Problem with my Mommas, leaving me stumped...

I've got my mommas running in DIY DWC buckets.

Everything works alright, except occasionally, like once every two months maybe, one of my mommas will just dry up and die on me! She'll start looking droopy, like she's not getting water (even though she of course is), and then she'll just dry up and get crispy. This happens over like three or four days from start to finish.

It seems to only happen to larger plants. The latest plant hit is about five or six months old. The plants in question seem to be getting plenty of dissolved oxygen, nutes are within regular range, and there's no sign of root rot or anything (no slime or stink).

I'm using GH 3 part nutes, with some pro-tekt for silica and a pinch of epsom salt to offset the calcium in my tap water.

It started happening to one of my mommas today, this is the third plant in six months affected. I'm baffled. I've attached pictures of the plant in question, and I would very much appreciate any insight.

I'm a DWC amateur, but have been doing my mommas in DWC for more than about two years with no real issues besides this.

Thanks much for any ideas you can share.

Had this happen once before, same scenario. It turned out to be the Epsom salt. I only use calmag now or just up my bloom nutes for mag def. Hasn't happened again. Just a thought. Nice size mom, sorry for the loss. Might want to clone what you can of her before she's gone. Good luck.

Newb here but looks to me like lack of oxygen. What do the roots look like? Whats your water temp?

Its in the roots and it ain't no Mg.def this time My money is on Pythium, look close at the roots, see it as a type of slime but it is a fungus and has spores like a mushroom to my blog:
http://forum.grasscity.com/blogs/vostok/31921-root-rot.html

http://forum.grasscity.com/blogs/vostok/31922-root-rot-2-pythium.html

What are your ppms looking like i had plants just die overnight in dwc and i believe its an issue with water temp and evaporarion. What happenned to my plants i believe was the plants were sucking up the water and so my nute concentration was rising and therefor throwing off ph as well and they couldnt handle the big fluctuations and burned up. I had 3 stones in each bucket and they died over night. I tryed to revive them with just plaim water and lots of oxygen but they were too far gone. You have to check your ppms and ph everyday in dwc.

What is the water temp in your buckets. I killed mine when the water temp went over 80*. 3g of water heats up quick.

xwant2LeaRNx said:

What are your ppms looking like i had plants just die overnight in dwc and i believe its an issue with water temp and evaporarion. What happenned to my plants i believe was the plants were sucking up the water and so my nute concentration was rising and therefor throwing off ph as well and they couldnt handle the big fluctuations and burned up. I had 3 stones in each bucket and they died over night. I tryed to revive them with just plaim water and lots of oxygen but they were too far gone. You have to check your ppms and ph everyday in dwc.

Click to expand...

Waaaaayyyy late replying on this....but wanted to check in and say thanks to everyone who sounded off...it turned out this was the problem: heavy water use caused nutes to get to concentrated, ph fluctuation stressed 'em out. I'm surprised because while I've seen ph issues stress plants outs before I've never seen it straight kill 'em like this.

I wanna set 'em up as recirculating so I only have to handle one res, but that's gonna take some work 'cuz I don't have space for a big barrel in my nursery. For now, it's six more reservoirs to test every day....

guevera said:

Waaaaayyyy late replying on this....but wanted to check in and say thanks to everyone who sounded off...it turned out this was the problem: heavy water use caused nutes to get to concentrated, ph fluctuation stressed 'em out. I'm surprised because while I've seen ph issues stress plants outs before I've never seen it straight kill 'em like this.

I wanna set 'em up as recirculating so I only have to handle one res, but that's gonna take some work 'cuz I don't have space for a big barrel in my nursery. For now, it's six more reservoirs to test every day....

Click to expand...

Yea that sucks to hear that you lost them. It happened to me once before. And they die fast if your not on top of it everyday. But live and learn. I heard you mention rdwc i would suggest you look into ebb and grow buckets first. I know Your doing allot of work maintaining 6 dwc buckets its a bitch.

xwant2LeaRNx said:

Yea that sucks to hear that you lost them. It happened to me once before. And they die fast if your not on top of it everyday. But live and learn. I heard you mention rdwc i would suggest you look into ebb and grow buckets first. I know Your doing allot of work maintaining 6 dwc buckets its a bitch.

Click to expand...

Well I lost the one pictured, but she probably only had a couple months left in her anyway....and cuz of your advice I saved the next one it happened to! So thanks much.

Maybe a bonehead question: what's the difference between RDWC and ebb&grow bucket systems? Both use res + controller bucket and have plant buckets plumbed inline from there, right? Is it that RDWC leaves roots hanging in solution with constant aeration while ebb&grow sorta fills the bucket with medium and floods periodically, so each bucket is like a mini-table? Does that mean you can skip the individual air pumps/stones with ebb&grow buckets?

Yea each bucket is basically a table. But i like to grow big plants since my numbers are limited so i prefer the buckets over the tables. Big advantages to ebb and grow is if you for some reason have a power outage in rdwc your in big trouble. But with ebb and grow you can hand water. And no you dont have to have a stone in each bucket just stones in 55 gallon res. You can build your own ebb ang grow sytem for under under 300.00 dollars. Look into ebb and grow controller by aquahub. I was gonna build a rdwc system first had the hole sytem planned out. But i settled on ebb and grow instead.

Some plants, I am not sure what the criteria is specifically, or what varieties specific, are more susceptible to dramatic ph swings, for whatever reason.