Struggling with my plants

[Tez420]

I picked up some hydro guard and also got a silica supplement. The past few days I haven’t been home to check on the plants but when I got home today I noticed white new root growth. I plan on using hydroguard cal mag and my 3 part in the next bucket change. Not sure if I should still soak in h202 because it seems to be healing. As far as changing the buckets goes I’ve been just dumping them out, refilling with fresh water then adding the nutes in and ph. Idk if I should change the bucket again for like the 3rd time in a week.. I read It’s good to leave the plants alone because they’re more susceptible to pathogens after a res swap. Oh here’s how the roots are coming in.

They’re coming in white besides one plant has a brown tinge on the new roots.

 

[Tez420]

I have used a 150 ppm active chlorine mix in coco when I had problems; it seemed to be successful, but I'm not 100% sure.

A while ago, in the early stage of my current grow on coco, I was struggling with constantly droopy plants for a few weeks and at one point it started to look really bad. Also necrosis on the leaves appeared and growth slowed down completely. Panic off course, mainly because all environmental factors seemed to be in check. At that point, I was certain the problem originated in the rootzone.

The pots were standing in plant saucers. I always removed runoff water from the saucers, but off course, the pots keep dripping out for a while and fill the saucer up a bit, long after fertigation. I use airRap pots. The bottom of the pots inside the AirRap pots are a little bit raised (the blue thingy in the picture below), so I was never worried by the tiny layer of water in the saucer. However, the outer plate wrapped around the bottom of the airRap pots forms a shield against air to get under the pot. There’s just I tiny split between the saucer and the wrap of the pots. To clarify:

The yellow edge is standing on the saucer. If there’s water in the saucer under the blue raster, it will be completely still, no air movement and dark. Moreover, due to the lights and the fact that both the pots and the saucers I use are black, I suspect temperature within that space can easily reach 25c, if not higher. I also made the mistake of using a fertigation mix at 22c, which is a little too high.

I believe that this caused problems in my rootzone. When I opened one of the pots, the bottom parts of the roots didn't look healthy at all. Besides that, there was also algae growing on the top of the medium.

I use chlorine tablets to sanitize my tent and equipment between each round of growing. I used national regulation for hospitals in my country to look up which kind of surface disinfectants are for example used to clean surgery rooms. There's a government agency in my country that keeps a list of disinfectants that are permitted to use for certain jobs and they also provide usage instructions. The chlorine tablets I use, result in a mix of 150 ppm active chlorine if dropped into 10L of water. With this mix, surfaces are cleaned. For the removal of blood and other (human) stuff, double strength is needed (so 1 tablet on 5 liters) and to clean out cattle transport wagons, 1 tablet per liter is recommended. You also need to let it work for at least 5 minutes.

So, I decided to flush my 2 plants with 5 liter of 150 ppm active chlorine mix each, in an effort to prevent further spreading of the problems in the rootzone. I pH'ed the water down to 6.8 (our tap water is around 8) before adding the chlorine tablet. This way I’ll prevent a pH spike in the medium, but the water isn’t too acid to react with the chlorine transforming into the dangerous chlorine gas. I used my pressure sprayer for it, so I could make sure that the mix was distributed everywhere in the pot, plus it takes a while to spray 5 liters (hence, the medium gets soaked slowly). I sprayed underneath the pot, to clean the roots poking out the raster. I also sprayed the sides of the pots, a lot of regular used equipment and the bottom of the tent. The plants were completely soaked with the chlorine solution and I let them sit (outside the tent) for about 30 minutes. In the meantime I cleaned the tent and regularly used equipment with plain water, to remove the chlorine.

Subsequently, I flushed the plants thoroughly with plain, pH'd water. However, I also took a bunch of other measures to take away the cause (the pots are now on a raster above the saucers and a small fan is positioned to blow air underneath the pots).

Only 6 hours later the plants perked up and within a few days they completely recovered, regaining fast growth and they didn't droop anymore. However, I'm too inexperienced to conclude with certainty that the chlorine treatment was the fix. I'm actually not even a 100% sure that my diagnosis was correct... Nevertheless, two conclusions are pretty certain to me:
1. The chlorine treatment didn't kill the plants;
2. After treatment, all the algae was gone and never returned. So at least it killed some of the unwanted stuff.

So in short: you can try chlorine at 150 ppm.

Everything was brand new when I got it and I sanitized with h202 and bleach. The tent should be clean. I’m just growing in Rockwool+hydroton so I’m not sure how I’d sanitize the netpot without damaging the plant. I’ll read up on chlorine and see if I can just toss my air stone in a solution and wipe the bucket clean

 

[Tez420]

I also want to mention my ppm are increasing slowly which means the plants during more water than nutes but my water levels haven’t noticeably changed. Ppm Raised from 180 to 200 and ph shot to 6.5.

