Drooping - should I be worried?

Hi all,

Got myself 3 autoflowering plants in DWC, 4 weeks old. Water temp steady at 67F, air temp currently at 73F, humidity around 40%.

The plants are fine except that they are drooping. Is this a concern at all (ie should something be done)? It's not that bad yet, but I also didn't want to wait for it to get worse.

This is only my 2nd hydro attempt, and I didn't see any drooping like this with my first plant. I made sure my airstones are still working, since this sorta looks like overwatered plants in soil.

Have you checked your roots? I think it is most likely something your plants will grow out of, however I also know how it feels to want to take preventative measures. If your roots, particularly the root tips, are pearly white then we've ruled out to many bad microbes because it can still happen at good water temps. Just not as often. How heavy and what nutes are you feeding, ppms, how many gallons of water is your rez and the ph of the nute solution?...Many reading want to know so we don't give bad advice to anyone. They still look good though! Just tried autos as well and I like them vs regulars. They can get monstrous still in DWC also...

Logan Burke said:

Have you checked your roots? I think it is most likely something your plants will grow out of, however I also know how it feels to want to take preventative measures. If your roots, particularly the root tips, are pearly white then we've ruled out to many bad microbes because it can still happen at good water temps. Just not as often. How heavy and what nutes are you feeding, ppms, how many gallons of water is your rez and the ph of the nute solution?...Many reading want to know so we don't give bad advice to anyone. They still look good though! Just tried autos as well and I like them vs regulars. They can get monstrous still in DWC also...

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Roots still looked good this morning - white, no slime or smell
Using Lucas Formula at half strength (~600 ppm)
Res at around 8 gallons
pH at 5.8-6.0
Plants are still growing as well!
EDIT: also using hydroguard (root inoculant) and orca (mycorhizzae)

The drooping hasn't gotten worse, so I'll just keep an eye on them for now in case it does. Just hate not knowing if I should do something or if waiting to see is the better plan

On an unrelated note, I can already tell having these 3 in the same tub won't be ideal.. getting so big already. But, if I used a second tub, I'd have to go back to frozen water bottles for now

As long as your temps aren't regularly above 75; you should (emphasis on should) be alright, but you know your grow more than I do! And yes it is a bit much, luckily because they are autos they shouldn't get quite as big...being over-crowded for space in the root zone COULD cause it, but at their size, they should still have plenty of growing space down there.....I think your plants are healthy, but the one thing that can cause that kind of droopiness (among a million others) would be the very early stages of too much nutrients. If you'd like to test it, maybe drop the ppms by just 50 or so and you should see a difference in a day or so if that is the cause...otherwise I wouldn't do anything unless you observe anymore symptoms or the droopiness worsens. I hope this helps.
PS - You can force your auto's to flower before they hit that big stretch by switching to bloom nutes....idk since your using the Lucas formula how that would work, but it is how I make my auto's flower about 1 week earlier. This may keep their root ball size and plant size down if you don't want to have to transplant, which you may not be able to do with roots growing into and next to one another.

I should've thought twice about moving all 3 into the same tub, but I was just thinking about the convenience (only got one chilling coil, so I'd have to go back to frozen water bottles for a second tub). Do you have any experience with crowded plants in DWC or hydro in general? Will they just not be able to grow as much, or will they also suffer in other ways?

Seeing that the roots are pretty tangled already, I don't think I'll plan on transplanting even the middle plant. Gonna chalk it up to a learning experience and see what happens. I'll make sure to have enough water for all of them hah

Good to know that these are okay as long as it doesn't get worse.

In hydro, I've finished my second go at 7 standalones. In my last 3x3 tent, crowding would be an understatement lol. I think they'll be fine with air like a fan blowing around them, just as you said, they will only get as big as the root zone allows and how optimal environment is which sounds to be good. More than adequate to get big colas on each, some people use 2.5 and 3 gal buckets for autos. The size and maybe the length of grow can change depending on if you let them stretch after sex develops or give bloom as soon as you see signs of female sex. In my experiences, at least.

Logan Burke said:

In hydro, I've finished my second go at 7 standalones. In my last 3x3 tent, crowding would be an understatement lol. I think they'll be fine with air like a fan blowing around them, just as you said, they will only get as big as the root zone allows and how optimal environment is which sounds to be good. More than adequate to get big colas on each, some people use 2.5 and 3 gal buckets for autos. The size and maybe the length of grow can change depending on if you let them stretch after sex develops or give bloom as soon as you see signs of female sex. In my experiences, at least.

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Thanks for the help.. I know most of this information is found elsewhere, too, but it's also helpful to not get lost in my head thinking about these things.

Have you grown with autos a lot? This is my first time trying them (I got bonus seeds with my last order). I'm curious, do autos generally take less nutes than photos?

I know it's hard to generalize, but given that I overfed my last plant, I'm wary of pushing nutes past half-strength..

It's alright I understand, I just try to sort of wrap any advice I can think of around the issue just in case it might help in the future! While I haven't grown them a lot I'd like to think I've had my fair share of experience, technically only one run of seven standalones which was my last run after seeing my brother's autos turn out so great. You're correct to be wary of your feeding, while my plants actually surpassed the bottle recommendations, everyone I've ever talked to say that auto's, generally speaking of course, do not oftenly pass 1200 ppms at their max without severe nute burns. This of course can be strain specific, a google search of the strain can say how tolerant of fertilizer your strains are, based on your pics I wouldn't increase their ppms for maybe a week unless you get yellowing of course. I finally figured out that pushing the ppm's too high, instead of burning, it can actually cause a lockout and appear to be a deficiency, but as long as you increase their nutes slowly you can probably catch any sort of nute burn before it starts. I won't advise exactly what ppms to push as I've only grown one set of autos, but it sounds like you're on the right track for sure! Your plants are definitely either slightly overfed or slightly underfed though, while I lean towards overfeeding you will know this better than me. Your plants will tell you what they want, we just don't know exactly how to listen sometimes! If you want to test it you can increase the ppms very slightly, maybe 50, and if they perk up any at all, they are probably just a little hungry. If the tips start to brown, then you'll know they have all they need to eat. But that is totally up to you. What nutrient line are you running?....
PS - I apologize for my long responses; I start typing and ramble quite badly! If you can tolerate that I hope this helps, lol

Oh my bad, you already told me the nutes.... Lol I ran GH Floranova which is a lot like Lucas and it worked fantastic!

Logan Burke said:

Oh my bad, you already told me the nutes.... Lol I ran GH Floranova which is a lot like Lucas and it worked fantastic!

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I'm still such a noob and there's too many other factors, which is why I decided to stick with Lucas for now.

I figure I can come back to nutes once I know what I'm doing, but feeding regiments scare me

And I appreciate your taking the time to write this all out, it is helpful to know what you went through and your thoughts on it all. Slowly learnin