Seedlings are looking horrible after transplant!

Hey guys,

I'm new here and new to growing and I could really use some wisdom and help.

Materials:
5 gal plastic pots with good drainage
Mother Earth Coco/Perlite 70/30
General Hydro Maxi Series Nutrients
Botanicare Cal-Mag+
Mars Hydro TSW-2000W LED lights @ 30" height.

I recently transplanted 6 plants 3xGorilla Glue Auto & 3xCritical Purple Auto into 5 gallon pots filled with plain 70/30 coco/perlite blend pre-soaked with 3ml/gal of CalMag water 6 Ph. The seedlings first sprouted using 12 oz paper cups filled with plain coco 70/30 and looked perfectly healthy until transplanting a week after being in the cups.

A few days after transplanting I started noticing dry curling of lower leaves, discoloration/yellowing in-between the veins of the lower leaves and the new leaves and growth looked fine, nice consistent green and no other problems to note.

After transplanting the plants were fed 6.0 Ph RO water with 3ml/gal of CalMag+ for the first week. The plants seem to be showing (from what I've seen in pictures and charts) Cal or Mag Deficiency although I don't see how that's possible when they've been fed CalMag+ water since day 1 and in the cups they looked fine, it was just after transplanting.

Tent temperatures stay around 68-77 F with 50-65% RH and the plants have been watered for the first week using 3 ml CalMag per/gal of water and after the first week I tried using the recommended 0.25 teaspoon of MaxiGrow in addition to the CalMag with no change 5 days later...

I'm really just wondering if I should try to ride these out or start over because I'm now hitting the end of week 2 and these are just looking like sh*t and growing really slowly.. I'm scared to add any real nutrients because of how they look in fear of burning them. Any advise is appreciated!

I guess not many people are active around these parts. The plants have recovered and are healthy. Ultimately the cause was isolated to General Hydroponics Maxi Series nutrients. Maxi is certainly not "ph buffered" and was making my 6 PH water drop to ~1.5-2 PH at a rate of 1 teaspoon per/gal of water. Absolute trash. I've since switched to FloraNova and continued to add 5ml/gal of CalMag+ From Botanicare and I'm having no issues to note. The leaves that were severely ph/nute burned were trimmed off and now the new growth is nice looking. I'm running FloraGrow at ~6 PH 3ml/gal.

I also noticed that Mother Earth Coco/Perlite 70/30 is VERY Calcium thirsty. I had to load a batch of 5 gallons with 30 ml of CalMag+ to stop a nitrogen/calcium deficiency that was causing my leaves to yellow entirely, have rusty spots all over the leaves and overall just look sickly.

What led you to believe that GH Maxi was going to be "pH buffered" without buffering?

Chip Green said:

What led you to believe that GH Maxi was going to be "pH buffered" without buffering?

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The water was buffered @ 6 PH and after adding MaxiBurn it made my water face plant to 2 PH. Their MaxiBurn commercial on YouTube has the guy saying it's PH BUFFERED which is complete lies.

You ph AFTER you mix it...
This is the problem with not having a game plan.
Would you tear apart your car without doing ANY homework??
https://www.growweedeasy.com/basics

Every grower ever has had to accept mistakes as learning experience, from time to time.

I, and countless others, have correctly mixed, and used GH MaxiBloom with fantastic results.
For decades.

YouTube grow advice, CAN be equally detrimental as "Hydro store guy"

You've already stated that you're new and that's fine. Mistakes are the best way to learn, rather than blame your tools, take lessons away and develop your skills.
I can see a few mistakes in your set up and I'd guess your transplanting skills were rough too. Probably not a lot to do with your pH, rather the fact you were trying to feed them cal mag when they needed nutrients instead.

It's NOT cheap growing weed. Surprised at how people go in with a reactive attitude. You really need to do some homework if you've never even grown tomatoes. Mixing Nutrient's is pretty serious to screw up.
Maybe it's just me. Glad you found something easy for you to use.

It's not the nutrients you're using it's the way you're mixing them. You pH AFTER you mix the nutrients. General Hydroponics Maxi Series is not trash. It's an extremely popular line used by many people with great success to grow all kinds of plants not just cannabis. If you mixed it incorrectly that your fault.

And stop wasting time on crappy youtube videos. That's the worst place to learn about growing.

I would just give them cal mag (if it has a little N) for now or a weak (clone strength) feed when they are that small

Are they looking better lately?

xtsho said:

It's not the nutrients you're using it's the way you're mixing them. You pH AFTER you mix the nutrients. General Hydroponics Maxi Series is not trash. It's an extremely popular line used by many people with great success to grow all kinds of plants not just cannabis. If you mixed it incorrectly that your fault.

And stop wasting time on crappy youtube videos. That's the worst place to learn about growing.

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Certainly good advise. After trying to adjust PH after as well it would take TONS of PH UP to be successful. I guess that line of nutrients is just not for me. I use FloraNova now and so far I've had no issues. I am a new grower and learning as I go so any advice anyone can give is appreciated. I've also learned a lot on my own just experimenting with different PH, nutrients and light distances since I'm growing LED.

