Lower Fan Leaves yellowing and falling off!?!

hey so basically what the title says

this is my first grow btw, but here it goes

i have 6 plants and they are 3 weeks into flowering. they are in 50% FF ocean forest 50% coco, in 5 gallon buckets. i water every 3-4 days with ff soluble trio, on beastie bloomz now. every other watering i use molasses and epsom salt every watering. distilled water only.

the problem is a lot of my very bottom fan leaves have wilted and fallen off. only about 4 inches up though. i dont think this is a mag def except it has every indication it is. i always water with epsom salt in the mix and i use PH balanced nutes and the water is again all distilled water. i get plenty of runoff. i dont have a digi ph meter to test runoff but FFOF is pretty damn ph stable and coco is a neutral medium.

is this normal? i thought i remembered a reading about plants auto pruning themselves at the start of flowering. do MJ plants start to auto prune and lose their bottom leaves? i will post pictures tomorrow.

I really dont think it's a big deal.
Because you are 3 weeks into flowering, the plant is taking the nutrients and using them for the top (probably buds i assume).
I am not 100% sure, but 99.9% says its ok.
Hope this helped.

ya i kindof figured that. but i didnt think it would be using that much so quickly

Yep, the plant will start to use up energy in the old fan leaves to make buds. Usually starts after a month or so of flowering, but I suppose different strains will have different times that they start doing things. As long as it isn't affecting your buds/newer leaves, I wouldn't worry about it. Just make sure your pH levels are correct and you should be fine. Do you measure your water's pH after you add in any nutes/additives to it? The nutes will lower the pH so you need to correct it back to 6.5-6.8 if needed.

no when i get the money im getting a digi meter. but i use distilled water and all of my nutes are PH balanced nutes somwhere round 6.5-6.8 i would assume

What do you mean all your nutes are pH balanced? What is the brand/kind of nutes you are using? Nutrients inherently make your water more acidic, and if you have distilled water it often becomes acidic once it has been exposed to air. Once you get your meter test your runoff and water/feed pH levels, I'll bet you'll find they are out of the correct range of 6.5-6.8.

If you are adding nutes to it without measuring the pH, I would use tap water that has sat out for 24 hours, not distilled water. Tap water is usually a high pH, so when you add your nutes and they drop the pH, they are dropping it from like 8 down to maybe 5.5 -6.0 instead of from 6.0 down to like 4.5 or even lower.

FF trio-solubles. the open sesame, beastie bloomz, cha ching.

Yeah, those are like 5-45-19, 0-50-30, and 9-50-10 fertilizers. They will definitely drop the pH of your water when you add them to it. You should be able to confirm this when you get your meter. Check the pH of your water, then add your nutes, then check it again. I bet it will be much lower.

ok. what can i do to raise my water PH

You'll also want a bottle each of pH UP and pH DOWN, so you can adjust the pH after you measure it. If you're short on cash you can pick up the General Hydroponics water drop test kit. It only costs around $7 and you can get it at your grow/hydro store or possibly a garden center. For the price, the drops are very useful and pretty accurate.

ok i think i will go to my hydro store tomorrow

also i dont think i am putting in enough to drop my water below 6.5

Even 2 teaspoons for a gallon and a half of water (1/2 strength of what it says on the bottle) of the nutes I use will drop my tap water from pH 8+ down to 5. I didn't think they affected it that much either, until I actually measured it!

1/4 a teaspoon wont do much right now haha

here are some pics of them.

Lol 1/4 of a teaspoon. What is the recommended dose that the bottle says?

Also if you want you can remove all those brown crispy leaves from the bottom of the plant, just leave the yellow ones until they turn brown and crispy as well. They should just come off with gentle pulling.

Did you pick up some pH stuff yet? Let me know what the runoff pH is once you do!

they have a feeding chart and they say for potted plants 1/4 to 1/2 a teaspoon a gallon. its strong stuff and PH balanced. good Fox farm open sesame. it says it on the description.

how are your plants doing?.. i have the same problem, but i want to think it is just because the plant knows she doesn't need those leaves... let me know how they are doing!

they do this near the end of they're lives, nothing you can do about it, she's using all her energy to produces buds not to feed herself, reduce the nutes and only give her water the last two weeks.