New hydro grow and brown leaves. Need some advice!

Pyreonfire · Jan 20, 2020

Hydro4life said:
Ohh nice, keeping ph in its range is crucial or you will start to see a range of deficiencies.

If your fairly new to growing then definitely get a tds metre!
It not only shows you your nute strength but can assist in solving issues like salt build up (ppms not going down when topping up with plain water)
Great tool to dial things in.

and yea looks like your running your res a bit hot feed wise. Salt build up can also cause this. How often do you do a bucket change??

Maybe cut your feeding back a bit until you can get a tds metre!? And do a bucket change out with fresh nutes and ro water....

Alot of cheap LEDs claim to be higher wattage than they actually are. You may find your led light is a lot less than 300 watts!?

Just purchased a TDS meter. Should be arriving tomorrow. In the meantime I'll do some research on what the numbers should be! Haha..forging new territories here. Seriously, my husband is going to think I'm crazy. Pretty sure I check on my "baby" more than I did my real children when they were newborns.

I've been doing bucket changes every 7-10 days and just topping off with light nutrients (half strength) and PH corrected water in between. Usually a gallon at a time.

Sounds good. I'll do a bucket change tonight with some RO and drop my nutrition down. Should I expect my PH to fluctuate much more than usual with the RO compared to well water?

I wondered about my light. We've talked about grabbing another since we also grow veggies hydroponically and are needing more lights for our lettuce already. Suppose I'll research lights once I figure out the TDS numbers! Thanks for all of your advice!

rkymtnman said:
i'd figure out what the exact problem is first. water source would be secondary for me.

So you think my problem is nute burn primarily? I have been studying images of sick plants for days and can't figure out if it's burn or a deficiency. I'll scale back the nutes and see if that helps! Thanks!

rkymtnman · Jan 20, 2020

Pyreonfire said:
So you think my problem is nute burn primarily? I have been studying images of sick plants for days and can't figure out if it's burn or a deficiency. I'll scale back the nutes and see if that helps! Thanks!

that's where it gets tricky.
burn can and often does lead to nute lockout which then looks like deficiencies. which people try to fix by adding more nutes. which makes the condition worse.

and half of the label strength is still probably too much especially for autos. but a meter will help with giving better advice.

fragileassassin · Jan 20, 2020

-buy a meter like yesterday. Being able to read ppm/ec/tds is just as important as reading ph for hydro.
-your water is VERY VERY hard. Hard water is not good for growing. Get that RO setup going for sure. The ph will swing more when you first start adding to it, but will likely be more stable than what youre using now.
-I see no mention of a beneficial bacteria or way you are sterilizing. One or the other is necessary.

How many gph of air is going to each bucket? At a minimum you want around 160gph of air per site.

Hydro4life · Jan 20, 2020

rkymtnman said:
that's where it gets tricky.
burn can and often does lead to nute lockout which then looks like deficiencies. which people try to fix by adding more nutes. which makes the condition worse.

and half of the label strength is still probably too much especially for autos. but a meter will help with giving better advice.

Good advice rkymtnman.

and good stuff buying a tds metre pyreonfire

Have never used well water so unfortunately can’t say. If using ro water does make it less stable then it shouldn’t be by much.

ive been using ph perfect in dwc for about 4 years (and now in coco) so I don’t bother with a ph pen anymore.
but if memory serves me right? Maybe someone else can confirm this? But If the plant is hungry (not enough nutes) and drinking more nutes/water ratio then your ph will go up? And if your plant is drinking more water/nute ratio then your ph will go down...?
So if you have the right nute strength to match the age/strain of your plants and your environment is dialled in then ph shouldn’t fluctuate much at all...

EverQuest · Jan 20, 2020

Hello , Try to make sure Ph is 5.4-6.4. This chart should help for future problems. also having high bucket temps to cool can use frozen water bottles a lot cheaper than a chiller. 1 small frozen water bottle will keep it chilled for 3-6 hours easy. If you use LED and or decided to use RO water or distilled use a cal/mag product. Good luck on grow!

