Calcium Deficiency? Opinions Wanted!

Hi Logan,
You don't see people doing that much...feeding both ways. But your logic is good. You want quicker response. Take the dosage into consideration. What I mean is don't overdose them. If you're at maximum dose in res...better not. But if you have the wiggle room...go for it. 2 or 3 days...maybe 2 or 3x a day. People will probably post only at lights out. The idea is that the droplets act as magnifiers and can cause light burn on leaf. I like to spray my plants and never had a burn. Not saying it's wrong...maybe under a 1000hid.
JD

I agree JohnDee, I've not foliar fed much but when I have it's been at lights on and I've never had a burn. I just wipe any droplets off of the top side of each leaf. I get what you mean though! I guess the dosage is what I'm trying to figure out, as of right now I've increased the CaliMagic to rougly 6mL a gallon, and there are no signs of any type of N tox. I'm thinking that somwhere between 6mL and 10mL a gallon is where my sweetspot will lie. I certainly can't imagine going above 10mL a gallon. On the bright side, one of the four plants has virtually stopped further browning and mottling (knock on wood!). I'll try and get some update pics in a few hours when lights go on.

Update pics.

Did you rinse the hydroton? You got to rinse it. Have you checked the PH in the buckets?

I use a PH/PPM monitor on them twice a day everyday. Yes, I rinsed the hydroton as I always do before each grow. PH is 100% stable day to day, along with the PPM's. I don't believe it's related to the hydroton.

Dude I would just put it off to transplant shock with clones that young. They get shocked and don't eat well for a week regardless of how well you treat them. New growth looks good, just do what you're doing and wait a week. Personally I've never had any problems feeding clones at twice your PPMs but your experience tells you. I could be a shitty grower for all I know, people like my weed enough it seems, and I'll be honest, there is very little difference from all the stains I've grown as far as PPMs. 4 weeks under 300 watts I would expect plants to be 5 or 6 nodes regardless of how crappy their leafs looked. Small root mass/transplant shock is like a lost week.

They grew totally healthy in their first 2 weeks of growth in my DWC system. From seed, not clones. If it was transplant shock, it would've been in the first week or so of transplant. Not almost 6 weeks later. Not to mention that the problem has persisted well over 2 weeks now, going into week 3 from the onset of the first affected leaves. Reading my original post would've cleared most of that up.
*EDIT* I am interested in that you've had no problems feeding twice that much ppm's. Do you also use Calmag regularly? Maybe my babies are just extra hungry, with an appetite leaning heavily towards calcium and/or magnesium? My plant's would be a lot bigger, but this deficiency (or lockout) has demolished over 60% of overall leaf mass, and has severely slowed down leaf production from the onset as the rust gobbled up fan leaf after fan leaf. Do you grow in DWC?..I'm wondering if we're in different mediums here.

Actually your first post doesn't say anything about seeds. I personally never put seeds into a dwc bucket, don't think it lends itself well to seeds.

I never bothered with calmag, I got good tap water so no need of RO and calmag, just GH three part. I've done about 20 years in DWC, started in aero. Just an observation, I've seen more people with calmag problems who use calmag and RO than people who use tap water. Of course I understand people got well water etc. Just saying.

I can tell you what always worked for me was to set my pH on the low end and once it was out of range to dump and refresh. I grew out of favor of readjusting. I could through clones from an aero-cloner with 20 or 30 roots about 4 inches long straight into Lucas Formula which I believe is like 1200ppm and they wouldn't go into shock. Have zero experience putting seedlings into DWC. I'm assuming you transplanted from Dixie cups or something.

I'm starting to see what ya mean about people using calmag and RO having more problems with it than those who just use tap. It appears that once I got up to 4-5mL a gallon, the benefits of the calmag diminished greatly and the problem still persisted, just at a far slower rate than it was before increasing both the CaliMagic and my base nutrient. So, after feeding as high as 7mL-10mL (to no affect) a gallon, I've decided to chill the heck out on the Calimagic and just apply it at the regular 4-5mL dose, and at the same time increase my base nutes from 50-75% strength, on up to 100% strength. In a nutshell, I've not tried adjusting my base nutes to full strength yet, so I'm going to see if that helps. I just feel like if double the recommended dose of the CaliMagic doesn't stop the symptoms dead in their tracks, it's simply not the solution. I really appreciate your input though, knowing how high you run your nutrients for young veggy plants has helped put my mind to ease about giving mine just over 1,000ppms (.500 scale). Fingers crossed that increasing my base nutes fixes the problem, and that I've just overcomplicated a simple case of underfeeding!
*EDIT* If I understand correctly, Floranova Bloom is supposed to be the Lucas Formula, just all in one bottle? This stuff already has 4% Ca and 2% Mg, which is a decent amount to begin with.

