Is this a magnesium deficiency?

[Alienpus]

Hey guys,

This is my first post although I have been lurking for years. These girls are 12 days into veg from clones. This is a new strain for me, ice cream from paradise. I am running them at 2.0 ec and ph at 5.7 and both are very stable, growth rate is good, but, my older fan leaves have been curling/folding up and developing 'rust spots' and newer growth is twisting, all in the past 5 days. Other than strain another new variable is I am using RO water as my well water has always been a pain to manage. They are 18" away from a cooled 430 hps so I don't think it's a heat or burning problem. According to my research my best guess is it's a magnesium deficiency, the only thing I have done so far is foliar feed with a dilute magnesium sulfate solution.

So, I was hoping that someone could please confirm that is is a magnesium problem and how to remedy it (ppm of mag sulfate in res), or if it isn't help me figure out just what the problem is. thx

 

[indica vet]

looks like nute burn to me mate , i bumped mine up to 2.0 ec from 1.8 and they did that!! dropped it back and bingo

 

[DWCPortland]

Agree, nutrient burn and some ph issues. How are your roots looking? Root rot will do some weird stuff and curling up and down of the leaves is a symptom along with ph issuse and so on... The purple stems are a sign of the ph problem, phosphorus.

 

[Alienpus]

That's just the thing guys, ph has never been lower than 5.5 or higher than 6.0, ever, i usually start at ph5.6 and let it drift to ph6.0 and I checked with 2 calibrated meters, ppm has never been over 1050. My res is acting perfectly, ph rises .02-.04 per day and ppm lowers about 10 ppm per day so in theory my nutes should be ever so slightly low. Roots couldn't look any better. The purple stems got my attention too but I figured it was the strain. I lowered to ec1.8 to be sure but I just don't get it unless this strain really needs low ppm or a particular ph. I usually run my plants at ec 2.2 Maybe my nutes have gone bad part A had a deposit in the bucket but went away with a good shake

 

[DWCPortland]

Try to run some cal mag a few weeks $20 at your local hydro shop. I would also start your ph 5.4 -5.5 and let it raise up not past 6.1ish! It could be a strain that requires lower or higher ph. My plants love 5.8 but I do let it fluctuate a little so they get all their nutes. And are you following the diections on the nutes or doing your own thing?

 

[Alienpus]

Yeah, the hydro store is a 3 hour drive away, but I just ordered some on the net, seen it mentioned a lot. Ironically my well water is at 680 ppm and has tons of iron and calcium with some magnesium in it that's why I bought an RO system. Thinking I could mix some in until calmag arrives. As far as nutes its 2 part so I can't really screw that up.

 

[DWCPortland]

Jeez that's high I would be buying ro water to drink! Always be prepared then if you have to order every thing you never know when situations occur. Thats up to you on mixing well water with ro I would wait but that's me. Try to lower the ph and let it raise to see if the plants take in the range of nutes. Thats my advise, best of luck to you.

 

[Alienpus]

Pretty sure I found my problem I opened up my 5 gallon buckets of nutes and one had several crystals like this one in the bottom, and the other had a white Precipitate covering the bottom.

 

[go4snypr]

read your containers.. I am using a bloom booster that says its normal to see a white scale on the bottom of the container....the chunks of crystal make me wonder though.

 

[Alienpus]

Manufacturer confirmed it's not normal at all and a bad thing. They said it's probably due to my spigots, the last few drops stuck inside evaporated and left behind small crystals that fell back into the nutes seeding larger crystals, which means certain salts completely precipitated out of the solutions. They gave me free 5 gal buckets of both veg and flower nutes anyway so it was worth the drive. Now I just hope the girls get better.