DWC: when do you start nutes? I always seem to start too late!

I grow in a couple different DWC setups. I ALWAYS seem to get nitrogen deficiencies when the seedlings are about 2 weeks old. The seedlings turn pale yellow-green and the bottom-most true leaves start looking really sad and I wind up having to clip them after my initial freakout and attempt to rescue them. Usually the 3rd set of true leaves are just starting to show. From what I've read, this is much earlier than when most people start nutes, but the last 3-4 grows have all been this way. I hate to stress my seedlings when they're so small, and yet I hear all these horror stories about people killing seedlings by giving them nutes too early. This time around I'm giving the seedlings about 175ppm nutes a day until they're up to around 1100ppm, which takes 9-10 days to achieve. I started the nutes on day 16 from the day I soaked the seeds to start them germinating. Does this seem too early? I swear what I have looks like Nitrogen deficiency, yellow as hell, been getting noticeably greener in the last 24 hour since I upped the nutes. PH is correct-- 5.2 - 6.0, checked and adjusted daily. Temps are a little high 85-88 degrees. Plants are either under 50 watt LED + 70 watt CFL or a 400 watt HPS at a good distance (4 feet) so it doesn't burn the seedlings. Any thoughts? I would love to just once (ok, more than once!) get everything right and not have jacked up leaves on my plants at at least some point every grow!

I use nutes before seeds have even broke the rooter yet. Keep it low for a long time, not reason to build it up day by day.
Do you change your res? Most of us will just make up a batch for the week, then dump it and start new the next week, and this is when we will add more nutes. Start low 150ppm-300ppm, then weekly raise it as you can, all strains are different, some can take heavy nutes, some cant.

micro, b52, water, and ph down/up in the early stage in order to stimulate root growth until they're well rooted and my medium is showing what i call "feet" which are roots poking out the bottom/sides of the cube. after roots have been established, the next flush i'll add a good serving of grow and a small serving of bloom to the mix in addition to all sorts of funny stuff i like to pump in there. at that point, i'll pump up to 350+ ppm. definitely start low though, don't want to burn it as it doesn't need much early on. it's hard to tell you exactly how to go about it as every strain is different. get familiar with your strain(s) and learn what they like or find someone that KNOWS your strains that is willing to share some insight with you.

previous 2 grows I've not changed nutes except when starting flower. Results were acceptable in my opinion. Main reason for not doing so was that the grow was in a difficult to get to location and getting large amounts of water to and from the location was a lot of work. This time around things are much more accessible. I'm trying the "lucas method" this time, which only uses GenHydro micro and flower nutes, plus adjusting the PH. The nute ratio doesn't change between vegetative and flower even, it seems really simple if it works. So theoretically you could do your whole grow in a bucket without changing out the nutes even once.

grinder, I've not used b52 before, I'll look into it.

I've already changed nutes once on my new grow, as I was scrambling to deal with N deficiency and too high of a ph as well. My current plan is to slowly up the nutes to about 1100 ppm over the course of a week or so (as of today I'm up to 670ppm, and raising by about 90ppm/day) to ease the seedlings into the nutes. They're repsonding well, greening up noticeably in 24 hours. Roots are getting nice and long, they're putting out their 3rd set of true leaves and many of the seedlings have 6-10 inch roots already. Do you think this is too much nutes to o fast for seedlings this young? I don't want to go from too little nutes to too much. PH has stabilized at around 5.85. From my readings you can tell whether you're overfeeding by watching the PH swings, if it goes up above 6.1 you're underfeeding, if it goes down to like 4 you're overfeeding. Is this true? In the past I've kept my tds levels at 1600, and yes occasionally burned my plants. This grow I want to go for a little less, 1200-1400 at 'full strength' as from what I've read I probably don't have enough light for my plants to handle higher nute levels (400 watt hps).

Anyway, gotta run, let me know what you think if you get time.

Start nutes before your plants even get put in your DWC. I spray with 200ppm solution while they are babies in a propagation tray, and after a week or so bump it to 400ppm. Keep climbing until you switch to flower you should be in the 800-1000 ppm range. Of course every strain is different and can handle different amounts of nutes, but if you aren't using nutes for the first few weeks then you are starving your plant!