Hydro4life · Jan 20, 2020

fragileassassin said:
-buy a meter like yesterday. Being able to read ppm/ec/tds is just as important as reading ph for hydro.
-your water is VERY VERY hard. Hard water is not good for growing. Get that RO setup going for sure. The ph will swing more when you first start adding to it, but will likely be more stable than what youre using now.
-I see no mention of a beneficial bacteria or way you are sterilizing. One or the other is necessary.

How many gph of air is going to each bucket? At a minimum you want around 160gph of air per site.

I’ve never sterilised my res as a preventative. As long as your res is cool with no light leaks and you have plenty of bubbles then you shouldn’t need to sterilise imo.

I don’t add beneficials (May be in base nutes??) and haven’t had root issues for about 3+years.

just my experience Fragileassassin, no disrespect intended.

Pyreonfire · Jan 20, 2020

rkymtnman said:
that's where it gets tricky.
burn can and often does lead to nute lockout which then looks like deficiencies. which people try to fix by adding more nutes. which makes the condition worse.

and half of the label strength is still probably too much especially for autos. but a meter will help with giving better advice.

Ahh, that makes sense. I'll do a bucket change and see if things start to straighten out from there. I didn't realize that autos needed fewer nutrients! That's good to know. Thank you!

fragileassassin said:
-buy a meter like yesterday. Being able to read ppm/ec/tds is just as important as reading ph for hydro.
-your water is VERY VERY hard. Hard water is not good for growing. Get that RO setup going for sure. The ph will swing more when you first start adding to it, but will likely be more stable than what youre using now.
-I see no mention of a beneficial bacteria or way you are sterilizing. One or the other is necessary.

How many gph of air is going to each bucket? At a minimum you want around 160gph of air per site.

- bought a meter today... arriving tomorrow, so not yesterday but I'm on it!
- I'll start on RO right away. And I'll watch that PH. Good to hear that it will be more stable than what I have going on now. It's very frustrating to have it swinging wildly every day!
- I didn't mention bacteria or sterilizing because I'm dropping that ball, apparently. Which is preferred and which is better for girls on a budget? I like the sound of beneficial bacteria.. but budget might win out on this one right now. The roots look really healthy, I will say. I spray painted the buckets black and then decided to foil tape them, so there's no light leaking in. So far the water and roots look beautiful!
- Regarding air, I have 4 stones per bucket. They are each about 64 GPH, so over 250 GPH in the bucket.

Pyreonfire · Jan 20, 2020

Hydro4life said:
ive been using ph perfect in dwc for about 4 years (and now in coco) so I don’t bother with a ph pen anymore.
but if memory serves me right? Maybe someone else can confirm this? But If the plant is hungry (not enough nutes) and drinking more nutes/water ratio then your ph will go up? And if your plant is drinking more water/nute ratio then your ph will go down...?
So if you have the right nute strength to match the age/strain of your plants and your environment is dialled in then ph shouldn’t fluctuate much at all...

That's interesting! However, that's contrary to the advice to scale down on the nutrition! Haha! I'm hoping the meter will give me more insight into what's happening and whether she needs more or less nutrition.

EverQuest said:
Hello , Try to make sure Ph is 5.4-6.4. This chart should help for future problems. also having high bucket temps to cool can use frozen water bottles a lot cheaper than a chiller. 1 small frozen water bottle will keep it chilled for 3-6 hours easy. If you use LED and or decided to use RO water or distilled use a cal/mag product. Good luck on grow!

Thanks for the chart! I'll save it and keep it handy. I wondered about frozen water bottles. The freezing temps don't hurt the roots at all? And yes, I figured I'd have to grab some cal/mag if going RO! Thank you... great advice!

Pyreonfire · Jan 20, 2020

Hydro4life said:
I’ve never sterilised my res as a preventative. As long as your res is cool with no light leaks and you have plenty of bubbles then you shouldn’t need to sterilise imo.

I don’t add beneficials (May be in base nutes??) and haven’t had root issues for about 3+years.

just my experience Fragileassassin, no disrespect intended.

