Problems with coco!!??

Ok so I've got 3 seedlings in coco and 1 died and the other two look beat up, deformed and stunted , they are over 2 weeks old and just tiny... And pathetic , I've been feeding tap water with 100ppm of cal mag and 50ppm of rhizotonic. My tap water is 125 ppm so I have around 275 ppm wAter phed to 5.8...

I was concerned about them so I checked the runoff.. And it was 900??????!!!!!,

I flushed this coco and checked the ppm before I used it and it had same ppm coming out as was going in.

So I flushed them till the runoff was about 200 or so..

Anyone know how my medium held all that nutrients? I was letting my medium dry out a bit between watering could this be a salt build up from letting it go too dry??

Here's some pics they are very unhappy as u can see....

When you feed them, how much runoff are you getting? Or are you just watering them, and not really letting it runoff? Because if you have sufficient runoff, you're essentially flushing the medium each time you water.

I always add perlite to my coco

some people wash out their coco with cal/mag`d water as they say that helps set it up better

to me it just looks like you needed more perlite in there, rhizotonic should be all they need in coco for the 1st 2 weeks or so you should be able to get them to 2 to 4 nodes before needing cal/mag and veg feed

Better question would be, where did the seeds come from? Most of the food there going to use until about the 3rd to 4th set of leaves, at least in my experience, is in the cotlydon leaves. Better off with just plain, bottle water until those cotlydons yellow.

Check your coco bag to see if maybe it has any ammendmemts in it.

Well I had let them water till runoff but I wasn't dumping the water , just letting it evaporate

dump it. if the plants are sitting in that water, whats in the pots won't run out like it should, and the salts build up in the bottom of the pot. your seedlings will do good till they reach that zone, then they get burnt. always get at least 10% runoff in coco and get rid of it.

and buy good coco, i bought some cheap shit off amazon and its so full of salt i have to wash it a dozen times to make it usable, it'll burn the shit out of seedlings if i don't

Roger A. Shrubber said:

dump it. if the plants are sitting in that water, whats in the pots won't run out like it should, and the salts build up in the bottom of the pot. your seedlings will do good till they reach that zone, then they get burnt. always get at least 10% runoff in coco and get rid of it.

Click to expand...

Good advice, OP, because it looks like you're using straight coir. Coir will wick up whatever it's standing in. After you get a grow or two under your belt, and get familiar with coco, I urge you to have a look at making your own coco mix. I used about 65% pieces and 35% coir. I think it's the best of both worlds, myself. Good balance between drainage and moisture retention.