Damping off on second try in coco

[stckyprp]

I'm on my second try now with starting from seed and it looks like both my seedlings got damping off again. They were both thing and brown at the base of the stem. I was using tiny pots about the size of a jiffy pellet with coco/perlite buffered and phd. The coco is some 2-3 year old bricks I had left over from walmart though that had holes in the wrapper. Maybe it's contaminated so I got some new coco perlite for the next try. My nutrients are also 2-3 years old and are Advanced Nutrients sensi coco a&b base nutes. Have my temps at 70-77F and humidity 60-72. I'm using a 240w qb at three feet dimmed to lowest setting.

I was reccomended to try starting the seeds in party cups with seed starting soil and then transfer to coco. Anyone have a recommendation for a starting soil? It seems hard to tell when the coco is actually all the way dried and when it's too over watered. I'm guessing I over watered again but not positive. Any other ideas of things I can try different?

 

[PrometheanLeaf]

How did you prepare the coco?

The nutrients being so far out of date could be an issue though.

 

[Dirk8==D~Diggler]

I don’t think you can overwater the coco

 

[stckyprp]

How did you prepare the coco?

The nutrients being so far out of date could be an issue though.

I was following the cocoforcannabis site. I rinsed it with hose water until it ran clear and then rinsed it some more. Soaked it in a bucket of phed calmag water for 15 hours and then rinsed and repeated. Then I stored it in a smart pot for a few days until I used it.

 

[stckyprp]

I don’t think you can overwater the coco

Yeah, that's what I thought too but people told me the damping off is probably from over watering. The fist try I watered the seedlings twice a day after first two days and they died. This time I tried only watering once a day and still got damping off so really kind of confused. They both died before the first set of true developed all the way.

 

[DailyBlastin]

seedlings in coco do not need daily watering unless you dial in to where they can take it, also do you have anything else added to the coco? coco is typically mixed with perlite or vermiculite, i know some guys that even mix in hydroton pebbles.

anyway the best advice i can give you is to dial yourself in, use a control bucket- same size and shape as what your growing plants in, and fill it with the same substrate mix your using with your plants. Now pretend that pot has a plant of similar age in as what your working with, water that pot how you would if there was a plant there, wait 12 hours and stick your hand right on in the center of that pot, is it overly moist, averagely moist, slightly dry, overly dry? if its moist wait a few more hours and try again, if its dry you didnt water enough to begin with, keep a journal, take notes on everything with date and time, smaller plants mean smaller roots, smaller roots dont want to be drowned, ideally you dont even want to top water with seedlings, bottom feeding them will promote better root growth, learn how your substrate ifunctions, be the plant- put yourself in the pot, create conditions that would make yourself a happy plant and you will in turn have happy plants.

 

[stckyprp]

seedlings in coco do not need daily watering unless you dial in to where they can take it, also do you have anything else added to the coco? coco is typically mixed with perlite or vermiculite, i know some guys that even mix in hydroton pebbles.

anyway the best advice i can give you is to dial yourself in, use a control bucket- same size and shape as what your growing plants in, and fill it with the same substrate mix your using with your plants. Now pretend that pot has a plant of similar age in as what your working with, water that pot how you would if there was a plant there, wait 12 hours and stick your hand right on in the center of that pot, is it overly moist, averagely moist, slightly dry, overly dry? if its moist wait a few more hours and try again, if its dry you didnt water enough to begin with, keep a journal, take notes on everything with date and time, smaller plants mean smaller roots, smaller roots dont want to be drowned, ideally you dont even want to top water with seedlings, bottom feeding them will promote better root growth, learn how your substrate ifunctions, be the plant- put yourself in the pot, create conditions that would make yourself a happy plant and you will in turn have happy plants.

Yah I have perlite mixed with the coco about 30% added.

That's a great suggestion to use a control pot I probably would have never thought of. Thanks I will definitely try it out. I'm going to try this time starting in a jiffy pellet and watering from the bottom and then transferring to a cup of new coco/perlite.

Do you think my old nutrients could be contaminated? There isn't a expiration date on them or anything. I might have got them from ebay too. I've been considering buying new nutes or just using the maxibloom.

I'm also only using my extraction fan to keep air moving because it seems to keep the seedling moving and I don't want to dry it out too quick. Not sure if that matters.

I've never had damping off or this much trouble with soil and veggies. It's a fun learning experience though thanks for the help. I'll get it eventually.

