than dwc. As I understand it, you water the pots everyday or several times a day until run off I've been doing that but my plants seem to have stopped growing.

These plants were doing great at first, 5 weeks ago they were put into 1 litre pots, I was feeding them 3ml/2ml/1ml grow micro bloom GH series, and 1ml Calmag per litre.

Then when they were rooted out I put them into 9 litre air pots I soaked the pots with the above and began giving them food everyday until run off, I bumped the grow up and got really bad nitrogen claw. So I've diluted my res down with plain water, it's down to around 1.0ec from 1.8ec and I've fed them until runoff everyday for about a week like that. The plants seem to have ground to a halt and the back right one has gone all kinds of weird colours, I'm worried that it's a root problem.

The coco is constantly damp, is that right? Should I let it dry out at all or keep ploughing water into it?

So what do I do? Shall I carry on giving them water until runoff or shall I leave them alone for a few days to dry out? Or shall I dump the res and give them plain water or flush them or what?

Garythegoose said:

from 1.8ec

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yikes. that's pretty hot for smallish plants.

My tap water is 0.6ec, then 1ml/l Calmag takes it up to 1.0, then nutes on top bring it to 1.8ec.

since you have GH nutes, i'd try H3AD's formula for coco. i think it's 6 mL micro/ 9 mL bloom and 1g/gal of epsom salts. double check to make sure that's correct.

i see some tip burn on the back left one. back right one looks like too much N. front one just looks sad.

I might try h3ads formula once I have got things working properly, I don't think chopping and changing things is going to do me any favours until I have got the hang of what I'm doing. So in the meantime, what should I be doing with regards to my current approach? Should I be feeding until run off every day and keeping the coco wet, or let it dry out, or give it plain water or what?

i tried coco for 2 grows and threw it all in the garbage and went back to my true love, dwc.

i'd flush with much lighter nutes. you shouldn't flush coco with plain water.

did your 0.6 tap water give you trouble in dwc?

maybe some coco experts will chime in, i'm not one for sure. good luck!

My tap water never gave me trouble in dwc, used to have RO water a few years ago but moved into a house with a water meter now so can't justify the cost of running the RO filter.

I guess another factor for me in coco is it doesn't grow as fast as dwc so I may be seeing slower growth as a problem when that's just the speed they grow at!

Why did you ditch your coco grows?

How are you mixing your nutrients in detail?

Garythegoose said:

Why did you ditch your coco grows?

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well i came from dwc and it is much slower as you said.

and no way in the world i'm going to have troubles with my medium was my main reason.

Airwalker16 said:

How are you mixing your nutrients in detail?

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I fill my res with water, add Calmag, stir, add micro, then grow, then bloom stirring in between. Then ph test it, it usually ends up around 6.5ph, so I add a squirt of ph down and give it a stir, let it settle for half an hour, then test it again until its at ph5.8. I have a small air stone in there to keep it oxygenated.

Garythegoose said:

I fill my res with water, add Calmag, stir, add micro, then grow, then bloom stirring in between. Then ph test it, it usually ends up around 6.5ph, so I add a squirt of ph down and give it a stir, let it settle for half an hour, then test it again until its at ph5.8. I have a small air stone in there to keep it oxygenated.

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Hm. You're doing it right at least.

I think you have more of a watering issue, combine with environment, light, heat, humidity, wind ( air flow ) etc. I ran hydro for a very long time I noticed from playing with coco they like a little bit different environment. I also agree that coco is faster then soil but no where's near close to hydro.

You are deff watering/feeding them too often and with too much solution. Also what are your environmental conditions? Coco is a great medium and difficult to overwater ONLY if your plant is big enough in the container it is in. Bet your plants were doing fine till you went to the bigger pots..
Do a runoff test and see what ec you are getting in runoff. When your plants are not big enough to take up alot of root space in a pot and you water everyday to runoff your just asking for problems. How heavy is one of the plants right after feeding and the next day before you feed again? If they are still very heavy you are giving them too much too often.

Do you know what your source water contains as far as minerals ?
My max ec tops at 1.2 in flower running RO, sort of hard to figure what your feeds contain without knowing what your base water contains.
The water authority you get your water from should have a water quality report somewhere.

westcoast420 said:

You are deff watering/feeding them too often and with too much solution. Also what are your environmental conditions? Coco is a great medium and difficult to overwater ONLY if your plant is big enough in the container it is in. Bet your plants were doing fine till you went to the bigger pots..
Do a runoff test and see what ec you are getting in runoff. When your plants are not big enough to take up alot of root space in a pot and you water everyday to runoff your just asking for problems. How heavy is one of the plants right after feeding and the next day before you feed again? If they are still very heavy you are giving them too much too often.

