Still Suffering from extreme PH drops in aero system

C

caregiver

New Member
So I'm still experiencing an extreme nightly PH drop in my solution in a 40 gallon res, absolutely cannot figure it out. After adjusting with PH up within hours the PH drops from 6 to 3.7...
PPM's holding around 900, EC at 2, Used R/O water, Humbolt A&B hydro schedule... Water temp a little warm, but not too bad around 77F.

nutrient solution is being recirculated with a good pump.

Do I have a fungus or something in my system? If so is there any way to kill it or manage it mid-flower? I am 4 weeks from harvest.

Any more help would be AWESOME. thanks...
 
You know.... usually rot shows itself with a the ph going up, not down.
On the other hand, 77 is way too hot, and could easily cause rotting issues.
Ms. Fox's comment is spot on. I've suffered rot with 5 different grows, and there was always smell involved. Another sign appears to be a "clouding" of the water.

Now, having said all that, is it possible that your plants are just plain sucking that much out of the water? You're deep into flowering when the plants pull the most from the water. Perhaps your issues are normal.

You've got a 40 Gal res.... that should support 8 plants (5 gal/plant). How many plants are you growing?

cheers
 
will post pics when the lights go on.
mostly brownish stuff toward the bottom of the roots. early on in flower most of the fan leaves turned yellow and dropped, now some buds looking very sad and not growing.

I flushed with r/o for about 20 minutes and still am having this drop. should i flush for longer with clearex and do another res change?

77 is too warm, not a whole lot i can do about it at this time. ive had super-healthy crops with this temp before, so i know thats not the main issue.

will try flora shield.

there are about 30 in an aero60 spaced out... they really aren't sucking that much water every night, and the ppms are not going down either....

Maybe it is normal, but this is unusual compared to my last crops... switching back to GH schedule on the next one to see if its my nutes.

How should i go about flushing? how long? any ideas on Well water vs. R/O? i live in the rocky mtns., the well water is pretty good 7.2 or so...

y'all rock! i'd host all of you if you're ever out in CO
 
no smell or root debris floating around... i've def. had root rot before and it STANK...
using both ph drops and a digi meter, so i know my readings are good. thinking more and more of switching to a sunshine#4 type of program instead of areoponics.
 
As an aside, I don't know anything about Humbolt nutes but I do know that some of the best weed in the world comes from that county!

At 77F your nute temp is too high and won't hold O2 worth a damn so if you could get that down to 65-70 you should see an improvement even without the benefits of H2O2. The peroxide will help in the interim by killing off any fungus, slime etc.

Mine's holding steady @ 68F with AN 3-part nutes, 1-12" airstone/tub @ 1200 ppm. I'm lucky with my grow in an insulated cold room 1/8 the size of a basement that is still @ 48F. By the middle of August it can get up to 60F so I'm on the slow down now. Ramping it up by Labour Day!

Love that permafrost!

By the way. What are you using for your pH up? I usually have to knock mine down from 6.0 to 5.4 every time I add some nutes. I use concentrated sulphuric acid dropwise to adjust. 2 drops/-0.1pH seems to work well so I don't have to check again 'till nute changes.

Are you using airstones in your rez? Oxygen is a positively charged molecule and quickly binds, (oxidizes), with negatively charged organic molecules common to dead plant materials, aerobic bacteria, fungi etc. H2O2 supplies that radical atom.

H2O2 + H2O = 2H2O + O

Very simplistic but the extra oxygen atom is released and HAS to bind with something. As crud is negative it goes there first. Not enough and the problem persists. Too much and you could damage roots. Luckily, if you can mix gas/oil for your 2 stroke machines you can mix H2O2 with your nutes and there is lots of room for error.
 
good advice LabRat... I'm @ 10,000' myself, so it is very cold outside most of the year (july/aug exceptions) I was thinking about running a hose from my res to a cool spot outside, then back to my res... haven't tried yet, but plan to cut some more holes in my floor this weekend.thanks for the info
 
caregiver said:
good advice LabRat... I'm @ 10,000' myself, so it is very cold outside most of the year (july/aug exceptions) I was thinking about running a hose from my res to a cool spot outside, then back to my res... haven't tried yet, but plan to cut some more holes in my floor this weekend.thanks for the info
Click to expand...

10,000'. Hell, you're high all the time. :0)

Yeah, if you could run a 50' skinny garden hose outside with the coils stacked up neat and some gunny sack material mixed up in there you could hose it down every once in a while and have yourself a primitive tho effective little low buck heat exchanger.

Good growing man.
 
yup, think you might be right... I was wondering why my Veg wasn't getting root rot if the water in that system was a constant 85... Well, it just got it this cycle and roots have rotted off the bottom of a few of the baskets. It seems the whole system is slimy, algae sounds about right. Same as root rot?

I guess I'll try the Peroxide flush for a few days as LabRat suggested.

See if any survive...

Getting a water chiller this week to see if that will help the problem in that system.

thanks everyone for the input
 

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