 

[Scuzzman]

Did you PH your water at any stage??
I flood coco with PH 6.3 water (rain) -drain and let sit for 3 days until nearly dry - put seedling(coco plug or rokwal) in coco and water/feed 150-200 ppm around the seedling only - I water approx 100 ml's only as no need to water all coco for couple of weeks , my temps 26 DG and 62 % HR ,, also only use MC these days - dont like liquid nutrients they are not cost effective and create alot of the common issues (just my view )

 

[DailyBlastin]

@stckyprp 30% is fine, 50% is better imo so consider adding some more in the future, coco/perlite mix is also completely re-usable so dont go throwing away rootballs after a grow, break it up, pasteurize it and go again. liquid nutrients certainly have less of a shelf life than dry foods, but dry food is typically a huge mess (unavoidable dust clouds) and also make your nute mix more susceptible to ph flux as its not ph stable like chem nute can be- notice i said CAN be, not all liquid nutes are ph stable, but they do exist, i use dyna-gro and the only time i have ph issues is when it comes to buildup inside my chiller/tubing, which is why ive started to do a pool shock clean out of the system every 3-4 months. can you post pics of your setup? im concerned you say u have your extraction fan blowing seedlings around.. a small fan to keep air moving is fine and recommended, but extraction fans are not small fans and you're far more likely to do damage to your young plants allowing it to blow on them than it will benefit them. Coco "wicks" alot easier than soil does, you can drip water in one spot over an extended period of time and it will wick well enough to wet all the coco the same as if you dumped a 5 gallon bucket of water on it- this is part of why you need a control bucket to test with, water in small consistent amounts, check the control bucket frequently, record you findings, if you watered an exact 1cup measurement, and 12 hours later the coco is wet then you wait another 12 hours, if its still wet you wait longer, if its moist but not over-ly moist then wait just a few more hours and check again, your goal is to have somewhat of a wet-dry cycle, that is allowing the coco to just barely dry itself out, before watering again, dont let it get super-dry but just make sure the roots have a reason to "go searching for" some water before just giving it to them again, if you constantly give the plant all that it needs it never really strives to grow and push itself further.. it becomes the complacent obese child, slacking off, not trying to better itself.. if that makes sense.

@Scuzzman Megacrop is a decent veg food but too much N for ideal flowering, and also if you're getting you "cost effective" numbers from the MC website then you're an idiot because they flat out lie and skew those statistics, they price their product out as using the recommended amount but price others products out for using double or triple doses.. also MC has worse ph flux than many other foods out there, you will be ph adjusting atleast once a week if not more, my dyna-gro nutes are ph stable, proper nute mixture=5.8-5.9ph in my res and never needs adjusting ( real quick-for those of you who may have seen my post not that long ago about a chasing ph issue that was due to an extreme buildup of crap in my chiller lines, it has since been fixed and my refills have not needed adjustment since) ive followed several MC vs (other nutes here) comparison grows and the only time MC fed plants look better is in veg, MC fed flowering plants may "appear" impressive in early stages because theres so many bud nodes that at the start of flower it looks like your gonna have colas for days.. but end results are under-par compared to others. My personal opinion is dry foods will never provide the ease of use and quality of life that liquid nutes have, the one and only advantage they have is a longer shelf life than liquid nutes, but for those of us who know how to dial in our systems its easy to calculate how much nutes we will use in a year and as long as you dont buy more than a years worth at a time shelf life is not an issue.

 

[Scuzzman]

@stckyprp 30% is fine, 50% is better imo so consider adding some more in the future, coco/perlite mix is also completely re-usable so dont go throwing away rootballs after a grow, break it up, pasteurize it and go again. liquid nutrients certainly have less of a shelf life than dry foods, but dry food is typically a huge mess (unavoidable dust clouds) and also make your nute mix more susceptible to ph flux as its not ph stable like chem nute can be- notice i said CAN be, not all liquid nutes are ph stable, but they do exist, i use dyna-gro and the only time i have ph issues is when it comes to buildup inside my chiller/tubing, which is why ive started to do a pool shock clean out of the system every 3-4 months. can you post pics of your setup? im concerned you say u have your extraction fan blowing seedlings around.. a small fan to keep air moving is fine and recommended, but extraction fans are not small fans and you're far more likely to do damage to your young plants allowing it to blow on them than it will benefit them. Coco "wicks" alot easier than soil does, you can drip water in one spot over an extended period of time and it will wick well enough to wet all the coco the same as if you dumped a 5 gallon bucket of water on it- this is part of why you need a control bucket to test with, water in small consistent amounts, check the control bucket frequently, record you findings, if you watered an exact 1cup measurement, and 12 hours later the coco is wet then you wait another 12 hours, if its still wet you wait longer, if its moist but not over-ly moist then wait just a few more hours and check again, your goal is to have somewhat of a wet-dry cycle, that is allowing the coco to just barely dry itself out, before watering again, dont let it get super-dry but just make sure the roots have a reason to "go searching for" some water before just giving it to them again, if you constantly give the plant all that it needs it never really strives to grow and push itself further.. it becomes the complacent obese child, slacking off, not trying to better itself.. if that makes sense.