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Yes they were doing fine until they went into bigger pots. I've diluted the res down and given them a light feed each morning the last few days and they have perked right up. I think I managed to bog them down with too much water, combined with the high N levels they weren't happy. The pots are still quite heavy, should I let them dry out a bit or just give them one or two light feeds a day and keep them damp?

Letting them dry out, a little, will encourage the roots to explore.

Yes let them dry out more between waterings, shouldnt be watering more than once a day if that.

I'm no expert by any means...I'v been running dwc for nearly 10 years and I'v been running coco and dwc side by side for 2 years. Growth has been about equal in both. This current run my coco is out growing the dwc (same environment side by side). I'm also running a coco grow at another location with a partner where everything else is in dwc and the coco is outgrowing them. Side note: because the coco is outgrowing the dwc we will be switching to all coco with about 50 plants.

The only time I use a cal/mag is when I up pot. I only use it once for the initial feeding. More importantly is the ph. I feed the coco at 6.3 for the entire life cycle.
Plants of the OP's size I would feed every 2 or three days (never let coco completely dry out) with 1.0 ec with plenty of run off until they get larger. When they get noticeably bigger I would NOT increase the ec but would feed every day with plenty of runoff for a couple weeks. At about week 6 I up the ec to 1.2 or 1.3 and feed every day with plenty of runoff. I'm currently in week 2 of flower and I'v upped the ec to 1.4

I'v never had issues such as the ones you are presenting in this thread (edit) knock on wood

The time lines are with clones, of course it will take longer running from seed.

Just my 2 cent

Good luck

Garythegoose said:

I've only ever grown in dwc and know absolutely fuck all about how/when/what to water when it comes to soil. I've seen people say coco is a kind of middle ground between soil and hydro and it's more forgiving than dwc. As I understand it, you water the pots everyday or several times a day until run off I've been doing that but my plants seem to have stopped growing.

These plants were doing great at first, 5 weeks ago they were put into 1 litre pots, I was feeding them 3ml/2ml/1ml grow micro bloom GH series, and 1ml Calmag per litre.

Then when they were rooted out I put them into 9 litre air pots I soaked the pots with the above and began giving them food everyday until run off, I bumped the grow up and got really bad nitrogen claw. So I've diluted my res down with plain water, it's down to around 1.0ec from 1.8ec and I've fed them until runoff everyday for about a week like that. The plants seem to have ground to a halt and the back right one has gone all kinds of weird colours, I'm worried that it's a root problem.

The coco is constantly damp, is that right? Should I let it dry out at all or keep ploughing water into it?

So what do I do? Shall I carry on giving them water until runoff or shall I leave them alone for a few days to dry out? Or shall I dump the res and give them plain water or flush them or what?

Click to expand...

Check your runoff ec. If its way higher than what you put in by alot then that can give you an idea if theres salt buildup or not. Dalt buildups can cause nutrient lockout or worse nutrient burn. How much runoff do you go for?

NrthrnMichigan said:

I'm no expert by any means...I'v been running dwc for nearly 10 years and I'v been running coco and dwc side by side for 2 years. Growth has been about equal in both. This current run my coco is out growing the dwc (same environment side by side). I'm also running a coco grow at another location with a partner where everything else is in dwc and the coco is outgrowing them. Side note: because the coco is outgrowing the dwc we will be switching to all coco with about 50 plants.

The only time I use a cal/mag is when I up pot. I only use it once for the initial feeding. More importantly is the ph. I feed the coco at 6.3 for the entire life cycle.
Plants of the OP's size I would feed every 2 or three days (never let coco completely dry out) with 1.0 ec with plenty of run off until they get larger. When they get noticeably bigger I would NOT increase the ec but would feed every day with plenty of runoff for a couple weeks. At about week 6 I up the ec to 1.2 or 1.3 and feed every day with plenty of runoff. I'm currently in week 2 of flower and I'v upped the ec to 1.4

I'v never had issues such as the ones you are presenting in this thread (edit) knock on wood

The time lines are with clones, of course it will take longer running from seed.

Just my 2 cent

Good luck

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Yeah I don't mean to disagree with you, I don't know how you run your systems etc, we all do it differently, but I've been running a bucket system for a good 20 years, I mean this is the system I know inside and out, I mix my own formulas, some formulas require a lot of foliar feeding and some are more basic. my rooms are very precise in maintaining proper environment etc. Anyhow in my hydro system with ease I can veg a clone for 3 to 4 weeks and have a 6 to 7 foot plant thats 4 to 5 feet across at any point. I commonly split stems because of growth rate, to the point I lose plants sometimes. Now I haven't been playing coco for nearly as long but it hasn't shown me anything close to this, I tried coco years back and gave it up because it couldn't keep up, I know other guys running it and it just can't do what hydro does from what I seen.