A little help needed - Questions with a pic

[MaoZebong]

I have a problem with my sprouting plant. The picture says it all, really.

The leaves are yellow, and it's not growing very fast.

I'm growing in a bubbler (dwc).

I knew I had a PH issue in the beginning, and I thought that was the reason for the yellowing and stunted growth. I was at 7 ph for a while, because I couldn't afford PH up/down. That is fixed now, but the plant isn't recovering.

I don't use RO water, but my tapwater holds around 65 PPM. When I feed (at quarter strength, as recommended by various growers), regulate PH, and add a root accelerator, I bump the PPMs up to around 128. I've seen the recommended PPM level for hydro is around 650, how do I bump it that high without using way too much nutes?

Thanks in advance for any advice or recommendations.

 

[oldman60]

Re: A little help needed. Questions with a pic.

You don't need to give it more nutes at this point. That much is for ahealthy plant. It most likely doesn't have a good
root system yet. Now that you have the ph under control give it a week or so to get started again. Then when you
see a healthy root system and new healthy grow up top start upping the nutes.

 

[Rodrigo]

Re: A little help needed. Questions with a pic

Less is more. It's never good to feed too much nutrients or additives to such a young plant. If you feed it too much water you won't be encouraging root growth because the plant (the roots) doesn't need to stretch looking for water. I'm saying this because that rockwool seems to be 100% soaked. Ph 7 is the neutral value pf Ph (it's also the normal value of tap water), that means it's neither acidic nor alkaline so it's not a major concern at this point, so adding a Ph regulator is not really necessary for now and might even be counterproductive. For example a common Ph Down is phosphoric acid, so by using it you might be adding too much phosphorus to your water so the plant might be getting nute locked.
May I ask the details of your setup and feeding schedule?

 

[MaoZebong]

Re: A little help needed. Questions with a pic

Hey guys. Thanks for the feedback.

On saturday I changed water, added a bit less than quarter strength nutes, quarter strength root accelerator, brought the water-level down a bit, and adjusted PH. This is what she looks like now:

Sorry for the poor image quality.

But you can clearly see she's got better. Not good yet, but on her way to recovery. Two new leaves are just coming out.

Rodrigo: Eeeh... I don't really have a feeding schedule as such.. I've just marked how much water is in the reservoir, and how many ppms that is from tap, how many ppms with nutes, and then I just top off when it's low. Changing water once a week. Haven't had to top off with nutes yet, obviously, but that was the way I planned on doing it. I can see the holes in the plan, but I don't know how to plug those under any circumstances, so I'm not that concerned.

I've got 1x250w CFL in a 50x60x200cm space. A 31L container with approx 25L of water. An airpump which is way bigger than needed with two airstones attached. I'm using GHE flora, bloom and micro (???) plus a root accelerator from some other company.

The strain I'm growing is Sharksbreath or something. A free seed with the NL I bought some time ago. I know nothing about it, but thought it would make a good test plant.

 

[Rodrigo]

Re: A little help needed. Questions with a pic

The first thing that caught my attention was the size of the plant, it should be much taller, when they first germinate the plant is just a thin and fragile stem, the first leaves that appear get very long very fast, this is the plant making a effort to expand surface area to catch light, I believe. Anyway so to me it looks like you are overwatering a bit, have you tried cutting the water supply for a few days? (while keeping an eye, you don't want it to die of thirst)
I would also stop using the root acc. that's not really necessary for the plant to grow and like I said before you might be giving it too much stuff so it got stunted.
The way the leaves curl leads me to believe that is an overwater problem, yet I just realized that the tip on the left is dry... try using just plain water for a few days (and less of it) and as close as 25°C water temp. as you can get, I use a fish tank heater.

 

[IGotGreen]

Looks to me like to much love, and when I say love I mean water and nutrients.
I never start feeding my plant anything until it develops a couple leaf sets. The first leaves that appear are full of nutrients to get the plant going, once they turn yellow and die off, that is a good indicator to start feeding at a VERY low dose.

 

[Rodrigo]

I never start feeding my plant anything until it develops a couple leaf sets. The first leaves that appear are full of nutrients to get the plant going, once they turn yellow and die off, that is a good indicator to start feeding at a VERY low dose.

I start the feeding as soon as the seedling sprouts, and my feeding schedule is 3 times a day (on a drip, I grow hydro) @ 50% strength and never had a problem and actually the plants grow very fast and bushy so lots and lots of bud sites, so I'm still leaning to you using too much stuff on a very young plant, the nutes, root acc, and ph down is too much.
I also believe that the clay pellets you're using are too big. I'd recommend buying the small pea-sized ones, this will be much better for you and your system.