@Scuzzman Megacrop is a decent veg food but too much N for ideal flowering, and also if you're getting you "cost effective" numbers from the MC website then you're an idiot because they flat out lie and skew those statistics, they price their product out as using the recommended amount but price others products out for using double or triple doses.. also MC has worse ph flux than many other foods out there, you will be ph adjusting atleast once a week if not more, my dyna-gro nutes are ph stable, proper nute mixture=5.8-5.9ph in my res and never needs adjusting ( real quick-for those of you who may have seen my post not that long ago about a chasing ph issue that was due to an extreme buildup of crap in my chiller lines, it has since been fixed and my refills have not needed adjustment since) ive followed several MC vs (other nutes here) comparison grows and the only time MC fed plants look better is in veg, MC fed flowering plants may "appear" impressive in early stages because theres so many bud nodes that at the start of flower it looks like your gonna have colas for days.. but end results are under-par compared to others. My personal opinion is dry foods will never provide the ease of use and quality of life that liquid nutes have, the one and only advantage they have is a longer shelf life than liquid nutes, but for those of us who know how to dial in our systems its easy to calculate how much nutes we will use in a year and as long as you dont buy more than a years worth at a time shelf life is not an issue.

Good constructive feedback great to see thank you-I hear what your saying regarding MC, have found I need to add 3-5 grams of Magnesium per 20 litres of rainwater..I also hand water 6 plants every 2 days in flower....

 

[DailyBlastin]

Good constructive feedback great to see thank you-I hear what your saying regarding MC, have found I need to add 3-5 grams of Magnesium per 20 litres of rainwater..I also hand water 6 plants every 2 days in flower....

no problem. and ahh youre handwatering, that makes it a little different, i presume youre only mixing up enough for feed the plants u have at a time then? in which case you dont really need to worry about chasing ph over an extended period like you would if you had a reservoir feeding them, of course just make sure you ph the solution you mix up before actually feeding it to the plants. and i highly recommend looking at automating your watering, it makes life SOOOOOOO much easier assuming you can maintain your res ph/ec/temp. plus you can go on like vacations or w/e without havign to worry about your plants drying out.

 

[stckyprp]

@stckyprp 30% is fine, 50% is better imo so consider adding some more in the future, coco/perlite mix is also completely re-usable so dont go throwing away rootballs after a grow, break it up, pasteurize it and go again. liquid nutrients certainly have less of a shelf life than dry foods, but dry food is typically a huge mess (unavoidable dust clouds) and also make your nute mix more susceptible to ph flux as its not ph stable like chem nute can be- notice i said CAN be, not all liquid nutes are ph stable, but they do exist, i use dyna-gro and the only time i have ph issues is when it comes to buildup inside my chiller/tubing, which is why ive started to do a pool shock clean out of the system every 3-4 months. can you post pics of your setup? im concerned you say u have your extraction fan blowing seedlings around.. a small fan to keep air moving is fine and recommended, but extraction fans are not small fans and you're far more likely to do damage to your young plants allowing it to blow on them than it will benefit them. Coco "wicks" alot easier than soil does, you can drip water in one spot over an extended period of time and it will wick well enough to wet all the coco the same as if you dumped a 5 gallon bucket of water on it- this is part of why you need a control bucket to test with, water in small consistent amounts, check the control bucket frequently, record you findings, if you watered an exact 1cup measurement, and 12 hours later the coco is wet then you wait another 12 hours, if its still wet you wait longer, if its moist but not over-ly moist then wait just a few more hours and check again, your goal is to have somewhat of a wet-dry cycle, that is allowing the coco to just barely dry itself out, before watering again, dont let it get super-dry but just make sure the roots have a reason to "go searching for" some water before just giving it to them again, if you constantly give the plant all that it needs it never really strives to grow and push itself further.. it becomes the complacent obese child, slacking off, not trying to better itself.. if that makes sense.