I don't have any room to talk as this is my first grow, but so far (knock on wood) my roots and bucket look beautiful. That's one thing that I can say is going great here! Haha! The rest.... well, yeah. haha

EverQuest · Jan 20, 2020

Pyreonfire said:
That's interesting! However, that's contrary to the advice to scale down on the nutrition! Haha! I'm hoping the meter will give me more insight into what's happening and whether she needs more or less nutrition.

Thanks for the chart! I'll save it and keep it handy. I wondered about frozen water bottles. The freezing temps don't hurt the roots at all? And yes, I figured I'd have to grab some cal/mag if going RO! Thank you... great advice!

No the frozen water bottles wont hurt the roots at all.

Justkickinit420 · Jan 20, 2020

Pyreonfire said:
That's good to know. I was finally able to post photos.. the site kept crashing on me every time I tried. Would you mind taking a look to see if the brown leaves are "normal" die off or "there's a problem" die off? Thanks!
The reason city water is more stable is the water treatment facilities put a buffer in the water to help keep the ph in the 7.0 range as that decays their water distribution system the least

Yes! Sorry about that! I edited the post to get them on. My phone was being a bitch.

I wondered about the RO water, but from what I read it's harder to keep stabilized? I'm having a hard enough time getting my PH to stay put. I worry that using RO will only make it worse. Am I wrong? And regarding chillers, I was looking and saw some that are like $300! Are there cheaper options that will do?

Pyreonfire · Jan 20, 2020

EverQuest said:
No the frozen water bottles wont hurt the roots at all.

That's great. Love free/cheap solutions! I'll start freezing some right away. Thank you!

fragileassassin · Jan 20, 2020

Hydro4life said:
I’ve never sterilised my res as a preventative. As long as your res is cool with no light leaks and you have plenty of bubbles then you shouldn’t need to sterilise imo.
I don’t add beneficials (May be in base nutes??) and haven’t had root issues for about 3+years.
just my experience Fragileassassin, no disrespect intended.

Im just keeping in mind how new he is and that 77F water temp. Doing something preventative should give him 1 less thing to worry about while he's learning.
I dont doubt your success, it sounds like you got your shit dialed in nice!

Pyreonfire said:
Good to hear that it will be more stable than what I have going on now. It's very frustrating to have it swinging wildly every day!
- I didn't mention bacteria or sterilizing because I'm dropping that ball, apparently. Which is preferred and which is better for girls on a budget? I like the sound of beneficial bacteria.. but budget might win out on this one right now. The roots look really healthy, I will say. I spray painted the buckets black and then decided to foil tape them, so there's no light leaking in. So far the water and roots look beautiful!
- Regarding air, I have 4 stones per bucket. They are each about 64 GPH, so over 250 GPH in the bucket.

Sounds like you are mostly on the right track. Much better start than a lot of ppl that come here for help.
You have plenty of options either way. Its more or less a pick one and go with it thing. As Hydro4life mentioned, this isnt 100% necessary for everyone, but it can take a variable out for a step thats cheap and easy to do. Either will give you some leeway on your water temp.
On the beneficial bacteria side you have stuff like hydroguard, southern ag garden friendly fungicide, and great white. With the southern ag being the cheapest. I use it at 1/4ml per gallon.
As far as sanitizing, people use peroxide (which would be my choice if sanitizing), pool shock or other forms of powdered chlorine, or small amounts of bleach. You use these all in very small amounts so overall its probably cheaper than beneficials.

EverQuest · Jan 20, 2020

Pyreonfire said:
That's great. Love free/cheap solutions! I'll start freezing some right away. Thank you!

