Plants wilting using LED's in RDWC

I think they're too far. My buddy has a big LED setup and he runs his lights fairly close on some plants. He even had a cabinet that was maybe 30" max height and grew a decent sized sour grapes under a 90W UFO. Maybe test out some closer than others if you're weary of hurting the plants with too much light. he runs blackstar 240W's at about 18 inches if I remember right..

looks like not getting enough water to the roots. and ph is way too high for that stage, 5.6-5.8 max.

I run LED lights. It varies during the grow but so far about 6 - 12 inches above the canopy has worked for me...more powerful lights may need a little more but I've never heard of LEDs that needed 3 feet. I grow soil so I can't say about your method but I can say that one issue that I had at first was over watering since the plants use so much less water. Less heat, less water and less nutrients to grow (same amount of nutrients per gallon but just less gallons). I also had to add a heater to my grow room.

i know some of the high power leds will fry the plants if closer than 2'

The 180w panels do look too far away. From my experience a generic Chinese panel needs to be 8 to 16 inches away, depending on a few variables like if lenses are being used, the beam angle, or if you're flowering or not. You may want to try and drop a panel closer to one of your sick plants and see if she bounces back. You could also drop a panel closer to a healthy one and see if the growth improves, i.e. tighter nodal length. 12-14 inches would be a good place to start for a 180w. The strips I'm not too familiar with. You may also want to get your room temp with lights on closer to 80F. Some panel makers recommend this temp and I know that my plants do drink more at this temp than 76-78F, though I'm just a poor dirt farmer. Have you PM'ed The Dawg about this? He's seems to be a good fellow who knows a bit about panels and 'dro. He might be able to help you. Good Luck!

i agree with superstoner on the pH being too high, but to confirm the water uptake issue can you post a few pics of what the roots look like in the UC sites? i'm thinking you may want to add drip lines to water them from the top til the roots hit the water, but the pics i'm asking for will verify that. oh... also make sure that you don't have the net pots just sitting in the water either; that can lead to root rot.

also, if they were used to 70%RH in a room of that size, and then you take it down to 50%, that could stress them especially if they have the above suspected issue and aren't able to draw enough water from the system. drier air will assist transpiration, but the roots better be ready.

also, any chance for a white light pic of some of the plants? just want to make sure that the pH being too high hasn't brought about any nute issues.

one last thing... how much air are you pushing into the system?


oh, and i also agree with FranJan on the day temp; i run my bloom at 80F with lights on for the metabolic increase the plants get vs them growing at 75F, but i would not suggest taking the temp near that while the plants are stressing like this. once you get them healthy and vigorous, and comfortable with 50%RH, then take them up to 80F if you want to.

Yes, the roots are in water. The roots were well over a foot long (spent too much time in the ez-cloner), so I couldn't plant them per Under Current's included instructions. They say plant on a bed of hydroclay (in netpot), then cover with remaining pebbles up to top of basket. I had to coil the roots around the very bottom of basket, because I feared the roots may break from laying on uneven bed of pebbles and then putting more pebbles over them. These are large baskets and a lot of weight.

I realize the correct way is to put clones that just start to root into the baskets, but I was trying to go with the lesser of evils. Now I may have created more problems for myself. I've lowered the water level to just 1/4 inch above bottom of netpot, instructions say to run water level halfway up netpot. I lowered it so they might not drown, but am I shooting myself in the foot for doing so? Won't I later just have to raise it to recommended halfway up? If so, won't that drown them when I raise it back up?

The roots are at the very bottom of the netpots with hydroclay covering them to the top of baskets. The long coiled roots are under about 1/2 inch of water and some are starting to turn slightly brown. As opposed to root rot, it looks like the roots are drowning. 3 of the larger plants do however have explosive roots developing near the top half of the baskets (the part that wasn't submerged).

So what I'm wondering is should I try and dump out the pebbles from the netpots and replant with 2" of pebbles on bottom, or leave as is and hope, or start a beneficial bacteria tea treatment to help the wilted looking roots recover (some look ok, others don't). I'm open to any other suggestions! It's been 10 days and no new roots at all (other than the 3 bigger plants).

Plenty of oxygen to roots. Twin 1.7 amp airpumps and a 1.2 amp with large airstones bubbling like crazy in every one of the 24 tubs.

Great post! Thanks again.

hey Fractalicious, and thanks for the more info. sometimes i leave things in the cloner too long too, so i know how that goes. thing is, i put them in 1gal pots of soil and call it good.

first, i want to mention that i work at a shop that sells Under Current systems, and I get a lot of feedback on them. and both the shop owners use them; one crops a lb per plant while the other hasn't completed a grow in almost a year... there seems to be a lot that can go wrong with these, but when nothing catastrophic occurs then the yields are massive.

the guy with his stuff in order propagates with grodan cubes, and then moves the plants up to the 4 or 6 inch cubes before placing the rooted cube in the net pot, on a layer of hydroton (and fully surrounded/covered with the hydroton too). he drip feeds the top til the roots touch water and then stops drip feeding to encourage the plant to focus on rooting the water. also, he makes a big deal about not having the net pot sitting in the water. he says that his water level is about 1/2 to 1 inch below the bottom of the net pot.

if you were of the mind to move forward with these plants, i would think to try to get the roots thru the net pot and down into the water, and then drop the water level itself.

personally, i would take cuts as i describe above and start over as i see these plants getting rootbound if they are left like that, and that the time that they will take recovering will set you back even further vs starting new cuts in a manner that will allow them to avoid these issues in your system.

however you decide to go, i wish you luck!