Any ideas?

I am currently one month into my second grow. After 2-3 nodes on one of three plants I started to notice splotch discoloring on the 1st node leaves. I believed it to be leaf septoria. I removed them because I had another node or two above it to keep plant alive. It continued growing well and then I just noticed spots again on the 3rd node leaves and tips of the new growth on top. 2nd node is still healthy. I removed the 3rd node leaves and tips of top leaves and took the three pictures here showing the spots. The rest of the plant looks healthy as shown in the other two pictures. But I'm afraid the spots will come back again.
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The splotches indent into the leaf and can be seen from the backside as well.
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Can anyone confirm leaf septoria? Or possibly have any other ideas? Or possibly yell at me for hastily lopping parts off my plant. Feel free to ask anything that might help diagnose the problem.

Are you using RO water? It looks like a Calcium def. , I'm not sure though.

What's your feed, watering, schedule? Ferts/nutes? Additives/amendments? IPM? Let's get into the details.

the plants look good

the new growth looks good, but you say the therd set of leaves are showing symptoms, thats worrying. answers to any of the asbove questions would help tremendously

Johiem said:

What's your feed, watering, schedule? Ferts/nutes? Additives/amendments? IPM? Let's get into the details.

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I water when they need water, using knuckle in soil and keeping track of container weight. I water to about 10% runoff and always pH water to around 6-6.5. I use distilled water until amended soil runs out of nutes then will switch to spring water with fert. I started seeds in fox farm happy frog and then transplanted into 5gal with fox farm ocean forest amended soil. Currently not adding any fert until amended soil runs out. No additives. No ipm, it's in a grow tent and I have some insect catchers outside of tent in case anything wanders in. Air flow is really good with passive intake and the outtake leading outdoors, my oscillating fan broke so I've had one on order and only stationary fans in tent currently. Soil pH is around 6-6.5, I check by comparing runoff to what I put in. I also smelled runoff and topsoil in case of some kind of root rot, but it smells fine.
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One thing to note. It was my first time transplanting and it's possible I didn't set up drainage well enough in red solo cup before transplanting. This is partly what made me consider leaf septoria. But the fact it skipped the second node and went to the third kind of threw me off.

go go kid said:

the new growth looks good, but you say the therd set of leaves are showing symptoms, thats worrying. answers to any of the asbove questions would help tremendously

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Yes the first node right above cotyledons was infected so I took them off. The second node was and still is fine. Third node became like images show over a couple days. And I just answered the above questions if you want to check my other two replies here.

Nixs said:

Are you using RO water? It looks like a Calcium def. , I'm not sure though.

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I am using steam distilled water store bought. And it does kind of look like that. It wasn't my first guess because they are about week two since moving to final containers in amended soil so soil should still be fertile. Unless there is lockout in the soil. But I would think that would affect whole plant.

Antman603 said:

I am using steam distilled water store bought. And it does kind of look like that. It wasn't my first guess because they are about week two since moving to final containers in amended soil so soil should still be fertile. Unless there is lockout in the soil. But I would think that would affect whole plant.

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I'm sorry, I was wrong in my diagnosis.

Is there a reason you are not using tap water? A lot of people rely on tap water for calcium and magnesium. If you're using distilled water, you might be running into cal-mag deficiency.

2nd node still appears good, now spots showing up on top node leaves as shown here. Rest of plant looks healthy.

JimmyJackCorn said:

Is there a reason you are not using tap water? A lot of people rely on tap water for calcium and magnesium. If you're using distilled water, you might be running into cal-mag deficiency.

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Tap water where I am at is extremely high ppm hard water. I used it once in my previous first grow and had hard water buildup on leaves almost immediately. So I try to stick to only distilled and spring water. One big difference from first grow and this one is I understand amended soil this time and am not adding liquid ferts too early. I had lockout and had to flush in my first grow at this stage because of it. I suppose I may have been getting some calcium from ferts though so maybe you are right.

Also, looks like my soil should have calcium in it. And if I had accidentally flushed it, I would think I might be deficient in a few other nutes too. Seeing as I haven't added any fert yet.
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Adding cal mag if it doesn't need it could hurt the plant right? Could still be worth a try if this keeps coming back though I guess.

Antman603 said:

Also, looks like my soil should have calcium in it. And if I had accidentally flushed it, I would think I might be deficient in a few other nutes too. Seeing as I haven't added any fert yet.
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Adding cal mag if it doesn't need it could hurt the plant right? Could still be worth a try if this keeps coming back though I guess.

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yes if you use distilled water you need to add calmag. I'd highly recommend not using distilled water and using tap water as long as your tap water is reasonable (<400ppm). Distilled water leaches nutrients out of the soil. Essentially making fertilizer of your runoff and leaving your plants with nothing.

pulpoinspace said:

yes if you use distilled water you need to add calmag. I'd highly recommend not using distilled water and using tap water as long as your tap water is reasonable (<400ppm). Distilled water leaches nutrients out of the soil. Essentially making fertilizer of your runoff and leaving your plants with nothing.

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Interesting. Well my tap water was around 600 last I checked. And the one time I used it on my last grow I had hard water deposit buildup on leaves. How do you feel about spring water? And how do you feel about distilled water mixed with fert?

Antman603 said:

Interesting. Well my tap water was around 600 last I checked. And the one time I used it on my last grow I had hard water deposit buildup on leaves. How do you feel about spring water? And how do you feel about distilled water mixed with fert?

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spring water is good.! whatever water you drink every day should be good for your plants so if you drink your tap water it should be fine.

or distilled/RO filtered water + nutrients is fine too yes!

pulpoinspace said:

spring water is good.! whatever water you drink every day should be good for your plants so if you drink your tap water it should be fine.

or distilled/RO filtered water + nutrients is fine too yes!

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No. Spring water can have a pH in the mid-8s to 9 and above...that shit is random, you gotta test it and it is not recommended.

Soil needs a pH of 6.3-6.8 with some variation in there. I used to use distilled, but got tired of buying it. Great option to use though, I should probably go back to it. Now I just pH my tap within that range for soil and add calmag if the plants start to show that they need it. My tap water is hard and calmag seems to be unavailable to them in this form.

I guess one thing you can do is look at everything you know you have. Plants need x amount of things to grow in kind of specific amounts. You can lock out nutrients by having too much of one thing.
Check your soil bag, check the nutes and use a calculator to see what you are actually feeding.

Ok so I just picked some of this up from local garden nursery. I'm going to try it this evening when lights come on with some water. I believe I'm sold on the calcium deficiency consensus here. Which means I might have hastily chopped off some leaves from plant sadly. I'll update with progress

I think that stuff is overkill...bringing your water/feed pH up a little and using 2ml of calmag in a gallon would be more than enough to correct your issue. Your soil is practically new, I doubt it is so acidic you need to do something as drastic as add that stuff.

Dank Bongula said:

I think that stuff is overkill...bringing your water/feed pH up a little and using 2ml of calmag in a gallon would be more than enough to correct your issue. Your soil is practically new, I doubt it is so acidic you need to do something as drastic as add that stuff.

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Hmm ok, the local nursery didn't have calmag and I noticed this was high in calcium and magnesium and only $5. I thought it might serve a similar purpose. I guess I'll make the trek to the nicer place next city over. Appreciate the warning.