Please help first time grower!!

Hi this is my first grow and I'm running into some problems with my plants and need some help diagnosing from some veterans. I have read countless plant symptoms threads and grow pages so I'm not lazy I just have tried everything and can't seem to get things right so I'll explain and hopefully you can help..

I have a 1000w led in a 5x5 tent it's about 2- 2 1/2 feet away it was closers but I moved it back the plants were getting to much light and seemed pale. It's a hydroponic setup with with hydroton stones which I cleaned and ph'd properly so no problems there. I'm using 100% ro water with 0 ppms and 7ph at start, I'm about 3 weeks into veg from seed, I add cal-mag plus and silica blast by botainacare which brings me to about 200ppms, then I follow the technaflora recipe for success feeding schedule which brought me to about 900 ppms, i also added very little h2o2 this week just to make sure the roots stay clean and no algea or anything builds up. As of right now I'm at about 945 ppms and a ph of 6.0.

I've been battling the ph every day or to i have to add about 1.5 tsp of ph down to keep it in the range of 5.8-6.2 it keeps climbing on me but I check ph levels twice daily highest it's been was 6.5 so I don't think it's a lock out i could be wrong tho... my hydro setup is the 6 site bubble flow buckets system from supercloset so my reservoir is constantly cycling thru the buckets so I don't kno if the daily dramatic changing of the ph is causing a problem I'm not sure if that would have an effect I'll let you guys decide. I have 2 fans circulating the air flow full time and an exhaust fan running full time.. I did have a heat problem last week which I have since corrected by running a vent from my air conditioner to the tent during the day it's about 70-75 degrees F and at night 60-65 degrees F. I am not running CO2 at this time.
I have 3 different strains going 2 of each, bubba kush, blue dream, and girl scout cookies. The blue dream have been doing great until this morning I will show pics below. The bubba kush have been growing a little slower than blue dream but nothing to alarming... the girl scout cookies have just been sucking I actually just had to plant another 1 this week but the growth is so slow I will show pictures below of each plant and hopefully I can get some answers.....

sorry for the long post I just wanted to be as descriptive as possible I plan to keep this thread active for the duration of my grow and hope to be able to have a decent first harvest with the help of this wonderful community.


Blue Dream pics :


Hard to see in picture but the plant is yellowish, those crisp edges I believe are from my heat problem from last week.





This is on my blue dream as well this plant has been doing awesome this practically happened over night you can see the yellowing on this 1 a bit better.


Bubba kush pics:


these just haven't been performing very well in my opinion but again this is my first grow but here you see slight yellowing and bottom leave curling down... keep in mind these all drink the same water so I don't get why some are growing slow, why some have worse symptoms then others I just don't get it.



This is the other bubba growing slightly better than the other but some yellowing and brown spots on lower leaves



Girls Scout Cookie pic:



This thing has been doing awful 1 died in replanted new 1 is doing good so far this 1 I just cut off the 2 lower leaves because they were covered in brown spots and died now the top leaves in the above pictures are doing the same thing starting to spot at the tips.


This picture is of all 6 plants just so you can see the size difference 5 of the 6 were all started at the same time.



2 left are the bubba kush
2 mid are blue dream
2 right are girl scouts

Someone please diagnose my babies lol I can't figure out what the issue is here if you need more info or better pictures just ask and I will provide.

Any and all help is appreciated thank you.

ppms WAY too high in my opinion.

cut your recipe to 1/4 of what you are running now. shoot for around 250 to 300ppm

rkymtnman said:

ppms WAY too high in my opinion.

cut your recipe to 1/4 of what you are running now. shoot for around 250 to 300ppm

Click to expand...

Yea you think so? It doesn't look like nute burn it almost seems like some sort of d efficiency

Heat, nute burn, light burn and ph issues.


All of those not maybe one of them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Mbakes51 said:

Yea you think so? It doesn't look like nute burn it almost seems like some sort of d efficiency

Click to expand...

i never go above 1.2EC (about 600ppms roughly) for my whole grow.

set your pH at 5.5 and let it rise up during the day. only adjust ph once/day.

i'd give a 24hr flush with 5.8 RO water. then start back on much lighter nutes. 1mL/gal of silica, 2mL/gal of calmg and nutes to get you around 250/300ppm

rkymtnman said:

i never go above 1.2EC (about 600ppms roughly) for my whole grow.

set your pH at 5.5 and let it rise up during the day. only adjust ph once/day.

i'd give a 24hr flush with 5.8 RO water. then start back on much lighter nutes. 1mL/gal of silica, 2mL/gal of calmg and nutes to get you around 250/300ppm

Click to expand...