Yeah i use these as my frozen bottles growing 2 plants atm with DWC. Remember when add bottle it raise the level of water. For 2 plants i have 6 bottles total use 1 at a time and can 3-6 hours it melts in about hour or more then i take out. I replace another frozen water bottle when temps come back up to 69-70.

fragileassassin · Jan 20, 2020

Pyreonfire said:
That's great. Love free/cheap solutions! I'll start freezing some right away. Thank you!

if you use the bottle method, just make sure you clean the outsides before dropping them in. Who knows what you could introduce into your system if you dont.
My first crop in my veg system I didnt have it setup to use my chiller yet and the temp would creep up over a few days. I got a gallon gatorade jug and would fill it up from my drain valve and pop it in the freezer for an hour or two until it just started to freeze and id just go dump it back in the system and it would drop it like 5F. Doing 1 gallon of my ~25 gallon system every few days was enough to keep my temp creep in check.

JohnDee · Jan 20, 2020

Pyreonfire said:
Oh and I also considered doing a mix of RO and the hard water to get some of the minerals and to help maintain the PH stability? Is that an option? I suppose I'm just not sure on why RO would be preferable? I need to research that more!

Hard water can be an issue for a couple of reasons.

Lets say you have young plants to feed at 400ppm and you already have 322 ppm of unknown crap in your water. So there's less room for nutrients.

The hard water will mess with your ph way more then RO water. With hard water you have to add loads of ph down.

The stuff in the water could be usable by the plant...which means you could be giving too much Ca++. Lots of good reasons to use ro water.
JD

Pyreonfire · Jan 20, 2020

JohnDee said:
Hard water can be an issue for a couple of reasons.

Lets say you have young plants to feed at 400ppm and you already have 322 ppm of unknown crap in your water. So there's less room for nutrients.

The hard water will mess with your ph way more then RO water. With hard water you have to add loads of ph down.

The stuff in the water could be usable by the plant...which means you could be giving too much Ca++. Lots of good reasons to use ro water.
JD

Nice! That helps me to understand completely. Well, I went ahead and purchased Cal/Mag and a TDS meter, so I'll get rolling with RO right away. I'm excited and hoping that it helps me to get everything dialed in where I need it. I appreciate your help! (And you're right.. I was adding tons of PH down. Crazy amounts!)

Airwalker16 · Jan 20, 2020

EverQuest said:
Hello , Try to make sure Ph is 5.4-6.4. This chart should help for future problems. also having high bucket temps to cool can use frozen water bottles a lot cheaper than a chiller. 1 small frozen water bottle will keep it chilled for 3-6 hours easy. If you use LED and or decided to use RO water or distilled use a cal/mag product. Good luck on grow!

We've all been given the false hope of chilling our reservoirs with frozen water bottles. Truth is, it's just not doable. Far too much work and being around to keep up on it. Really, a chiller is a great investment if you don't plan on or want to in the future, learn a beneficial bacteria regime that plays nice in your system and climate.
I say run sterile, ro water, a lil calmag and GH flora trio, set chiller at 66°F and they're off to the races

Pyreonfire · Jan 20, 2020

JohnDee said:
Hard water can be an issue for a couple of reasons.

Lets say you have young plants to feed at 400ppm and you already have 322 ppm of unknown crap in your water. So there's less room for nutrients.

The hard water will mess with your ph way more then RO water. With hard water you have to add loads of ph down.

The stuff in the water could be usable by the plant...which means you could be giving too much Ca++. Lots of good reasons to use ro water.
JD

So one more question for you guys... I went ahead and ordered a EC meter and Cal/Mag. It's set to arrive Wednesday afternoon. In the meantime, should I change out my reservoir for RO water even without the Cal/Mag or any idea where I stand with EC? Would I be safe to add in Cal/Mag in a few days once it arrives? Or, should I hold off until I'm completely set?

Airwalker16 · Jan 20, 2020

Pyreonfire said:
So one more question for you guys... I went ahead and ordered a EC meter and Cal/Mag. It's set to arrive Wednesday afternoon. In the meantime, should I change out my reservoir for RO water even without the Cal/Mag or any idea where I stand with EC? Would I be safe to add in Cal/Mag in a few days once it arrives? Or, should I hold off until I'm completely set?

Just wait til it comes. And always ALWAYS Mix your cal mag VERY FIRST, even if you're making 20gals worth, but mixing in just a 5gal jug or something. CalMag has Has HAS to be very first!!

New hydro grow and brown leaves. Need some advice!

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