My seedlings are yellowing once again. Why am I cursed with this?

[Acid]

Little update - My older plants which were dying altogether, are currently sitting at my windows. Today, I sprayed them with an "iron fertilizer", which is for soil and foliars. It's a well known brand here. I felt like trying this stuff out on my dying plants, as they still haven't moved for over 10 days now.

This stuff contains 6% Nitrogen (N), 3% Iron (Fe), 2% water-soluble Sulfur (S), 0.4% Sodium (Na), and 40% "organic matter", whatever that is. It smells like diarrhea, so yeah, there's surely something organic in there too.

My plants got a soaking foliar around 9 hours ago. After 4-5 hours, the leaves started standing back up again. I feel like I did something right this time. I will watch my plants for now, and not use another foliar, to see how they react over time.

__________

Actual grow, currently without any problems - Seedlings in solo cups. I seriously don't know how to water them correctly, because I don't know what their weight has to be before I water again. I always hear "as soon as it's very light", "if the top is dry", and and and.

Is there anyone here who literally grows in 16oz / 470ml solo cups with Biobizz Light Mix or All Mix right now, and know what they have to weigh before and after watering? I feel like this is gonna be a huge miss, rather than a hit, but I can ask anyways.

And as a little update, here they are right now, 5 days old:

 

[Roy Growin]

Little and often
If you want a weight test it with spare pots of wet/dry compost for reference

 

[Acid]

Little and often
If you want a weight test it with spare pots of wet/dry compost for reference

I do have 100% dry light mix (literally dust top to bottom) in a solo cup (without a plant or anything), but it's only 90 grams including a 470ml solo cup. I imagine that's WAY too dry?

 

[Roy Growin]

Yes
1g = 1ml
Aim for midway

 

[Wastei]

A pressure sprayer makes it easier to water/feed smaller volumes and you won't disturb the "soil" surface. Before that we used a piece of cloth to squeeze out droplets.

You can start with regular feedings to runoff with those girls.

Cheers!

 

[Acid]

Yep, it's starting again, slowly. 3 out of 4 seedlings seem to show the first signs of yellow veins everywhere once again, with some light leaf discoloration here and there. One of them seems perfectly healthy though, for whatever reason. Any ideas?

Feeding is til ~5-10% runoff because organics, just a little water coming out each cup.

 

[bluter]

there's nothing wrong. they're just about ready for seedling level nutes. you can probably run them at a half seedling mix right now.

 

[Roy Growin]

Don't water to run off, it's too wet unless you're using coco
When it's dryish, stand the pot in a little water and let it be drawn up, don't worry if the top feels dry, it's the tap root that needs the water not the rest of the pot

 

[Wastei]

Don't water to run off, it's too wet unless you're using coco
When it's dryish, stand the pot in a little water and let it be drawn up, don't worry if the top feels dry, it's the tap root that needs the water not the rest of the pot

Peat and coir are not that different in their practical use IMO. Especially running 30%+ perlite in either mix.

When babying seedlings you should avoid to water straight on the stem area. I spray along the edges of the pots to not let it be too wet or too dry. Aiming for the "Goldilock zone". No runoff only spraying with pressure sprayer the first week. Pots should be saturated but not feel heavy.

I believe the seedlings are older than they look in the pictures? When the seedlings have their first hard stem layer you can increase with regular feedings to runoff and raise the pots to not sit in runoff water.

You want to steer away from wilt off disease while not depriving the plant of water/nutrients for growth. Letting the pots dry to much on the top can also cause wilt in the early stages of growth since most of the root growth is concentrated on the surface the first couple of days.

There's no right or wrong, just different ways of doing things and getting to the finish line.

Cheers!

 

[Acid]

Peat and coir are not that different in their practical use IMO. Especially running 30%+ perlite in either mix.

When babying seedlings you should avoid to water straight on the stem area. I spray along the edges of the pots to not let it be too wet or too dry. Aiming for the "Goldilock zone". No runoff only spraying with pressure sprayer the first week. Pots should be saturated but not feel heavy.

I believe the seedlings are older than they look in the pictures? When the seedlings have their first hard stem layer you can increase with regular feedings to runoff and raise the pots to not sit in runoff water.

