From that sheet, i see your water is very alkaline! 192 ppm's of calcium carbonate is a recipe for disaster, especially in coco where ph needs to be kept lower. Hard to say what issue you may have as you posted a single pic of a single leaf of a plant..you need more pics, showing the entire plant to get a better idea, but for now, that's one major thing, is your water. Based on the leaf pic, im seeing a magnesium issue.Tap water...
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Lol where is this written?JSheeve,
It's generally frowned upon to start multiple threads about the same problem. If you provide more info...you may get better responses. Whole plant pictures, strain, type of grow and all that...
JD
I do feel like I'm using a shit load of pH down..From that sheet, i see your water is very alkaline! 192 ppm's of calcium carbonate is a recipe for disaster, especially in coco where ph needs to be kept lower. Hard to say what issue you may have as you posted a single pic of a single leaf of a plant..you need more pics, showing the entire plant to get a better idea, but for now, that's one major thing, is your water. Based on the leaf pic, im seeing a magnesium issue.
Edit: I just now see you're in dwc, and not coco, even worse to have high alkalinity in hydro as ph needs to be kept even lower than coco.
I added 2 tsp scoops of the maxi bloom to the res along with a tsp of Epsom salt. I figured if they were micro-deficient that the maxibloom might help so I added more base to get the added micros. Brought ppm to 850 and pH to 6.17. They got the tail end of a "lights on" and an entire "lights off," I'll see how they are doing here shortly.JSheeve,
It's generally frowned upon to start multiple threads about the same problem. If you provide more info...you may get better responses. Whole plant pictures, strain, type of grow and all that...
JD
When you consider his tap water, roughly 265 PPM, and his PPM only 565 he was only giving them 300 in what looks like about 3 weeks in flower. I think they were starving and needed more N. Hopefully his moving to 850 which is 600 nutrients or close will fix it.Well JS I'm pulling for ya. Your water, at just under 200 is usable. I've seen people grow using 250ppm and even 300ppm. Be sure you add nutrients...then wait a bit before correcting the ph. The nutrients will drop your ph and allow you to use minimal ph down.
Improvement may take a few days. Some people will foliar spray as a correction. But rarely is that really needed. You aren't doing anything particularly sophisticated...solid basic nutrients. So I'm personally leaning toward a deficiency rather then a lockout. If you didn't have that Ca in your water...you would have to add it by using calmag. So I'm not at all worried about that.
And some strains are Mg hogs. White Widow along with other White strains almost always need extra MG.
Good luck,
JD
Thanks for the support.Well JS I'm pulling for ya. Your water, at just under 200 is usable. I've seen people grow using 250ppm and even 300ppm. Be sure you add nutrients...then wait a bit before correcting the ph. The nutrients will drop your ph and allow you to use minimal ph down.
Improvement may take a few days. Some people will foliar spray as a correction. But rarely is that really needed. You aren't doing anything particularly sophisticated...solid basic nutrients. So I'm personally leaning toward a deficiency rather then a lockout. If you didn't have that Ca in your water...you would have to add it by using calmag. So I'm not at all worried about that.
And some strains are Mg hogs. White Widow along with other White strains almost always need extra MG.
Good luck,
JD
With all due respect, no.Ph down won't help if the alkalinity is too high..you can pour a bottle of ph down in it, it won't matter! ph and alkalinity are two different things, and if alkalinity is high, like in your case, you would have to bring the ph down to near 4.5 to neutralize the alkalinity..at which point, the elements are locked out anyways. With a high alkaline water, it will always drift upwards to 7. Ideally, you're looking for around 50 ppm's of CaCo3 (calcium carbonate/alkalinity)..above 100 is not really ideal, you're at almost 200 and running hydro, it's a bad combo. For now, im not seeing a zinc issue at all, nor sulfur. Again, hard to tell as your pics are really distant and under hps lights..can't see anything. To me, it seems they are growing nice and you should have a great harvest!
Then there's that pesky cliff.With all due respect, no.
pH-down is the specific and sovereign treatment for too many pHs.
Furthermore, pH and alkalinity are tightly correlated. If you know one, you know the other.
So, no.
With all the sad burnt-out hulks of pHs piled up at the baseThen there's that pesky cliff.
You have plenty of Ca/Mg just feed them and you should be good.Thanks for the support.
I had added 3ml Ca-Mg per 5gal, 2 or 3 times (I can't remember). Once was in week 2 I think, once was in week 3 and I think once was last week. I added the 3ml/5gal ontop of 1ml Floralicious+ as a topper-off-er throughout the week to keep res levels up.
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I ran out of 'pH down' yesterday and ontop of your suggestion that they were underfed I figured the maxibloom would help lower my pH as well. So they got the extra scoops to level out at 850ppm. Furthermore, I figured they were possibly Zinc deficient and the high mineral count in the tap water was neutralizing any free zinc from the limited maxibloom I was feeding so that was the third nudge to add more.
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I also added Epsom salt, about a tsp, because the stems did look like they had, or possibly are going through a Mg deficit and figured my deficiencies looked like possible sulfur deficiencies as well and ontop of getting the sulfur, getting the Mg from the Epsom was better than trying to get the Mg from the 5:1 Ca-Mg ratio in the GH calmag as my tap water is full of Ca already.
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The strains are Starwberry Banana (indica) & Velvet Bud (sativa), not sure on their lineages.
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pH was 6.22 at begining of lights on, and my 'pH down' came today so I added some and am currently reading 5.94. I've switched from Root Farm pH down (phosphoric) to a nitric acid pH down. It must be a higher concentration as it only took 9ml/5gal vs 15ml/5gal to achieve an initial 5.65pH reading.
He has a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry (Princeton, no less) and teaches at the college level Just walk away (he owns me regularly too)If you say so..i can tell you as a fact, you have a source of water that is highly alkaline, then ph down is useless. Bringing the ph down of something that is highly alkaline will not matter as the medium or water in the case of hydro, will drift up regardless. The amount of ph down you'd have to add to neutralize the alkalinity affects, would be too much and in itself would create chaos.
Ph and alkalinity are not the same at all! Alkalinity is the water's capacity to neutralize an acid, whereas ph is a measurement of the intensity of the acidic or basic solution.
If only I had known this as a young Turk with a basement lab. I would have LOVED to cause chaos with nothing more than some hard water. I would seriously and deeply appreciate the references to this, especially in the original German.If you say so..i can tell you as a fact, you have a source of water that is highly alkaline, then ph down is useless. Bringing the ph down of something that is highly alkaline will not matter as the medium or water in the case of hydro, will drift up regardless. The amount of ph down you'd have to add to neutralize the alkalinity affects, would be too much and in itself would create chaos.
Ph and alkalinity are not the same at all! Alkalinity is the water's capacity to neutralize an acid, whereas ph is a measurement of the intensity of the acidic or basic solution.
I rent you out often enough, no? Are you not happy?He has a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry (Princeton, no less) and teaches at the college level Just walk away (he owns me regularly too)