Yeah that is correct. Everybody was doing Lucas so they put it out. I personally still like to have the 3 part for mothers etc and other growing styles I feel do better with the 3 part formula. Coco hated Lucas but I believe there is an adjusted Lucas coco version too.

Yeah I'm pretty sure there is. Isn't coco only bad with Lucas because of how Coco leaches out and holds onto Ca and Mg? Anyhow, I've changed the res on one plant and done a label strength dose of CaliMagic and 100% strength dose of Floranova...a bit soon to tell for sure, but I'm feeling optimistic that this will fix the issue. Sometimes, it just takes returning to the basics.

Logan Burke said:

Oh wow Unorthodoxy! That's a pretty crazy high dosage a calmag you've got going there, prior to this event happening to me I'm not sure that I would've believed that a plant could tolerate so much Calmag. But now I know otherwise, haha. I'm happy that this thread helped you!

On a seperate note, I've upped my ppm's up to 700 as of now, with 3.5-4mL/gallon accounting for nearly half of the overall ppm's, and my babies are STILL showing some very minor symptom progression. It isn't anywhere close to as bad as it has been though of course. So, I'm thinking that I should bump the CaliMagic on up to 5mL a gallon, and not add more base nutes? Would you agree, @JohnDee ? Or increase the base nutes alongside the CaliMagic dosage?

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I'm a newbie, so it's entirety possible I'm misdiagnosing another problem, but that is my current diagnosis! I have read elsewhere that the WW is a very hungry cultivar. I kept on seeing the progression of symptoms that line up with a CalMag deficit, even after adding more and more.

I hardly believe it myself, especially when my NL only wants 2g/G of Megacrop and no more! (with 5ml added CalMag). It only very recently showed any signs of deficiency, and it may just be starting to fade naturally.

Also, since I saw progressive symptoms on my Bubblegum plant, I decided to do a foliar spray night before last for the WW and BG of kelp meal tea and CalMag.

I guess it's too early to tell, but symptoms may have been halted.

I'm just trying to make sure I'm not in a pH lockout, but my runoff pH is in good range (6.2 - 6.4).

Here is a link to my grow thread:
https://www.rollitup.org/t/unorthodoxys-mostly-orthodox-first-indoor-grow-experience.987285/#post-14925545

It needs some updating but I think I will do that now.

Your post has reminded me to give an update of my plant's status. I returned their dosage of CaliMagic down to the bottle recommended 5mL/gal and increased their base nutrient Floranova Bloom from 50-75% strength to the full 100%. I thought, 'Maybe my nutrients are just imbalanced, giving close to 2x the maximum dose of calmag and not even 75% dose of base nutes?' Well, I'm not sure if that was the case, but I do know that the symptoms have very nearly stopped progressing altogether. There are still one or two plants whose symptoms are barely inching forward, but I believe that increasing their base nute a little more will fix this. I hope that this may help you find the sweet spot for your plants a little bit, good luck I will post back soon to let future readers know 100% what solved my problem.

Logan Burke said:

I hope that this may help you find the sweet spot for your plants a little bit, good luck I will post back soon to let future readers know 100% what solved my problem.

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Thanks!
It's time to start flushing my Bubblegum and White Widow, but my Northern Lights is behind them, and is starting to show some deficiency. Maybe calcium, and I wouldn't be surprised as it's getting a low dose of Megacrop. I'm going to increase MC and CalMag for that one today.

I just wanted to post an update for any future readers whom may have had problems similar to mine. I've gotten the symptoms to totally stop spreading, and the solution for me was giving full strength 5mL/Gallon of CaliMagic, and full dose Floranova Bloom (5mL/Gallon). Giving this combination, I've actually been able to drop my PH back down between 5.8-6.0 and still the symptoms aren't coming back. I just got too carried away with the CaliMagic when in actuality, I needed to get back to the basics and give a good full dose of my base nutrient, with a dose of CaliMagic at 5mL/gal. Good luck Unorthodoxy with your situation, and thank you all so very much for stopping by my thread! As always, RIU has helped pull my ass out of a sling!