You want to steer away from wilt off disease while not depriving the plant of water/nutrients for growth. Letting the pots dry to much on the top can also cause wilt in the early stages of growth since most of the root growth is concentrated on the surface the first couple of days.

There's no right or wrong, just different ways of doing things and getting to the finish line.

Cheers!

They're 6 days old now since sprouting out the substrate, the pots are watered with around 100-120ml of water, as soon as they weigh around 180g. I water with a big syringe, I just water around 50ml in a circle motion around the cup, wait a bit, and then water another 50-70ml around the cup, slow and steady, without any pressure on the syringe. Sometimes there will be a little runoff (around 5-10ml), sometimes not, depending on which plant. They do not have a hard stem layer yet, they still have the normal looking "hairy" seedling stem, just slowly becoming a bit more chunky.

Here's a small interesting formula: Biobizz Light Mix weighs 330g per 1L of FRESH substrate, not dried out. Slightly moist to the touch, but not wet. I think you know what I mean, the typical potting soil / substrate moisture you get when you open the bag, not dry, not wet. This means that my 470ML solo cups should weigh around 155 grams with just plain moist substrate, not watered / wet. Does this formula maybe help to understand when and how much I should water? Edit: I just noticed that this is including the solo cup. I will quickly tare my scale with an empty cup!

So - 120g is the final weight of the fresh substrate w/o the cup. With the cup, it's 127 grams. I water when it's around 170-180 grams.

They're not wilting in any way, technically they look fine. It's just the colors going weird again, the middle main vein of each leaf seems to turn a really "dark green", while the surrounding leaf material turns a lighter green, with small yellow veins surrounding the edges here and there.

 

[JiggiLotus]

Yep, it's starting again, slowly. 3 out of 4 seedlings seem to show the first signs of yellow veins everywhere once again, with some light leaf discoloration here and there. One of them seems perfectly healthy though, for whatever reason. Any ideas?

Feeding is til ~5-10% runoff because organics, just a little water coming out each cup.

They look fine at the moment. I wouldn't give them nutes yet, 2nd/3rd week start the soft nutes.

 

[bluter]

They look fine at the moment. I wouldn't give them nutes yet, 2nd/3rd week start the soft nutes.

he's running a weak background amount on @Roy Growin 's advice. it's a good call in that media with the nutes he's using.

 

[Acid]

Update - My chemical water analysis is back, and I'm confused as hell because it's.. almost perfect water. Even less calcium than the cities statistics? I'm confused as hell, but also somehow glad it isn't the water. Yet I'm mad confused about the fact that it ISN'T the water at all.

Little hint - It measures in µg from aluminum onwards, so don't think I have like 20mg/L of barium or something!

 

[SmokingWings]

They're not wilting in any way, technically they look fine.

I think that he was talking about avoiding Damping Off Disease and not that your plants have it. It is a problem for very young plants which will start wilting and fall over when the stem becomes damaged at the soil line. Once a seedling plant has the disease there often is very little that can be done. Some growers have saved their plants if they catch it in time but it is not easy.

Leading causes are a wet soil surface and little or no air circulation over the surface. Generally it is found when growing indoors and not all that often found on outdoor seedlings.

 

[Acid]

I might have some good messages for now, but with tons of "JUST MAYBE".

So as of 2 days ago or so, I started using.. chemical PH down. The aggressive kind. Terra Aquatica PH Down, with phosphoric acid, nitric acid, and citric acid. I get my water, and put some Canna Rhizotonic into it, to raise PH and stabilize the soft water. I then add TA PH Down until I am at 6.2-6.4. As of right now, my plants seem to actually.. enjoy this for some reason. I am hitting day 8 really soon, and I already have side nodes growing, and they're green! At least for now.

For some reason the addition of Rhizotonic seems to really stabilize my PH as soon as I move it down with TA PH Down. I did a 24 hour test with tapwater + citric acid, tapwater + TA PH Down, tapwater + Rhizo + TA PH Down, all at 6.3PH.

The citric acid one went from 6.3 to 7.4 in 24 hours. TA PH down went to 6.8, rhizo + TA PH down went to 6.5. And the latter is what I did in my only successful grow without any problems.

Maybe I am currently in progress to absolutely kill my plants, it's still early. But as of right now, they seem really healthy and I feel like they are actually getting some color back. I did eff 2 of them up badly, because I used an iron foliar on them, 1/5th the recommended dosage. Damn they didn't enjoy that at all, trust me.