@Scuzzman Megacrop is a decent veg food but too much N for ideal flowering, and also if you're getting you "cost effective" numbers from the MC website then you're an idiot because they flat out lie and skew those statistics, they price their product out as using the recommended amount but price others products out for using double or triple doses.. also MC has worse ph flux than many other foods out there, you will be ph adjusting atleast once a week if not more, my dyna-gro nutes are ph stable, proper nute mixture=5.8-5.9ph in my res and never needs adjusting ( real quick-for those of you who may have seen my post not that long ago about a chasing ph issue that was due to an extreme buildup of crap in my chiller lines, it has since been fixed and my refills have not needed adjustment since) ive followed several MC vs (other nutes here) comparison grows and the only time MC fed plants look better is in veg, MC fed flowering plants may "appear" impressive in early stages because theres so many bud nodes that at the start of flower it looks like your gonna have colas for days.. but end results are under-par compared to others. My personal opinion is dry foods will never provide the ease of use and quality of life that liquid nutes have, the one and only advantage they have is a longer shelf life than liquid nutes, but for those of us who know how to dial in our systems its easy to calculate how much nutes we will use in a year and as long as you dont buy more than a years worth at a time shelf life is not an issue.

I've got some new seeds germinating right now so I'm going to use perlite this time water from bottom up and take notes using a control pot. I'm positive overwatering is the issue like you're saying. The last time I thought for sure I didn't overwater because I did it less and the top looked bone dry. When I took the seedling out though the bottom of the pot was still wet.

I don't have a pic right now but I can describe it. It's a secret jardin tent https://www.secretjardin.com/product/dark-street-120w/. I think mine is older and only 5.5 tall instead of 7 I will have to check. It's a 2x4 tent though. I have a Active Air 400 cfm fan at the top without the carbon filter attached right now and I have the bottom flap open for passive intake air. The intake air makes the seedling move around but I don't think it's too drastic. I just keep the seedling pot on the ground of the tent and a humidifier in the corner. 240w qb on lowest setting at three feet. This actually brings another question I have had though. I keep the fan on low with a controller but it's still really loud and seems really powerful. Do you think a 4 inch fan and filter would work better/quieter and still eliminate 100% of smell? I was considering getting a phresh filter because reputation and removing smell is big concern. I might keep the old fan and filter running in the bedroom itself at least when tents open.

Which dyna-gro nutes do you use? Are there any kind of suppliments or additives beyond base nutes you use or think could help me or anything?

 

[DailyBlastin]

4 inch fan and filter will be a better combo for a 2x4 tent and will still need to be reduced in speed actually. also im sure some of the noise is simply because u dont have the filter attached to the fan right now so ur hearing open wind rush but im willing to bet alot of the noise youre hearing probly isnt the fan itself- its the speed controller that im guessing you use look like that? these type of speed controllers suck, they actually function not by slowing your fan speed but by constantly switching the fan on/off so that it never gets up to full speed, the downfall is though that switching the fan on/off constantly like it does will burn out fans in a heartbeat, and also produces that annoying hum that youre undoubtedly hearing. switch to a true variac controller like this lil more expensive that the cheapos (ususllay around 60-70$) but well worth it as you wont be hearing your fan anymore. i sleep next to my tent and the loudest part of my whole setup is the light waterfall sound of my reservoir circulating through the chiller, which actually helps me sleep lol.. but i cant hear no fans whatsoever. these types of controllers work by reducing the constant voltage being sent to the fan, which actually reduces the speed properly, and is silent!!

and yes with a 4inch fan and filter properly dialed in you wont have any smell on the exhaust end, always keep in mind that the room your grow is in will always smell, whats important is keeping the smell from escaping which is what carbon filters do for us. if your worried about the smell in your grow room then what you could do isuse the 6inch fan filter u have and set it up in a corner of the room so that the air staying in the room is also being scrubbed, not just the air being exhausted.

i have dyna-gro's full line personally but all you will really need for a simple start to finish grow is the foliage pro, you could also pick up a small thing of pro-tekt which is their silica solution, just helps plants be a little hardier and put up with temp swings and stress's easier, and you could also pick up a small thing of bloom if you wanted- the foliage-pro is good enough to use as a flowering feed by itself but when properly mixed with bloom it essentially functions as foliage-pro+pk booster, but neither of those are 100% necessary if you dont want to.

To clarify i do not use all of dyna-gros line in my res all the time, only pro-tekt, foliage-pro, and bloom regularly, i have their mag-pro product that i use when i need a mag boost but that isnt too often, i run their enzyme product usually once every other month or so to help keep things clean, i also use a mixture of the foliage-pro and their specialty bonsai-feed for my mini-mothers, i also have the K-L-N rooting product, and neem oil also. im just a big fan of their line, PH stable, good NPK ratios, and even when i "forget" to flush a plant before harvest (which i have to do manually since my res feeds a perpetual grow no 2 plants are ever the same age) i never get a chemical aftertaste, leaves pure white ash behind, so yea its just been good to me.

