Help! Holes and discoloration on new growth

Hey, I'm running a DWC no reseviour set up, my girls are 4weeks and 3 days old. They look good minus! The photos I have attached! One of the photos has a red circle so you can see this is part of the newer growth!

The PPM was 500 lastnight now 400ppm. PH was 5.8 lastnight and today 7.2. My other girl is fine. I've added no new nutes
Food: GHP Trio-micro, grow, bloom, GHP silica
CAl mag
Floralicious
Flora blend,
Diamond nectar,
Myco+ I recently added this last feed which was 2 weeks ago, and this feed
Hydroguard

Recently I started using RO water only before I was using RO +tap, my tap PPM is 100

Also my roots are starting to ball up, idk if that's normal but I did see a whole thread on dwc root balls! No smell is coming from them. They are not pretty looking but they are alive! I have a pic below.

-Temp 73 humidity 50 during the day
-Temp will drop to 68 at night humidity drops to 35
-18/6 schedule
-Photoperiod Amnesia x dosidos
-Light 450w mars hydro at 25% I did have to raise it this morning she was close to the light, she stretched far overnight I wonder if she was too close! I also added a mars hydro 150 watt on the side of the tent to help tops grow, it's working beautifully on lefty but maybe not for righty.

I also had to add electric tape to one of my top sites on her cause I bent it too much moving her and it was flaccid, the tape helped its getting stiffer.

I don't see any bugs but maybe I just can't see them! I have neem oil but haven't used it yet! Any advice is greatly appreciated! I am a virgin here trying to pop this cherry and I will make any changes yall think I should make. Also do I apply neem oil straight out the bottle or dilute it?

im not a pro, and ill be starting my first dwc here in a few weeks, so take it with a grain of salt. but im pretty sure your roots are not suppose to be brown/tan. i would start there

and something is chewing on your leaf it looks like

Amateur and not a dwc guy but possibly manganese deficiency.

What do the roots look like? That pH shift can indicate root issues.

Yeah that sure looks like root rot. You’re adding a lot of stuff that isn’t needed for a healthy DWC grow. All you need is the GH trio and the hydroguard and probably some cal/mag since you’re using RO water.
I don’t know about all that stuff you’re adding but I think a lot of it is organic stuff and that’s a no no in hydro. keep it simple. You can cut most of those roots off and start dipping what’s left in a sterile res but your going to have to wash all the buckets with some decent sterilizing agent first before putting them back in or it will just return

Ok thank yall, I'll start with cleaning up the roots and changing the water with less nutes.

Nikkiliciousj said:

Ok thank yall, I'll start with cleaning up the roots and changing the water with less nutes.

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I think that would be a great start although it may be hard to get them to the finish line at this stage with the rot but worth a shot unless you got more going that you can start over with but it’s a great learning experience none the less. Hope you can turn it around.
On a side note if they are still eating is there a possibility that you have a big light leak into the water and that’s all algae? It’s sure looks like rot but normally they don’t eat a lot when they have root rot so maybe a bad case of algae. Just a thought

Treesomewanted77 said:

I think that would be a great start although it may be hard to get them to the finish line at this stage with the rot but worth a shot unless you got more going that you can start over with but it’s a great learning experience none the less. Hope you can turn it around.
On a side note if they are still eating is there a possibility that you have a big light leak into the water and that’s all algae? It’s sure looks like rot but normally they don’t eat a lot when they have root rot so maybe a bad case of algae. Just a thought

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No light leeks that I can think off I have black light proof buckets that I wrapped in panda film just in case. Unless the light is leaking through the hydroton but it would have been brown early on right? Cause the setup hasn't changed and they are almost 5 weeks. All this happened in 1 week, the roots were beige almost white with a little bit of tangling.The three things I keep thinking about is too many nutes, the Myco+ and I stopped the top feeder. Those are the only 3 things I changed up recently before the roots balled up and changed colors, and that chewed up leaf appeared. But I'm gonna be nursing them, I was being Hella lazy cause they were doing great and went a full 5 days without checking them, crazy how much can change so fast! Major learning lesson!

GH Micro + Floralicious will stain your roots, they look fine IMO.

Get some sticky traps and figure out what bug you're dealing with.

Laughing Grass said:

GH Micro + Floralicious will stain your roots, they look fine IMO.

Get some sticky traps and figure out what bug you're dealing with.

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That looks far worse than some staining. That looks like rot to me. But I’m no expert by any means. I know if they were mine I would be trying to keep them going.

Treesomewanted77 said:

That looks far worse than some staining. That looks like rot to me. But I’m no expert by any means. I know if they were mine I would be trying to keep them going.

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That is not rot. There is no slime, there are no detached roots floating in the water and per the OP there is no odor. Blow the image up and look at the roots closely, if this was rot there would be other signs beyond colour, and it would reek. The dark part above the waterline is a bacillus colony from the hydroguard and perfectly normal.

Have you used floralicious in a DWC? I have, that shit is like molasses.

I do agree with you that the OP ditch the additives and stick with the base. I disagree with cutting the roots off or using hydroguard in a sterile res.

Laughing Grass said:

That is not rot. There is no slime, there are no detached roots floating in the water and per the OP there is no odor. Blow the image up and look at the roots closely, if this was rot there would be other signs beyond colour, and it would reek. The dark part above the waterline is a bacillus colony from the hydroguard and perfectly normal.

Have you used floralicious in a DWC? I have, that shit is like molasses.

I do agree with you that the OP ditch the additives and stick with the base. I disagree with cutting the roots off or using hydroguard in a sterile res.

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With root rot you see pH drop not rise. I concur, no root rot. Is there anything close to those two leaves that could have mechanically damaged them?

Earwig?

Laughing Grass said:

That is not rot. There is no slime, there are no detached roots floating in the water and per the OP there is no odor. Blow the image up and look at the roots closely, if this was rot there would be other signs beyond colour, and it would reek. The dark part above the waterline is a bacillus colony from the hydroguard and perfectly normal.

Have you used floralicious in a DWC? I have, that shit is like molasses.

I do agree with you that the OP ditch the additives and stick with the base. I disagree with cutting the roots off or using hydroguard in a sterile res.

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See learned something new again. Never seen anything like that using hydroguard. Also never seen roots that dark that didn’t have rot. But I totally agree it was odd to have rot and the plant was still eating and PH rising as stated it normally drops rapidly. I know the floralicious plus is black as molasses for sure and it’s filled with organics.

curious2garden said:

With root rot you see pH drop not rise. I concur, no root rot. Is there anything close to those two leaves that could have mechanically damaged them?

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Maybe the light! it actually reached the top and I had to raise the lights up!

If you have a fan blowing too hard on the tops of your plants the new leaves can get deformed and ragged like that. It looks more like that to me than anything else.

Yeah I have 3 fans going one oscillating and 1 on each plant! I'll cut them off and stick with the oscillating

Laughing Grass said:

That is not rot. There is no slime, there are no detached roots floating in the water and per the OP there is no odor. Blow the image up and look at the roots closely, if this was rot there would be other signs beyond colour, and it would reek. The dark part above the waterline is a bacillus colony from the hydroguard and perfectly normal.

Have you used floralicious in a DWC? I have, that shit is like molasses.

I do agree with you that the OP ditch the additives and stick with the base. I disagree with cutting the roots off or using hydroguard in a sterile res.

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Ok cool, I've only washed the roots, I haven't cut them!

Yeah, that's a little overkill! One oscillating fan should be good