Been trying to tackle this problem for awhile, need some good advice!

[bapabooey]

First off, thanks for taking a look at this and donating some of your time.

I've been having some issues with this plant for quite awhile, brown spots show up on the leaves and spead. Older growth browns more and more until it dries out. I've noticed my stems off each node start out as green, slowly start to get purplish/brownish at the ends and work its way to the leaf, which then starts getting brown spots and eventually dieing.

My pH is usually around 5.8-.5.9 with occasional drifts, more or less. Nothing above 6.2 or below 5.5 though. There was an incident where my pH went up enough to the point where I am sure it caused lock out. The plant was about 4 weeks old and ph went up to 7 for a day or 2.

Strain is Bomb from THC farms. I grow with the complete fox farm line up, and have just started using "Open Sesame". Have been following their feeding schedule by half or so the ppm/Ec. (Currently on week 6) Just finished first week of 12/12.

Plant was veg'd for 7 weeks under cfl's and now is under a 400 watt HPS. Temps are consistently 70-74 during the day, 62-65 at night. RH is around 35-45%.

This is the entire plant.

This is the purpling/browing of the stems near the leaf.

Purpling/browning again.

Brown spots forming on leaf, this is the leaf from the branch in the pics above.

This is a branch from some older growth.

This is the leaf from that same branch

Random shots.

So yeah, i'm pretty new at this and just looking for some confirmation as to if this is a cal/mag def, or something else.

Any help is GREATLY appreicated.

Any other info you need just ask, I could use any help I can get. Any advice/criticism on what this could be and what I can do to treat and prevent it would be awesome.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

Hello,

I am fairly new to growing as well and am about to start the first grow I've put any money into, however I have been doing extensive research on most aspects of growing and I would venture to say you have a cal/mag specifically Magnesium.

I'd love to talk idea's or hear your experiences with your plants, Hope things work out for you also this chart is vary helpful and easy to follow. As you can see at 5.9 PH you are avoiding magnisium all together and not getting much cal unless ur PH drops, I would venture to try starting at 6.0 to 6.1 and let the PH drop over a course of 3-5 days before bringing the PH back up.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

My next immediate question would be How do the roots look? and are you sure that you are supplying enough bubbles for your plant to uptake the nutes you're feeding it.

 

[bapabooey]

don't think the air bubbles is an issue, i have a 6 watt pump kickin 4 air stones in a 5 gallon bucket. roots look nice, white. smell like fresh lettuce, some very faint spots here and there, but i believe this is from organic nutes.i don't believe my ph swings as low as 5.5, if it does it's not for very long.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

Do you plan on adding cal/mag? if you're using the Farxfarm line up are you using 100% of their recomended ammounts? most growers universaly agreee that in a hydro setup Foxfarm can become vary unstable. Also making sure the nutrient bottle is well shaken cause you will find by the end of the grow a lot of nutes will build up at the bottom of the bottle. So the plants may not be getting everything they need.

One last thing, if you're using R/O water as good as it is to use it may be the cause of why your plant is suffering. By using that kind of water you are resposible for adding every kind of nutrient the plant needs, and there is a few.

My recomendation would be to distill, normal well water out in the open air for 3-5 days (or buy distilled water) ajust the PH to 6.0 or 6.1 for a week and allow your plant to suck up some magnisium. ( on the flip side if your plant get all kinds of brown pokadots its generally a calsium deficiency which again use distilled water at a PH of 5.7-5.8. Maybe look at the foxfarm lables and make sure you're using biggrow "hydro" and not big grow soil. Let me know how things are going ~ peace

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

One thing i just noticed while scrolling up is your air hoses are going in from the top, which mean you could be getting light leaks there which could cause some of these problems. maybe get some ducttape or drill some holes for your airlines.

 

[bapabooey]

I've put in about a teaspoon per gallon of cal/mag for the past 2-3 weeks, havent seen much of an improvement. I'm using tap water which comes out at about 50 ppm and 7.1 ph, I let it sit out for 1-3 days before use. I've noticed with FF nutrient lineup is it best to add nutrients, mix and let it sit for 24 hours in an bubbling bucket. The pH tends to swing around while all the nutrients, but after 24 hours it tends to be stable. Then I'll pH it to 5.7 and let it rise up, myabe I should've been phing it to 5.5 and let it rise up from there. Lately ( since i started flowering) I've noticed ph is rising now, and not dropping which was the normal up until now.

The pic doesnt really show but I have 4 pre drilled holes in the top, just big enough for the air hose I dont believe any light is leaking through. Everything in the bucket seems normal, I think my problem has to do with a bad lockout due to pH but I want to be 100% sure before I go in and start adjusting like mad again. Ive caused this poor plant alot of pain, its been hacked at to main line, I topped it 3 times to have 4 main colas. All I want is for this poor thing to have some peace.......before it gets chopped. lol

Anyways thanks dude, glad I have someone helping me out on this. Feels good to have some input coming in from someone other tahn myself. Hopefully we both come out of this with some good knowledge.