 

[stckyprp]

4 inch fan and filter will be a better combo for a 2x4 tent and will still need to be reduced in speed actually. also im sure some of the noise is simply because u dont have the filter attached to the fan right now so ur hearing open wind rush but im willing to bet alot of the noise youre hearing probly isnt the fan itself- its the speed controller that im guessing you useView attachment 4555785 look like that? these type of speed controllers suck, they actually function not by slowing your fan speed but by constantly switching the fan on/off so that it never gets up to full speed, the downfall is though that switching the fan on/off constantly like it does will burn out fans in a heartbeat, and also produces that annoying hum that youre undoubtedly hearing. switch to a true variac controller like thisView attachment 4555787 lil more expensive that the cheapos (ususllay around 60-70$) but well worth it as you wont be hearing your fan anymore. i sleep next to my tent and the loudest part of my whole setup is the light waterfall sound of my reservoir circulating through the chiller, which actually helps me sleep lol.. but i cant hear no fans whatsoever. these types of controllers work by reducing the constant voltage being sent to the fan, which actually reduces the speed properly, and is silent!!

and yes with a 4inch fan and filter properly dialed in you wont have any smell on the exhaust end, always keep in mind that the room your grow is in will always smell, whats important is keeping the smell from escaping which is what carbon filters do for us. if your worried about the smell in your grow room then what you could do isuse the 6inch fan filter u have and set it up in a corner of the room so that the air staying in the room is also being scrubbed, not just the air being exhausted.

i have dyna-gro's full line personally but all you will really need for a simple start to finish grow is the foliage pro, you could also pick up a small thing of pro-tekt which is their silica solution, just helps plants be a little hardier and put up with temp swings and stress's easier, and you could also pick up a small thing of bloom if you wanted- the foliage-pro is good enough to use as a flowering feed by itself but when properly mixed with bloom it essentially functions as foliage-pro+pk booster, but neither of those are 100% necessary if you dont want to.

To clarify i do not use all of dyna-gros line in my res all the time, only pro-tekt, foliage-pro, and bloom regularly, i have their mag-pro product that i use when i need a mag boost but that isnt too often, i run their enzyme product usually once every other month or so to help keep things clean, i also use a mixture of the foliage-pro and their specialty bonsai-feed for my mini-mothers, i also have the K-L-N rooting product, and neem oil also. im just a big fan of their line, PH stable, good NPK ratios, and even when i "forget" to flush a plant before harvest (which i have to do manually since my res feeds a perpetual grow no 2 plants are ever the same age) i never get a chemical aftertaste, leaves pure white ash behind, so yea its just been good to me.

That looks exactly like the speed control I use hah. I'm thinking about getting the T4 Cloudline 4" which comes with a speed, temperature and humidity control. Trying to decide between 4" Phresh filter at 200 cfm or can-lite at 250 cfm to go with it. Then I will use the Active Air 6" fan and filter I have now in the bedroom corner like you suggest for extra filtering.

Dyna-gro looks pretty solid. I was looking for cheap and megacrop has been sold out a while and I heard some not so good things, Jacks looks good but I'm not sure if the jacks on amazon is the right stuff. Dyna gro looks cheap and pretty straight forward.

 

[PrometheanLeaf]

Shop Now | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com

You can use just the 5-12-26 plus the 15-0-0 and just add epsom salts, without getting the extra doodads. Works great, it's what I use now.

 

[PrometheanLeaf]

NUTRITION SCHEDULES | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com

This might be useful.

 

[DailyBlastin]

dont buy into the namebrand filter thing either.. ive used filters from atleast 20 different companies, everything from phresh and CAN to shitty viviosun ones, they all do the same thing when dialed in properly (i.e. fan is set to move the proper amount of air for 1-2 exchanges every 5 minutes) the main difference in any of them is the type of charcoal used,how well its packed, and the design of the filter casing, im currently using This filter and love it, first company ive seen do a hexagon pattern which increases the surface area for air to pass through the carbon, the theory being with filters using circular stamped holes, theres roughly 50% of the carbons surface area being covered by the metal housing and therefore goes to waste essentially, with the hexagon stamped holes their getting about 65% open surface area, so your getting more efficient use from that filter, also reversible flanges helps with getting the most out of a filter.