Here is a current image:

I wouldn't say that they're perfectly healthy, but the aggressive PH attempt seems to actually work. This is what I did with my only good autoflower back then, I used rhizotonic and TA ph down in this organic stuff for whatever reason, probably because I was doing a coco grow on the side.

I also did NOT prewater the whole pot. I will never do this again, this only caused tons of trouble for me. I transplanted these girls today (day 7 or 8, something in between), because roots were already growing out of the solo cups. Grabbed an empty solo cup, removed substrate out of the middle of each pot (I acclimated the final pots to prevent root shock, had them in the tent for 1 day), then I put the empty solo cup into the pots, filled it up again, and removed the cup, for a perfect 1:1 solo cup sized hole. Sprayed the hole down with water, threw myco powder into it, took the plant out of the cup, sprayed that rootball down too (tons of roots already), added myco, and put it into the pot. Lightly pressed them into the substrate, covered everything up, and watered each plant with ~250ml of PH6.2 water with just Rhizotonic and TA PH down. They're in All Mix now, so I don't know if I should still add 1ml/L of Grow.

And first sidebranch growth! Tiny but it's already coming.

We're getting into the hot phase right now. If these sidebranches grow out yellow in a few days, I'm back to zero once again. I'm literally replicating the only successful grow I had. The only difference is that I added dolomite lime into the final pots, around 2oz for each 4gal pot, rather than just epsom salts like in my only good plant back then. I did this because almost everyone who uses BB Light / All Mix, gets cal/mag deficiencies later into the grow, if they don't add calmag here and there. I now saved on this hassle and added dolomite lime.

 

[bluter]

you really should fertigate your plants in at up pot to reduce shock.

 

[Acid]

Hey guys, someone messaged me and never explained further, I'm a bit lost.

"Really nice water to work with, just take into consideration calcium and acid equilibrium. If your formula is acidic you'll end up breaking all calcium carbonate and pH will plumb down, if you use neutral formulas take into consideration the precipitation equilibrium with calcium + magnesium: phosphorus.
Consider using free amino acids or some other long-chain organic chelating agent. Keep an eye on iron and micronutrients."

What exactly does this mean? I feel like there's some reason behind all of this, especially because he's mentioning micros and iron specifically. He didn't even see my problems, he just checked my water analysis and said this. Could someone with good knowledge go into this a bit more?

 

[Roy Growin]

Hey guys, someone messaged me and never explained further, I'm a bit lost.

"Really nice water to work with, just take into consideration calcium and acid equilibrium. If your formula is acidic you'll end up breaking all calcium carbonate and pH will plumb down, if you use neutral formulas take into consideration the precipitation equilibrium with calcium + magnesium: phosphorus.
Consider using free amino acids or some other long-chain organic chelating agent. Keep an eye on iron and micronutrients."

What exactly does this mean? I feel like there's some reason behind all of this, especially because he's mentioning micros and iron specifically. He didn't even see my problems, he just checked my water analysis and said this. Could someone with good knowledge go into this a bit more?

Sounds like the sort of guff a chatbot would come up with - did it come from a well known member you recognize?

 

[bluter]

What exactly does this mean? I feel like there's some reason behind all of this, especially because he's mentioning micros and iron specifically. He didn't even see my problems, he just checked my water analysis and said this.

there aren't any to see. there's going to be fewer in the future once you settle in and stop flailing about. things are good now. stick to the plan. follow what roy has been telling you and relax.

Could someone with good knowledge go into this a bit more?

sure. it's a nothing burger. hope that helps. stop hopping from pillar to post constantly and your grow will work out.

keep following the recommended schedule.

Sounds like the sort of guff a chatbot would come up with - did it come from a well known member you recognize?

this is exactly how the AI began infiltrating and mining the other forums. it needs a human operator to get it started, and then it runs on it's own.

 

[Acid]

Something just looks off once again. I can't be the only one who thinks they're showing problems again?

Here is the fourth one, looking 100% fine, so I do in fact see that something is wrong somehow

Why does this one look totally fine, while the other ones are losing their color and vitality? They all get the same water. This is what the color has to look like, the other ones are all funky with weird yellow halos everywhere. I'm not doing anything, just watching, but it's obvious they're starting to have trouble with something again