First Bubbleponics Grow Plant Leaves Dying Need Diagnosis!!

Hey everyone, here's a laydown of what's happening recently to my plants. I am currently VEGGING on a 18/6 hour cycle.

I've noticed that the roots started to turn brown so I applied some H202 (6 ounces of it) to 10 gallons of water. It instantly cleared up any signs of buildup of the brown bacteria that causes root rot. (Still don't know why I got it, probably res temps went up too high sometimes)

Setup:

14 Gallon Tote
Ph: 6.0 constant
Temps: 78 Outside, 70-75 Degrees F Water Temp
Nutes: Foxfarm Grow Big (8 teaspoons) [2 teaspoons/gal are the instructions]
2 12" Airstones
400w worth of CFL lighting (got dual spectrum going)

Topped them a few days ago (shortly after the symptoms started showing of yellowing)

The lower/mid biggest Fan leaves are yellowing and showing signs of drying and overall looking like they are going to die. The weird part is, the tops of my plants are still growing like mad and are very green. One plant is even showing some brown spots...

Anyone have a diagnosis for this? I have included various pics of the various infected plants. I have 5 currently in the system, and only 1 has ZERO signs of yellow, which is odd since all the other ones are showing signs of yellowing.

Someone please help! How do I correct the yellowing leaves? and is it possible for them to turn back to a normal shade of green?









EDIT: I just added 2 more teaspoons of nutes just to see if it is a nute deficiency problem... now they are at 1/2 Strength

1/2 strength is probably too much at this point. I don't think it's deficiency - they are too young to show deficiency if you are on top of the nutes IMHO. I think you should stay at recommended nute level and wait it out. My plants had some yellowish-brownish leaves and recovered just fine. Just focus on the new growth (old leaves don't fix themselves - they can only get worse even if conditions are perfect). If the new leaves look and stay good you are golden.

this does not look like a problem to me - I wouldn't react with more nutes - or anything else - if the new growth looks good. you should see how crappy some of the clones look and turn out to be monster trees.

Just a newbie's 2 cents.

Power Towel said:

1/2 strength is probably too much at this point. I don't think it's deficiency - they are too young to show deficiency if you are on top of the nutes IMHO. I think you should stay at recommended nute level and wait it out. My plants had some yellowish-brownish leaves and recovered just fine. Just focus on the new growth (old leaves don't fix themselves - they can only get worse even if conditions are perfect). If the new leaves look and stay good you are golden.

this does not look like a problem to me - I wouldn't react with more nutes - or anything else - if the new growth looks good. you should see how crappy some of the clones look and turn out to be monster trees.

Just a newbie's 2 cents.

Click to expand...

I just flushed the whole system and now its' only 6 teaspoons of nutes for 10 gallons (recommended dosage is 2 teaspoons per gallon = 20 Teaspoons, but I only used 6). I hope that would fix it if it's a nute burn, if the plants don't show improvement in a day should i just add more nutes?

No!

Just wait it out a few days and see what they do. Don't overdo it. When the plants are young they need consistency, dont adjust things too much. If you do then they wont settle and do thier thing. Just sit back and smoke a bowl or something and leave them alone for a couple days.

Just my 2 cents....good luck!

caregivers said:

No!

Just wait it out a few days and see what they do. Don't overdo it. When the plants are young they need consistency, dont adjust things too much. If you do then they wont settle and do thier thing. Just sit back and smoke a bowl or something and leave them alone for a couple days.

Just my 2 cents....good luck!

Click to expand...

make that a few bowls haha!

i won't touch anything then, i'll update everyone in a couple of days

how often do you have to adjust your ph, and what is your water like before nutes or ph,ing . i have problems sometimes when my res gets over 73-74f .

my res stays at 73-74, is that bad for root growth or just run the risk of growing bacteria ?

sixstring2112 said:

how often do you have to adjust your ph, and what is your water like before nutes or ph,ing . i have problems sometimes when my res gets over 73-74f .

Click to expand...

I usually adjust it through the day that I switched out the water

I just did it, the PH was unusually HIGH for some reason, took me about a few hours to get it back down to 5.5-6.0

could i have locked out some nutrients if the ph was above 7.0 for a few hours?

It was weird, I phed all the water that i dumped back into the res (nute included) but then somehow the pH skyrocketed..

weird

Klyftonic said:

I usually adjust it through the day that I switched out the water

I just did it, the PH was unusually HIGH for some reason, took me about a few hours to get it back down to 5.5-6.0

could i have locked out some nutrients if the ph was above 7.0 for a few hours?

It was weird, I phed all the water that i dumped back into the res (nute included) but then somehow the pH skyrocketed..

weird

Click to expand...

my pH always jumps almost 1.0 up between the time I mix a new batch at recommended strength (for mature plants) and 12 hours of being in the res with bubbles and plants. E.g.- start at 5.3, 12 hours later, 6.2. It's crazy - "they say" not to change the pH more than 0.5 but the plants themselves do a great job of this. I only have 1 good, active plant, and 6 gallons of water.

I am coping with it by just throwing it in at the 5.3, letting it jump up, and then after a day, only adjusting it ONCE a day, if that. Usually I have to add about 1/2 teaspoon (for 6 gallons) of pH down every 2-3 days.

This only seems to happen on new batches. AFter the initial 1.0 rise, like I said, it's just a smidge of pH down every few days - probably compensating for dropping nute PPM - which of course raises pH. It's almost like, it depends on if the plants are drinking the water or nutes faster. If it's the former, PPM will rise, the latter, PPM falls. And which one they are drinking faster changes with maturity, to what degree they are "locked out", and the PPM itself. You will drive yourself nuts making too many changes and it's bad for the plants.

Only change the res once a week max, and try as best you can do keep things (pH/PPM) consistent at this stage. Shoot for "intentional" pH changes of 0.5 per day or less, and slowly graduate your PPMs over time (during res changes).

Personally I have found that 1/2 teaspoon pH down per 6 gallons drops it about 0.3, so I never put more than that in any one day.

Your PPM may be a bit low at this point, but KEEP IT THE SAME for now, and GRADUALLY bring it up. Shoot for the correct pH ONCE a day at most with less than 0.5 intended change per day.

You can test for this with tub of RO water only, and add small amounts of ph down until you change it 0.5. Then you know your max ph down dosage for a day, and you can guesstimate how much to put for intended changes smaller than 0.5.

ah yeah i am now aware of the PH change, my friend just told me that Nutes (foxfarm at least) are meant to be PH neutral in the water. The thing was I was using the nutes as a PH down for phing my water, so once all the nutes got combined with my other Ph balanced water, they would equal out, thus giving me a consistently high ph. sorry if that was a long sentence, just smoked a bowl haha

Update: for now I have added 1 teaspoon more of Nutes to make up for deficiency. I also trimmed off some of the yellow leaves (the ones that looked 75% dead). The top growth is doing fine, although some leaves are showing signs of deficiency so I would continue to see if I need more nutes

Also: is it possible to "unlock" nutes?