Ill take a look in the next few hours to see how shes doing and update some pics.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

Vary cool, I would love to see how your girls are doing. Maybe we can share some good information with each other. There is a website ive been looking at and it shows all of the deficiency you can get with marijuana. Just type into Google "marijuana deficiencies" and its the website that shows "Cannabis Plant Problems & Symptoms | Marijuana Nutrient" on the link, scroll down and take a look it is vary good information.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

Also about your rising Ph would suggest light leaks, Maybe get a roll of duct tape and wrape your buckets ive been seeing a lot of growers do that, with the lids. I dont believe your PH should be rising, and sounds like a hassle with the FF nutes, ive been using other nutes, vary stable, no deficiencies and my plants loveeeee it to death

 

[bapabooey]

I believe the ph was dropping do to the plant drinking water faster than it was eating nutes. At the time I think I was over feeding, tips were just starting to yellow so I backed off a bit. If it is light leaks, I'm thinking it might be through the top of the netpot, slipping through those clay rock, they do seems kind of loose just sitting there. Didnt have hydroton at the time.

ill have to look at the other line after I finish up with these FF nutes. Hassle hasnt been too much but hey, I've been pretty patient and having a pretty damn good time growing and enjoying the experience.

 

[bapabooey]

I should say I'm just getting to using half of what FF reccomends on their feeding schedule.

 

[bapabooey]

Okay am home from work gonna hit you with some pics.

That bottom growth is lookin kinda scraggly.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

Yes your probably correct about the rocks, I would get a cover just something to cover the base of it. Also About the nutrients as a hydroponic grower one of the must have items is a PPM meter or more commonly known as a "TDS meter" they come in all kinds come are an EC, TDS, Temp meter all combines but know that most of them need to be calibrated before they show correct results. You need to be in the correct nutrient range. For flowering a full power nutrient solution will be in the 800-1200PPM range (PPM stands for Parts Per Million of chemicals in the water) the different chemicals such as Cal/Mag, Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorus And all the micro nutrients all change the PH of the water so if your PH is changing after changing the water you can tell what your plant is up taking for nutrients on the PH scale, and adjust according to the need of your plants is using up the nutrients shown on the chart above.

Perhaps only using half of the recommended dose is not enough for your plants. Also one thing to know is your PH balance can lock out nutrients so if your experiencing a deficiency, identify what it is and adjust the PH to suit.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

Yes it does, however your new growth look fine indeed, and that the leaves effected by deficiencies generally speaking will not recover and go back green. Most growers get rid of them.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

One of the thing I know is that FF is not Geared toward Marijuana as a few other Nutrient lines are and as such it will be harder with FF to gauge if your giving your plants absolutely everything they can uptake because remember all strains can handle different amounts of Stress.

More importantly you wanna know what strains can handle more nutrients, so you can grow some monsters!

I love the whole experience, If i didnt i wouldn't be growing today that for sure. I have a thread/ blog started if you wanna chack it out. I have a lot of goodies coming in about a week or so.

 

[bapabooey]

Just fixed the light leaking through the rocks, if there was any.

I have an HM digitial TDS meter and a PH temp meter.

As far as nutes go, does this plant look starved to you? I'm not very sure. I've only started seeing ppm's go down alot since I induced flowering. I add fresh ph'd water with nutrients every week and she brought it from 600ppm to 200ppm, I only top off during the week with ph adjust water. Before the 12/12 cycle she was barely making a dent in ppm's, perhaps due to some sort of lockout.

I'll def be poking in on your blog btw. Thanks for chuggin through this with me

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

No that sounds about right my friend, you'll also notice that during flower is when she will do the most growth. I would bump the PPm up to around 1000-1200 and see how your plants like it. MAke sure to stip off all the damaged leaves, allow the new fresh leaves to absorb that energy.

and no problem, im brand new to the site aswell, would like some input on my own grows too.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

Have my stuff on the way woot, I went a little crazy with the genetic shopping but I got some cool freebies too. Here i just got in the mail, Blue Dream, Sage 'n' Sour, The Chem dog, White Rhino, Super Critical, purple trainwreck, purple haze, blue OG, Original Cheese and they gave me a Pineapple Express but its an auto-flowering. Should have everything to get started in the next 2 weeks maybe sooner!

How are the girls doing this morning? One thing I haven't seen you mention is at what temperature the water is itself during the day the temps should never exceed 72 degrees which by the sounds of it, it does not. But a lot of growers say your res water should not dip below 55 degrees Ive even found that at 60 degrees it can stunt growth a small amount. At night time is when you would be worried about this.

Hope all is well with you and your plants!

 

[bapabooey]

Nice man all that sounds delicious, can't wait to see them. Good luck with all of it!

My res temps are actually pretty perfect, 65 at night 67 during the day. I pinched all that bottom growth off heres what she looks like.

 

[M1DRAGONACE]

She is looking vary nice today, that stalk looks awesome! Do you know what kind it is? are you sure its a Photo-period and not a Auto-flowering. I do know if you get a auto-flowering "variety" the transition into flower can occur at anytime week 2-5 of veg. and that if you leave light at 18-6 during the transition that hurts your plants a bit, also the flip side if you turn it to 12/12 before its ready.