crunchy crisp broken plants. HELP!

[HeadMed]

question:

I have been growing the same strains for a little over 2 years now.

xxx og
afgooey

recently also

jack the ripper
deep chunk x strawberry cough

systems are ebb and flow tables
medium is Diatomite (fossil rock)
using standard GH 3 part nutes, and r/o water.

continuous harvest.


Seems like for the past couple months or so... the plants have gotten reall "crisp".

Flowered plants, and plants in veg, even mothers... appear to be beautiful and in perfect health... but brushing past the plants can cause massive stem breakage... just "pop" broken stem...

they didn't used to be like this..

anyone else ever have this... is it a known sign of something?

 

[Flurple]

sounds like a strange problem, can you post a pic?

 

[HeadMed]

yeah it will be a bit. plants look good though. They are growing fine... producing fine, pretty and green in veg, and big and crystallized in bloom. They just got real delicate all of a sudden. The stems break like...mmmm... you ever break the ends off of really fresh snap peas... like that, only a whole lot easier.


Anyone think they could be over hydrated?

 

[PitViper]

you are experiencing the 1st symtoms of lockout...there is a deficiency somewhere...Ive seen this problem 1st hand....
they are being overhydrated...they are starving for something..calicum and Magnesium perhaps

 

[HeadMed]

lock out huh.... hmmm hadn't thought of that. it makes sense. with the effort od conservation (and just sheer amount of gallons it takes) i had stopped changing my rez's every week, and put them on a rolling 4 week change out schedule. monitoring ph and ppm has kept them looking good, but the timing is right.

 

[PitViper]

lock out huh.... hmmm hadn't thought of that. it makes sense. with the effort od conservation (and just sheer amount of gallons it takes) i had stopped changing my rez's every week, and put them on a rolling 4 week change out schedule. monitoring ph and ppm has kept them looking good, but the timing is right.

heres the problem....you have no idea what nutes are being absorbed. If you just reset the PPM it wont work, Ive done the 4 week deal and doesnt work.
I guarentee this is the problem. Flush the system for 3 days straight and drain the res, fill and renute. change it weekly w/o fail and you will be fine

 

[HeadMed]

yeah that was the old plan... I got lazy. I should've known better. Thanks again man.

 

[HeadMed]

So just to update.

Turns out we had several issues all i believe were made more likely if not caused by not exchanging my nutes and only topping off to correct ppm and ph.

I had the crunchy crisp problem as described above.

I developed a gnat problem about the same time as we started only topping the tanks.

It became extremely hard to get cutting to root.

Developed root rot ... 1 mother plant had it real bad and stopped growing, and almost looked dead...

Things that did survive did not produce or grow as much as they had in the past.

We had decided to try and save money time and energy by not exchanging the nutes and only topping off. Theory being that by maintaining the correct ph and ppm we would be fine. (god nutes media etc are expensive. and coming up with 40 gal of water every week is rough.

We went back to changing the nutes every 2 weeks. (We have also decided to run a trial of fox farms... more expensive than the gh basic 3... lets see if its worth it.)

We scrubbed down every peice of equipment. took every plant and swished/soaked it roots and media in a solution of 1 part hydrogen peroxide to 3 parts ro water. (you could see bubbles coming off the media and roots like when you put it on a dirty cut..) we held them in there till they stopped foaming. the gave them a vitamin b root soak, and put them back in their newly scrubbed home.

We made up the fox farms nutes as per their feeding schedule, and added 3 tsp of hydrogen peroxide per gallon of nutes.

Plants are greener, growing faster, rooting better. Gnats are fewer and fewer. and the mother that was almost dead is showing sign of recovery. (growing again)