Dang, I never feed nutes to seedlings untill they show the second set of leaves and then I give them 1/4 strength never lost a seedling this way.

Get your hands on some Clones and start ASAP =)

ATL Hydro, thanks for the numbers that you use for your vegetative growth stage. I'm keeping my veg growth short this grow as I'm working with unfamiliar genetics and my grow tent is shorter than I'm used to working with (5'4"). Previous grows I vegged for about 50 days from starting the seeds, this time I'm shooting for around 42. Hopefully this will control height-- I'm also considering doing a scrog setup of some sort to further control height. I'm on day 21 curretly, half way through vegging.

Beaver, your advice sounds good. I seem to start seeing N deficiency right about the time the 3rd set of true leaves start to show up. I may be starting my nutes too low, also. If I'm shooting for around 900ppm at 'max strength' for vegging, that would be around 225. It would take me about 3 days to work up to that strength adding 90ppm each day, and when plants are that small every day makes a difference. I know it's really anal retentive of me to increase nute strength like this, but it makes sure I give the plants the attention they deserve and if I fuck up these plants there is NOWHERE to buy weed or get clones from around here, so I'm out of dope for months and months on end. Been out of weed for 2 months already, sucks to be me.

Kush, I'll definitely be keeping some mother plants from this grow, I did this last year but then got lazy and planted the mothers outside come summertime to flower and finish off. I grow indoors in winter and outdoors in summer. I'm low on seeds now so need to keep mothers and clone or buy more seeds. My plan is to clone the rest of the winter. I've done clones before and it's definitely the way to go, especially since I have non-feminized seeds. I'm growing plants out for seed currently because they're autoflowers and want to have lots of seeds to plant outdoors next summer.

Thanks everyone, this really helps. The plants have totally greened out now and are showing good signs of growth. TDS is at 500ppm currently, and I'll continue to creep that up to my target of 875. Based on ATL's input, I'll slow down the nute additions as I still have 20+ days of veg and am over half way to my max nute levels. Don't want to go from too little nutes to too much!

Good luck! Like I said it is based on strain. Near the end of flower my purple kush was at 1500ppm, this amount could easily kill another strain. I also have a short ceiling in my grow space, had to veg for 21 days and then flip, still ended up with 3.5footers.

dayum, 3.5 foot with a 21 day veg? I've not grown any kush strains (yet), so am not familiar with it at all. I've got 5 Nirvana's Blue Mystics and 2 Mandala #1's started right now. Never grown Blue Mystic, but it's supposed to be a short indica like Northern Lights, so I'm not too worried about it. Mandala #1 is a sativa/indica cross and last grow they hit 4 feet with a 50 day veg. I'm gonna scrog this grow (1st time doing that, too) which should hopefully guarantee that I won't be growing the #1's straight into my lamp hood. I think scrog/sog is the only way to go with a short grow space like this unless you're growing runderalis, plus I think I can get away with growing different strains at the same time and not have to worry about height differences, they'll all just be as high as the screen. Last time I topped my Mandalas, and got 2 nice colas per plant along with a little height control. I'm finishing a couple G-13 labs Poison Dwarfs right now. Both plants are not more than 10 inches tall. When they say 'dwarf' they mean it! So many things to try in this hobby!

I let my clones show roots through the starer puc, then I move them and start with about 900ppm nutes. By week 2 i have them at 1200 and veg at 1200 the rest of the time.
With seeds, I take a syringe of weak soulition, just a few ml's per gallon of water, and 1st wet the puc down withe ph' water , then add alittkle nute soulution, then more water.
This has never burned a seedling, I do it as soon as they pop up.
Hydro clones can go a while wthout the nutes, but I always feed mine when I see a root...just weak solution though...less is better.

what you mean by puc? I use those soft foam inserts for clones like in those fancy clone machines (mine is home built for like $4). I start seeds in round little rockwool plugs that are like 1x2" in size. Everything goes into net pots with hydroton once they've outgrown their little inserts/rockwool plugs. Man that's some agressive feeding, guess I've been totally starving my plants with my super-cautious feeding schedule.