The Gram Reaper said:

I would just give them cal mag (if it has a little N) for now or a weak (clone strength) feed when they are that small

Are they looking better lately?

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You're dead on actually. I ended up doing exactly that and they came right back to health. Here's an update as of like 2 days ago.

Really big difference compared to what they were looking like... lol

Also to anyone thinking this is my first grow.. It's not. I've been growing for almost 9 months. This was just my first experience having a big problem in Coco. Here's a cola from my previous Cinderella 99 AutoFlower.

The plant yielded 6 ounces dry in 3 months.

calvin.m16 said:

You're dead on actually. I ended up doing exactly that and they came right back to health. Here's an update as of like 2 days ago.

Really big difference compared to what they were looking like... lol

View attachment 4400726

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I grow in Coco and they get Cal mag every watering. 3 ml is the minimum. I bump it up to 4ml when my seedlings are about the size yours are now. I also don't feed every watering so I'll put a little extra Cal mag in the water the days I'm not feeding. Coco isn't ideal for your first grow cuz you're still learning basics. It's how I started out but that was me acting on bad advice from a grow shop employee. Take what they say with a grain of salt.

calvin.m16 said:

Also to anyone thinking this is my first grow.. It's not. I've been growing for almost 9 months. This was just my first experience having a big problem in Coco. Here's a cola from my previous Cinderella 99 AutoFlower.

The plant yielded 6 ounces dry in 3 months.

View attachment 4400727

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There's not a huge difference between first grow and having grown for 9 months. Looks like you're getting your bearings tho.

Hank Mardukas said:

I grow in Coco and they get Cal mag every watering. 3 ml is the minimum. I bump it up to 4ml when my seedlings are about the size yours are now. I also don't feed every watering so I'll put a little extra Cal mag in the water the days I'm not feeding. Coco isn't ideal for your first grow cuz you're still learning basics. It's how I started out but that was me acting on bad advice from a grow shop employee. Take what they say with a grain of salt.

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Gotcha. I enjoy Coco mainly due to me starting out in FoxFarms Ocean Forest and having a gnat infestation due to it.. I also purchased it from a vendor who gets it directly from FoxFarms distribution center. They said they had other reports of the gnats and offered a refund. LOL no thanks I'll stick with Coco and worry less about bugs. That is very good advice on the CalMag I noticed that if I "flushed" them like most feeding charts say to it would actually cause my plants to turn yellowish. Coco really is Calcium Hungry huh?

I've used the Maxi series in the past and I do remember it dropping the pH and having to use ph up. I grew so -7.3me damn good weed with it. The nutes I use now don't really change the pH much and since my tap water ranges between 7.4 - 8.1 I have to use a little pH down.

When they claim that it's pH buffered they mean that it will maintain pH once it's mixed and pH is set.

You don't need to "flush" coco. In fact you don't want to run plain water through it. And depending on how your nutrients are formulated you don't always need CalMag. I don't use it and I grow in coco. But the primary source of nitrogen in what I use is calcium nitrate. 13-0-0, 13% nitrogen and 13% calcium. More than enough calcium. I've seen coco specific nutrient lines that don't use calcium nitrate and then also sell calmag so they can sell you more stuff. Calmag is basically just calcium nitrate and magnesium. But since most nutrient lines are lacking calcium in their base nutes the suggestions for using calmag are accurate. So I'm not saying you don't need it. Just stating that it's not needed when you are supplying adequate amounts of calcium in other ways.

Anyway, I've been growing in coco for years. It's a great growing medium once you get it dialed in. It's worth figuring out because it produces so well.

xtsho said:

I've used the Maxi series in the past and I do remember it dropping the pH and having to use ph up. I grew so -7.3me damn good weed with it. The nutes I use now don't really change the pH much and since my tap water ranges between 7.4 - 8.1 I have to use a little pH down.

When they claim that it's pH buffered they mean that it will maintain pH once it's mixed and pH is set.

You don't need to "flush" coco. In fact you don't want to run plain water through it. And depending on how your nutrients are formulated you don't always need CalMag. I don't use it and I grow in coco. But the primary source of nitrogen in what I use is calcium nitrate. 13-0-0, 13% nitrogen and 13% calcium. More than enough calcium. I've seen coco specific nutrient lines that don't use calcium nitrate and then also sell calmag so they can sell you more stuff. Calmag is basically just calcium nitrate and magnesium. But since most nutrient lines are lacking calcium in their base nutes the suggestions for using calmag are accurate. So I'm not saying you don't need it. Just stating that it's not needed when you are supplying adequate amounts of calcium in other ways.

Anyway, I've been growing in coco for years. It's a great growing medium once you get it dialed in. It's worth figuring out because it produces so well.

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True that man. I do have to use CalMag+ because I run RO water and it literally has no calcium, magnesium or iron in it. The FloraNova Grow Blend which does have some Calcium, Magnesium & Iron in it but not enough for Coco in my short experience. I tried running just that for a week and my plants started to turn yellow and get rusty necrotic spots on them.

I like maxi series but I don't like it for hydro. always leaves salt in the bottom of my res and in the root zone. just switched over to coco so gonna try it in there