First Grow. I Need Help from an expert.

My system is an Emily's Garden DWC hydro with 400watt MH "Warm" bulb in an Hydrofarm habitat grow tent with white walls.

My 18 day old babies were doing fine until about 3-5 days ago. Now they have stop growing and the main leaves are turning yellow and wilting. I'll upload pics later.

Every day I have to adjust my Ph-down both in the morning and evening. It seems like it always wants to be around 7. I add Ph-down straight into the res every time and re-check the range after a few. Nothing can keep it from rising.

The PPM during the first week in the hydro system was 995 but the plants show no serious sign of nute burn and continued to grow. I changed the res and dropped the PPM down to 200 last week...now they are sick.

The temp/humidity in the tent has been 70-82F and 40-60% and plenty of circulation. Light 18/6 14 inchs away

I know keeping the Ph stable is important so I'm soaking the system in bleach water and cleaning hoping this helps.

I've also notice discoloration on the tent walls from the light. No alge in the res and air stones working good.

Any ideas?

I cleaned the system - Nutes 250ppm, PH 5.8, 5 oz of H202, Extra air bubbler, 75f/ 40%humidity, fan on high. If this don't get it, I don't know what to do.

I did some searching on the "death tent" and did notice something interesting. The color of people's plants looked like the color of my tent walls... that yellowish nicotine-color stain. My babies have been in it from day 1 and they too have been very light green but had continued to grow nicely until recently.

Most people complain about these tents during flowering, My veg bulb is a "warm" mh-->similar to HPS. Is it possible that these tents walls bleach because of the bulb? My local hydro shop has one of these setup with a regular MH and I didn't notice/see the bleaching in his shop.

check for mites. An easy way is to mist your plants and look for webs between nodes.

I thought mites to be a soil problem?

See if you could lower the temp any more...even though your temps are good in a normal gro room i heard that the tents release a toxic gas when the temp starts gettin past a certain degree....there are lots of threads on it...check em out just google it

PH still needs adjusting every time to keep it down and in range. Any ideas

I think my problem might be this little POS emily's garden and a fucked up death tent. I've noticed everyone uses 5 gallon buckets and 35 gallon tubs for their setup and I got this 2 gallon POS with a 400 watt light beaming on it 14 inches away.

THE FUCKING PH WON"T STOP GOING UP..............AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

are you using a 2 gallon res/buckets for DWC......sounds like a small volume of water for any grow and it is likely to be the cause of your ph issues.

This severe fluctuation and/or the constant dosing with phosphoric acid to keep it under control may be the cause of yellowing but with no pics and your description of them wilting as well makes me think you need more air (they are drowning/being overwatered)--i see you added another airstone so that may help.

pics would help with diagnosis.

Old in the Way said:

are you using a 2 gallon res/buckets for DWC......sounds like a small volume of water for any grow and it is likely to be the cause of your ph issues.

This severe fluctuation and/or the constant dosing with phosphoric acid to keep it under control may be the cause of yellowing but with no pics and your description of them wilting as well makes me think you need more air (they are drowning/being overwatered)--i see you added another airstone so that may help.

pics would help with diagnosis.

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Thanks for the feedback
I decided 2 gallon was going to be a problem no matter what so I returned the tent yesterday for a new silver one and built my own 22 gallon rubbermaid DWC with 5 inch net pots, and 2- 14 inch air stones from wally's (talk about bubbles).

This shit is super easy to build yourself.

cool, let us know if this helps.

meltdown213 said:

PH still needs adjusting every time to keep it down and in range. Any ideas

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Have you been calibrating your PH meter? When mine went out of calibration it showed wildly high readings. You should calibrate it once a week or so.