 

[MackMurder]

I picked up some hydro guard and also got a silica supplement. The past few days I haven’t been home to check on the plants but when I got home today I noticed white new root growth. I plan on using hydroguard cal mag and my 3 part in the next bucket change. Not sure if I should still soak in h202 because it seems to be healing. As far as changing the buckets goes I’ve been just dumping them out, refilling with fresh water then adding the nutes in and ph. Idk if I should change the bucket again for like the 3rd time in a week.. I read It’s good to leave the plants alone because they’re more susceptible to pathogens after a res swap. Oh here’s how the roots are coming in.

They’re coming in white besides one plant has a brown tinge on the new roots.

Awsome news brudduh what a beautiful site. I would yank whatever brown roots are left if theres enough white ones.
I wouldn't worry about the peroxide now bruvv I think your golden
Keep us posted

 

[1ne eye]

I'm proud of you, you kept on it repaired those roots, i wouldn't worry about the little brown ones that are there, hopefully in a few days they will start eating and things should be good. Most people would have given up and went back to crappy soil.

 

[1ne eye]

Also try to keep PH to 5.8 or close.

 

[MackMurder]

I'm proud of you, you kept on it repaired those roots, i wouldn't worry about the little brown ones that are there, hopefully in a few days they will start eating and things should be good. Most people would have given up and went back to crappy soil.

Yeah all those contest winning plant of the months and plants of the years in soil look hella crappy

 

[Tez420]

Awsome news brudduh what a beautiful site. I would yank whatever brown roots are left if theres enough white ones.
I wouldn't worry about the peroxide now bruvv I think your golden
Keep us posted

Yezzir, I’ll cut all the brown roots in tmrs res change

 

[BeanTownFan420]

Some brown but the young new roots emerging is good either way hope you get it square.

 

[Tez420]

I'm proud of you, you kept on it repaired those roots, i wouldn't worry about the little brown ones that are there, hopefully in a few days they will start eating and things should be good. Most people would have given up and went back to crappy soil.

Right on man, l spent too much $$ to simply give up now lol. I typically ph to 5.8 and it slowly rises everyday, it’s at 6.7 now. I’m not sure how to drop the ph without using ph down everyday.

 

[Tez420]

Some brown but the young new roots emerging is good either way hope you get it square.

In that pic^^ the brown long roots was the original rr. Ill give it a few days with a new res change and keep everyone posted.

 

[MackMurder]

Right on man, l spent too much $$ to simply give up now lol. I typically ph to 5.8 and it slowly rises everyday, it’s at 6.7 now. I’m not sure how to drop the ph without using ph down everyday.

Maybe ph to 5.5 instead since you know its gonna rise. Give you a bit more breathing room and might have to use a little less ph down

 

[Tez420]

So this is how we’re looking now, starting to actually grow on the topside of the plant now. I added Silica, hydroguard and I also upped the strength of everything including my 3 part. This is they’re most rapid growth so far so I think we’re doing aight. Is some brown that. Are back though on the roots, not sure how severe but just the tips.

 

[1ne eye]

Right on, looking good.

 

[013]

theres a chart that’s well documented on here but I know my friend @Rexer has a copy pretty handy. It deals with rising & falling ph - I’m soil grower here but maybe MackMurder or BeanTownfan knows what I’m talking about

 

[Rexer]

Edit- took a quick look through, you're doing great for a 1st run and have the right attitude!
Change your airline to a black one. You have it running through the root zone and it's bringing light right into the roots! Also, never follow the nute strength listed by GH!
I'll pop back on After- busy day ahead

 

[013]

Boom..... drops the knowledge - way to go Rexer!!! Many thanks -

 

[1ne eye]

Just noticed in your last picture you have clear hose for your air line, for future grows go with black light can travel through the clear line to your reservoir.

 

[Rexer]

Yup, also-when you start using the hydroguard make sure to stop the peroxide treatments. The hydroguard falls under a "benny" and bennies and H202 don't mix that well.
Start tracking your PPM/EC (best way is to start a journal) and ph on a frequent basis. Low temps in the roots on a hydro can cause yellowing and difficulty for nutrition uptake. I've chased my tail on what looked like nute issues to find a cold root zone near an intake to be a problem.

Also- I'm glad your sticking it out on the hydro, keep up the attention and attitude and you'll have a reward from her. My 1st run was autos in a diy cabinet in a diy Ebb and Flow. It wasn't pretty but i had some good medication out of it.
If you do a journal give me a tag and ill happily follow along.

 

[VetSmoke85]

@GoogleGenie goes into controlling pH in his journals. Maybe worth looking in to see what he's doing. Looks like you're back on track now I'm trying to learn more about hydro so your guys journals are great to see. For now I'll stick to my crappy soil One day I'll dip my toes in though.