Hpa/Undercurrent hybrid blackberry fire attempt

shawnery

shawnery

Well-Known Member
Starting a new grow after 2 consecutive fails from some sort of contamination. Either an explosion of algea or some form of root rot destroyed my last two tries in my undercurrent system.

I just transferred them from the cloner to the main system. They're in 5in cups and the stem holes in those are to big. To hold the plant in place until the stem grows a but I just taped the 3in puck to the top of the 5in puck. The reason they loom strange and a little ghetto. The extra puck will be removed once the stem grows enough.

I'm growing Blackberry fire from the last plants I lost to root rot to save them. The plants and roots are doing fabulous and they're just at a month old from cutting. I'm running 330ppm with advanced nutrients, silica, calmagic and pool shock. Air temps around 75 to 80 and humidity between 60 and 75 depending on exhaust fan. Cycle timer set to 30sec on/5min off.

Any tips for aero or anything specific that sounds off let me know. Considering my last to grows I'm not holding my breath. I'm keeping my chlorine levels between 2-4 ppms and shocked it much higher. Hopefully this will help with the baddies.
 

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shawnery

shawnery

Well-Known Member
My plants are growing well but they are very light green. I'm hoping it's just a side effect of fast growth but this is my first aero setup so not sure.

Samsung led f564b lights 3500k @ 5" @ 30,000lux
Advanced nutrients ph perfect grow & micro no bloom 1/4 strength
Silica 1/2 stregth
Calimag 1/2 stregth
Hth pool shock 2-5 ppms
ppms 350
Temp 75-77
Humidity 65
Water temp 77-78
Misting times 20sec/5min, I tried 5sec/5min but the plants started to appear underwatered.
 
shawnery

shawnery

Well-Known Member
Ph was off by 1 point above normal. I have these nice medical grade ph strips that I use to double check my cheapo meter which I will be replacing. I checked them against the calibration fluid and they were perfect as were my meters. But when I checked the res the meters were off. So I was going by the strips because my meters act up once in a while. Little did I know that chlorine in my solution was effecting the results with the strips.


Here is the same plant 3 days after transplanting. Different angle but a pleasant amount of growth. Comments or thoughts are always welcome!
 

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shawnery

shawnery

Well-Known Member
Question.

I only run my misters for so long to get the mist into the net cup. Once I have enough roots hanging do i have to worry so much about getting the root in the net cup wet?

I'd like to run the misters for probably 5s at the most because right now they're still dripping 5 minutes later. It's just my concern for drying out the inner roots has me spraying longer.
 
shawnery

shawnery

Well-Known Member
Here's an honest and unchained update on my girls.

They seem to still be recovering from some sort of deficiency which I have assumed was from high ph for an extended period of time.

Secondly my roots had started hitting the water and I started to see just the slightest off white that most people wouldnt even notice but I'm on high alert. I treated by upping my hth just incase there was a water issue. I started seeing brown chunks on a root here or there. Looked around and noticed brown algea growing in small places. This is what was getting caught in the roots which i removed below brown algea. Added two photos of brown algea on 50mic filter.

I immediatly pruned my roots to sit above the water line to stop in further brown algea getting on them and causing root.

Today i went out got 26 gallons of distilled water came home and got to work. Drenched the roots for 30 minutes to help then not dry out. Shocked the system with about 100ppm of chlorine. Washed all surfaces with chlorinated water. Cleaned in pvc pipes as far as possible and then drained the system. Vacuumed the system completely dry and then sprayed down everything with straight h202. Refilled the system with distilled water at 1/4 strength nutes and 5ppms of chlorine.

What I've learned is this,

If your water source is not right for what ever reason no matter what you apply to fix it it won't be enough. I've tried hydroguard, h202, chlorine at 10ppm and still got it when using charcoal filtered tap. I have a cloner that has the same distilled water for almost a month with a pump running 30/30 and chlorine and the roots are pristine shiny noodle white. The cloner even has light leaks, tiny, but the main system has none.

The big issue I've found through research with brown algea is it needs dark, high silicate and high nutrient levels in order to thrive and that is exactly what the perfect system provides.
 

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shawnery

shawnery

Well-Known Member
Here's what the plant is looking like after a week and so of recovering from high ph. The old growth is sad but that's neither here nor there and can't be changed. The newer growth is much better and especially the newer side growth. I just topped them so you can't tell as much with the tops. Leaves look strange near top from being FIM'd a while ago.
 

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shawnery

shawnery

Well-Known Member
Getting slight burnt tips but my ec is dropping slightly while water drops and ph rises so I'll stick with my current nute strength.

I've decided to try out food grade h2o2 instead of chlorine. I think I was stunting my root growth because of the high levels I had to run. I'm hoping I have it under control enough to depend on h2o2.

It has the added benefit of increasing DO levels as well as oxidizing the nasties. I'm running 4ml per gallon for the first dose and then 2ml per gallon everyday.

So far in just one day of stopping the high dose chlorine and switching to h2o2 there has been a blast of growth everywhere. Most of all the roots are starting to grow again at the waterline in the undercurrent part. I think the roots were just burning of right at the waterline.

One day of growth from both pairs of photos. What causes smaller leaf sizes?
 

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shawnery

shawnery

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I used the cheapest mist heads, the cheapest connectors, the cheapest tubing and I haven't had one clog in the entire system.

The advantage to running top of the line 50mic filter inline with the undercurrent pump and a homemade pantyhose filter on the hpa feed tube in a completely sterile system.

I bought qn extra sprayer and connector incase of any issues and it seems as if it may just indeed be a waste of money, hopefully.
 
shawnery

shawnery

Well-Known Member
If anyone reads this,

How do you support your aero plants considering they have nothing holding them besides a puck?

I ended up going with a yoyo hanger for each stem about half way down connected to the roof of the tent.
 

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