Plant stopped growing

Hello,
I am a newbie to this site. I decided to join because after many previous issues, I always saw the most positive help from this site. Anyways with that said, I need some help with my new grow.

Here I have some Maui Wauis that were planted in October after I received them from the Attitude site. They were doing great growing almost an inch a day under two 48-inch T12 lights and then all of a sudden they stopped. I figured the issue was bigger pots so i transferred the DWC grow from barely-a-gallon pots to 5-gallon buckets. Two days after the transfer, I noticed no growth and also a funny smell which turned out to be the beginning cases for root rot. Purchased Actino-Iron from my local hydro store as per the owner's recommendation and used it for a week before flushing the plants and buckets. Well it seemed to possibly have gotten rid of it cause the roots are now since white and some light caramel, but best of all no bad smell. Unfortunately though the plants are still not really growing like they were and the bottom as well as the 2nd set leaves are yellowish/green as seen in the picture below. I've heard that root rot can work up slowly on your plants and am hoping that isn't the case. In addition the weird thing is that root rot makes your water acidic..well I'm having the complete opposite. My pH is always high, I will lower the pH to 5.6 and within an hour it's back to almost 7.0! To resolute the pH issue, I even soaked all new rocks in 5.6 ph'd water for 24 hours, added the nutrients and then placed the pH back to 5.6 and then waited another 12 hours before applying it to the plants. Well the pH is still rising like it was, so I'm just not getting it!

So to recap the issue in case of confusion due to my story:
1. Plant not growing
2. pH keeps rising very rapidly

- The bulbs I am using are GE Plant & Aquarium 48" Bulbs
- Nutes used are Mother Earth Blended Super Natural Super Tea 4-1-4 (but am moving to the Age Old Grow products here next week)
- Tap water and nutrients (let it sit for 24 hours in a bucket with a pH of 5.5-6.0 before adding to plants)








Any help you can give me would be great and much appreciated.

You may have answered your own question. Unstable ph will stunt growth. My suggestion is start using distilled water (88 cents/ gallon at walmart) and some better nutes, check out Dyna Gro before switching. I had the same issue with tap water. I would boil it and let it sit for 24 hours and it still would cause ph problems. You'll notice that with distilled water you use very small amounts of ph down because its ppm is 0 which will also allow you to raise your the ppm of your nutrients. Also look into aquashield instead of actino iron. Hope this helps!

Better yet used 3/4 distilled to 1/2 and rest spring water. If you are going for a more affordable way since will include Cal.

Honestly I have used neither of those nutes. I have ran roots and aurora currently, advanced a lot, Humboldt even general hydro and never had that problem mixed with ro aka distilled water. So I would guess its the salt in your water or iron.

Update: I checked my plants yesterday and the leaves are turning more yellow on the bottom and very limp. With pretty much the rest of the plant. Thank you both so much for your reply. After seeing this update, I took both of your individual advice and purchased distilled water as well as spring water last night. Once I got home, i filled the containers 3/4 with distilled and the rest spring water, checked pH (was good), redid nutrients and everything. (once again checked pH and had to lower a lil bit but again all good )

New update: Unfortunately arises an issue, I checked the pH this morning and boom it's back up..AGAIN As for the rest, everything else looks okay so far, but who can really tell results until a couple of days.

Here are the plants as of this morning:




Big mommas looking a lot sicker than stretch

are the t12s all you got for light those suck for growing could be the reason to the yellowing not enough light getting to the bottom

grorite said:

are the t12s all you got for light those suck for growing could be the reason to the yellowing not enough light getting to the bottom

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Unfortunately yeah that's all I have assuming they were the best for the situation and also since the bulbs I purchased were for plants and aquariums. What would you recommend?

i would say buy cfls at least i just harvest one of my plants under cfls just about 3 ozs from it should get another 2 from the other i run 400 actual watts 2 plants

grorite said:

i would say buy cfls at least i just harvest one of my plants under cfls just about 3 ozs from it should get another 2 from the other i run 400 actual watts 2 plants

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these are GE Plant & Aquarium T12 - Plant; Terrarium lights and say they process 1900 lumens per bulb. is that not enough light?

Leave it to AN to come up with a "compost tea" for hydro. You have plenty of light for veg. I would buy a new base nutrient and use the mother earth as a supplement.

kountdown said:

Leave it to AN to come up with a "compost tea" for hydro. You have plenty of light for veg. I would buy a new base nutrient and use the mother earth as a supplement.

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Thanks! I switched over to Age Old Bloom nutes and Kelp supplement as of yesterday. I've heard real good things about this company and want to give em a shot. Thanks also for the lighting advice. I kinda felt that it was enough light for my two plants.

Plant is still dying from the bottom up. Any suggestions??? I'm getting pretty desperate here.

Mix a fresh batch of nutes at half strength (400-600 ppm). try a simple npk ratio like 1-1-1 or 7-9-5 (something with silica already in it would be great cause it helps deal with stress). leave all the other supplements out. and if possible try a foiler spray. For the ph just try a different solution GH has the best and Flora is the worst in my opinion. I dont think they will die.

I dont want to keep suggesting things that you have to buy but Dyna Gro nutrients is probably the best for your situation right now. People are gonna argue but when I started growing I fell into the marketing trap of the Nutrient business and it cost me a lot of money and a lot of dead plants. I finally started to take the advice of Homebrewer and tried Dyna Gro. I use nothing else and get decent results every time. Check out his grow off between Dyna Gro and Advanced Nutrients

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/429438-dyna-gro-vs-advanced-nutrients.html#post5684072

http://www.dyna-gro.com/

Hello ,

are the t12s all you got for light those suck for growing could be the reason to the yellowing not enough light getting to the bottom
​

http://www.ttfotf.com/

brentswth20 said:

Unfortunately yeah that's all I have assuming they were the best for the situation and also since the bulbs I purchased were for plants and aquariums. What would you recommend?

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CFL's would even be better, IMO.
I only tried once, but the 'plant/ aquarium' bulbs didn't work any better than a plain ol' shop tube for me.
The lumens you speak of, is the amount of light they emit.
You should be more concerned with the Kelvin rating, or the spectrum of the light emitted.
For veg, you want 5000k, or 6500k bulbs, and for flowering if you do that indoors, 2700k.
The 2700k will work for veg if you mix n match with the 6500's.

Nmccray420 said:

distilled water (88 cents/ gallon at walmart)

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One of the few reasons I wish we had walmart. You can't buy distilled water anywhere over here.

This post is truly inspiring. I like your post and everything you share with us is current and very informative.latest films

Your lights are not the reason they looked like that. I used two 4ft t12s at 1st for 8 plants. I switched to t8s and got 4 bulbs. Then cfls and honestly they all worked fine plants were way bushy and green.

Dying bottem up would mean like a disease or something right? Bugs? Just guessing idk