OK thank you for the help I'll give it a try and get back to you

Mbakes51 said:

OK thank you for the help I'll give it a try and get back to you

Click to expand...

no problem

what all is in the technaflora lineup? some you probably don't need at this time.

rkymtnman said:

no problem

what all is in the technaflora lineup? some you probably don't need at this time.

Click to expand...

B.c boost
B.c grow
Thrive alive b-1
And sugar daddy
Is what I put in along with the cal-mag and silica blast

not familiar with technaflora so i'll assume that the feed schedule is OK (but way too strong). on the website, if you check out the feed schedule, it says EC or ppms will be 2.0 or 1100 for grow mix. if you cut that in 1/4, that would be a good place to start.

like i said, myself and many hydro growers rarely go above EC of 1.0 or 1.2 (500 to 600ppms roughly) for the whole grow. less is more with nutes. especially in hydro.

keep me posted on how they look after a flush and lighter nute load.

First of make sure your system is super clean .. Then use 1/4 of nutes then what the bottle says.. In my pic that little palm tree was a clone with no leaves just roots then I put in a homemade Dwc bucket and now it blew up I use terra vega nute.. And calmag. Check your water temp too 68-72*. Good luck keep in touch let me know how you make out but it might just be lit to much nutes.. Sorry couldn't help much. I run soil grows Scrog set ups

My clone was in a root roit I washed off the soil then in DWC bucket then boom it blew up.. I also use peroxide in my water like 20 ml to 4 gallons . Good luck to you

rkymtnman said:

not familiar with technaflora so i'll assume that the feed schedule is OK (but way too strong). on the website, if you check out the feed schedule, it says EC or ppms will be 2.0 or 1100 for grow mix. if you cut that in 1/4, that would be a good place to start.

like i said, myself and many hydro growers rarely go above EC of 1.0 or 1.2 (500 to 600ppms roughly) for the whole grow. less is more with nutes. especially in hydro.

keep me posted on how they look after a flush and lighter nute load.

Click to expand...

Sal Baretta said:

My clone was in a root roit I washed off the soil then in DWC bucket then boom it blew up.. I also use peroxide in my water like 20 ml to 4 gallons . Good luck to you

Click to expand...

Ty

Yw

I just want to give an update to everyone and I appreciate all the help so far I haven't yet flushed the system is am very soon though reason being i have a 40 gallon min for my hydro system and my ro filter takes 24hr or so to produce the 40 gallon I have a secondary tank just for getting a fresh supply of ro water I usually start filling 48 hours before reservoir change. That being said It's been about 24 hours since the diagnosis of nute burn and I've been observing and noticed that the 2 middle plants are still getting worse yellow blotches on the lower leaves and yellowing/pale in between veins of upper leaves slight wilting and leaves curling up. Yet all those symptoms and it's only on those 2 the other 4 are looking slightly better keep in mind I'm still at 900 ppms. I also noticed I have a 2 week old newer plant in the same water and it's thriving with no symptoms so that got me thinking why is this small plant not getting burnt but these big 1s are...
so I took a closer look and ding ding ding i found algea on the hydroton so i dug in a little bit to look at the roots and found the beginning stages of root rot on the roots closer to the plant... I believe this happen because I was having a problem with this system draining and the water was rising alot higher in the buckets than it was supposed to but I have corrected the problem and it seems that higher level that's now lowered has minor traces of algea and beginnings of root rot now I need to know how to clean the algea and root rot... I'm also am going to lower the ppms to about 400 ppms just to be safe but I just wanted some ideas for the algea and root rot.

that's the problem with all buckets being connected. when one plant gets rot, the rest are soon to follow.

are you close to any grow shops? i use dutchmaster zone. cheap, easy to use ( 2mL per gallon is what i use). it's basically chlorine. if you can get that fast, i'd do it. if not, you'll need to get some hydrogen peroxide. i forget what the mix rate is for it so you'll have to search. depends what % the h2o2 is too.

you'll need to get every noook and cranny. add to your res and let it run. also pour from the top with whatever you decide to use to kill it. and pour alot on every plant.

rkymtnman said:

that's the problem with all buckets being connected. when one plant gets rot, the rest are soon to follow.

are you close to any grow shops? i use dutchmaster zone. cheap, easy to use ( 2mL per gallon is what i use). it's basically chlorine. if you can get that fast, i'd do it. if not, you'll need to get some hydrogen peroxide. i forget what the mix rate is for it so you'll have to search. depends what % the h2o2 is too.

you'll need to get every noook and cranny. add to your res and let it run. also pour from the top with whatever you decide to use to kill it. and pour alot on every plant.

