Asking for Grower Support!

[mikrom]

Hey Everyone!

thanks for every view already. much appreciated.
I have been having some problems with my first few weeks of flowering and wanted to ask anyone's advice. "
Here's the scoop.

First things first to take it seriously I made sure to have the "How to ask for grower support" open to answer each question and take each step to get the results I want.

What Strain is it? I have 2 strains in the room, white widow, and purple kush (both from crop king seeds)
Is it Indica, Sativa or Hybrid? What percentages? see above, google crop king seeds and check out the strains. fairly common.
How Many Plants? 4 in total
Is it in Vegetative or Flowering Stage? flower
If in Vegetative Stage... How Long? they vegged for about 5-6 weeks before flowering
If in Flowering Stage... How Long? 17 days
Indoor or Outdoor?indor
Soil or Hydro? all in sunshine advanced #4 with myco (sphagnum moss blend)
If Hydro, Reservoir size? 3 gallons and i think one is in a 5 gallon (accidently)
If Hydro, Reservoir Temperature? i try to keep the water temperature at about 20c i guess. not 100% sure as i do not measure it.
If Hydro, what type of Medium? using RO water
If Hydro, what type of Setup? Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Soil Bloom, about 8ml per 2.35L. Botanicare CALMAG about 2-3ml per 2.35L. Botanicare Liquid Karma 1mL per 2.35L. This feed everytime to ~10% runoff every 3rd time flushing with that much plain RO then watering half of that in nute-water.. (1.5 times total water 3rd time)
If Soil... What is in your Mix? stated above
If Soil... What Size Pot? stated above 3 gall
Size (Wattage) of Light? How Many? new platinum LED p300
Is it Air Cooled? yes room is vented with fan and carbon filter. it's in a tent 3x3x8ft. 4 plants total
Temperature of Room/Cabinet? 24c low, 27c high.
RH of Room/Cabinet? 40-50%
PH of Medium or Reservoir? PH of feed in is 6.0-6.1, runoff seems consistant at the same.
Any Pests? no
How Often are you Watering? every 2 days generally. i though this could be an issue potentially. maybe overwatering because i am not actually picking up the pots to feel weight, rather just sticking to a schedule of every 2 days water to run off
Type and Strength of Fertilizers used? ppm was a bit low. I am not 100% sure what ppm to hit with my nutes. lately i've been going in at the above mentioned formula which hits about 1.2ec and coming out at about the same but lately rising a bit so ill flush it in the next few days to take it down and feed at about 550 or so.
Size or Square Footage of Room?3x3x8ft

Any other questions please feel free to ask. I have a documented log of the ph and ppm in and what nute ratio i've used. I think that my problem is a magnesium deficiency but not 100% sure whats going on. it seems to be related to the light and photosynthesis (mostly occurs in the high light areas)

Maybe i should just move my light back? it's about 20 inches away from the highest part of the canopy. and also it was not the highest leafs that experience this issue but seems like the mid-way leaves and the older leaves. only happens with about the first 2 weeks or so of bloom then seems to tone down. would really like to help understand my issue thanks!!

Adding photos now

 

[mikrom]

 

[mikrom]

seems like things are clearing up just turned up the nutes and cranked up the cal-mag a bit too

 

[Weaselcracker]

Just curious- Why do you calculate the nutes at ml/2.35 litres?

 

[mikrom]

haha good question lol. I have a container that i use for hand-watering that happens to be 2.35 litres (10 american cups i think) basically a kool-aid container that i water with...

 

[Weaselcracker]

As you may have figured out- your feedings seem a bit light. It looks like you're giving about 13 ml/gallon of bloom when reccomended is over 20ml/gallon
I also would encourage you to water based on a wet-dry cycle. Lift the pots to gauge dryness, and only water when they get light. They should take less than a week to dry out again after being thoroughly soaked. Keeping them constantly wet will cause problems - guaranteed, in my experience. But- it's possibly that you weren't overwatering them - it just depends on the plant/pot size ratio how quickly they use up the water.


I use botanicare nutes in Promix as well. In the past I went by the feeding schedule on the bottle but reduced by about 10- 20%. This worked out ok. I didn't trust my tds meter so just measured by the ml. Maximum amount of bloom I used during flowering was about 25 ml/gallon, as reccomended- though usually I would use closer to 20 or 22ml. This last winter I got a Bluelab combo meter so started trying to pay attention to ppm. This has been a headache so far. If I mix, roughly and 'unscientifically'-
One gallon of water
(I'm being generous and making it over 4 liters for some reason actually because I just have a 500ml jar handy so am mixing in 8 full of those to make 4 liters )
Base EC - 0.2
5 ml cal-mag -raises it to- 0.6
Then adding- 25 ml bloom. I get total
EC - 2.2

This seems too high. I find various websites saying not to go above EC 1 in soil (is promix different?) including the base EC of the water. Just read one website that's says never to go over EC 0.8. Here I will PM that to you to confuse you more
Long story short- I started going a lot lighter on the nutrients this winter. Generally about EC of 1.6. At one point a couple months ago one plant in particular started showing some problems at the leaf tips- so I eased up even more on the nutes, then as the symptoms got worse, flushed. At which point symptoms got much worse. Similar to the ones on this thread. Oh no! Problems so close to the end! Please Help!