Click to expand...

I have just about 40 gallons of ro water I was going to drain and instead of add the water to the reservoir then pump it in poor a couple gallons into each pot with the ro water and some solution from the hydro store think that'll work? I was thinking about hydroguard

i didn't like hydroguard which is why i ended up with Zone. whatever you decide to use, i'd do it quick or it will spread fast as wildfire.

rkymtnman said:

i didn't like hydroguard which is why i ended up with Zone. whatever you decide to use, i'd do it quick or it will spread fast as wildfire.

Click to expand...

OK thanks I'll c if they have the zone and get back to you later or tomorrow with a status update I appreciate all your help so far I'll think they'll pull thru there's still a lot of healthy roots so I caught it before it spread to far

Ok I'm back with an update I kno it's to early to really tell but I drained the system wiped down the reservoir and buckets I flushed the plants with ro water and regena-root and I brought the ppms up to about 400 and I checked on them this morning before the light kicked on they all had a nice healthy color and 5 were stretching for the light again like before so I think I'm good.

After the light was on for a couple hours I noticed they started looking yellowy pale again so it seems I had many things going on at once which is why i couldn't diagnose so easily I have a kind led xl 1000 and it was far enough away I just had the power up to high apparently it was putting out an equivalent to 800w I dropped it down to 450w and they seem happy now.

I just have 1 plant the blue dream that looks sad and droopy but that's the same plant I dug out its probably just shock or stress I had to examine the roots to see how bad the rot was on atleast 1 of them so I'm hoping it bounces back and I didn't damage the roots to bad I was gentle I thought but we'll see in a couple days... Please correct me if I'm wrong but if in a couple days they all start getting better besides this droopy 1 can i just clip 2 clones off the top rather than wait for another seed to germ? I think it'll pull thru but I just want a backup plan.

Also I couldn't understand how people were getting good results with such low ppms but I sat and talked to a friend of mine and now it makes so much sense... I have 6 6.6 gallon buckets that actually only fill with about 5.5 gallons max because I have a dwc hydro system and I have a 20 gal recycling reservoir for a total 40 gallons.... Stay with me here especially if your new like me because this will save you a fortune. Silly me was under the impression that I had to supply nutrients for every gallon in the system when in theory the plants will never use all of that so it's just a waste so from now on I'm only going to treat 25 gallons in my system and because it's recycling the plants will have access to more than enough nutrients for them without ever having to worry about burning them. KEEP IN Mind this is my first grow i am no pro this is just a theory I'm hoping someone will chirp in on. But it makes sense for a recycling dwc to only need enough treated water for the plants and just ph the rest.

Mbakes51 said:

Also I couldn't understand how people were getting good results with such low ppms but I sat and talked to a friend of mine and now it makes so much sense... I have 6 6.6 gallon buckets that actually only fill with about 5.5 gallons max because I have a dwc hydro system and I have a 20 gal recycling reservoir for a total 40 gallons.... Stay with me here especially if your new like me because this will save you a fortune. Silly me was under the impression that I had to supply nutrients for every gallon in the system when in theory the plants will never use all of that so it's just a waste so from now on I'm only going to treat 25 gallons in my system and because it's recycling the plants will have access to more than enough nutrients for them without ever having to worry about burning them. KEEP IN Mind this is my first grow i am no pro this is just a theory I'm hoping someone will chirp in on. But it makes sense for a recycling dwc to only need enough treated water for the plants and just ph the rest.

Click to expand...

not exactly. not sure how you can have a rdwc that doesn't recirculate all the solution all the time? mine was 30 gallons so i mixed up my nutes for 30 gallons at whatever EC i wanted depending on size/growth stage etc.

the "why" for lower nute strengths is that roots are always exposed to nutes in dwc/rdwc so they can feed anytime they want. then compare to a ebb/flow or even a hempy bucket which only waters the root zone from 1 to 5 times daily. the plant will eat less frequently so you can up your nute strength. that make sense?