I then said - screw it, and gave them a full feeding at 25ml per gallon. They've been fine since then- minus the dead and damaged foliage which I cut off. Now I'm just feeding based on the schedule on the bottle, though using slightly less. I try to avert my eyes from the EC, which is 2.2 minimum

I'm not sure what the moral to this story is...?????
I think the reccomended amount on the botanicare bottles is reasonably safe, if you're cautious and aim on the low side to start.
I'm still a bit confused about EC. Maybe these nutes don't 'read well' with a tds meter? Or else the info I have read is wrong.
Any thoughts?
Anyone else out there using botanicare who measures EC?

 

[mikrom]

Thanks weasel this is a great reply. You definitely seem to be experience all of the same problems as me. and yes, I have heard from the grow store about issues with these mostly-organic nutrients not reading properly on the tds meter. I have noticed this myself that sometimes I mix the same batch or what I would think is the same batch and the tds reading is way off. Through my research on this topic I have come to 2 possible conclusions: Either the recipe is feeding too little Phosphorous, or too little Magnesium. I started feeding 4ml per 2.36L calmag with about 8-9 ml bloom and even that I think is too much for some plants (1.7mL calmag per litre, 3.8mL pure blend bloom soil). I have pk going a bit wire-y while white widow is looking all right. both however seem to be experiencing this defficiency seen above.

I'm really not sure though and confused as it seems like too much nutrients some times and too little others. I have been lifting pots to make sure they are dry before watering. If I was really over watering though I think it would have been more noticeable in the grow phase, but the plants looked beautiful this time around right up until the switch. same watering techniques. must be to do with nutes in the switch phase.

I think my issue has somewhat cleared up. but I also decided to order some Advanced Nutrient products, based on the research I've been putting in, it seems like they have a good grip on the science and art of this all. and people have good results with them consistently. I really hope i get way better results

Anyway back to Botanicare, I use their calculator on their site and punched in a recipe for Pure Blend Pro Soil, CalMag, and Karma. They recommend using 11mL bloom with about 1.8mL calmag throughout most of bloom (per 2.36mL). That translates to roughly 4mL per litre, 15-17 per gallon bloom + 5ml per gal calmag which i think may need more calmag. (mag at least)

I'm not sure some middle-lower leaves have burnt tips, some wire-y growth even in the flowers, but at least they are blooming this time instead of straight up keeling over.

Also I added a small dose of some bloom booster with higher P's than K's.(future harvest) it seems to have helped


What is pro mix? i find a promix website but it has like a million products. I'm curious what you are using? I'm in sunshine advanced #4 (With myco, no silica tho, early batch)

 

[Weaselcracker]

Yes-thanks for the reply. Good to know we are both confused there have been quite a few entries in my records where I tested the ppm and got some unexpected wacky number and wrote "??????WTF ???????" next to the entry. A record book full of question marks and shit isn't going to do me a lot of good in the future. Many hours of searching in the past hasn't given me any info on ppm with botanicare. I'm also leaning towards something like AN - because I want to try to get away from the ml/gallon routine and try measuring by ppm for a while. There is so much more documentation of this in other grows with other nutrients.
At the same time - I've been happy with botanicare. It's just trying to combine it with ppm, and move forward a bit to really dialing things in, that's causing me to move backwards. User error.

 

[mikrom]

yup i've done that more than once too (ppm super high, wrote wtf ????? flushed)

but yea i decided to go with AN because they are very clearly specific to cannabis they are proud of that fact and more people seem to have experience with them. but im still going to use my botanicare seeing as i have a shitton of it. so ill dial it in and do some side-by-sides later

ppm still fucks with my head. but right now im measuring before and after (in and out water) every time. so far i've been using with the botanicare stuff about like 300-500 veg maxing at about 600-700 and flowering around 700-800. this is using a 500/ec calculamatoriam. Do you know if AN nutes are easily read on TDS meter or are they also partially organic and therefore invisible to ec readings ?

 

[Weaselcracker]

The AN website does have ppm feeding schedules. The botanicare site doesn't, at least not for the nutes I'm using, so that probably says something.
I am using promix BX which is basically the same as sunshine mix. Peat moss, some perlite and vermiculite, myco, and added lime.
I use sunshine mix #4 a lot too.