2 days into flowering and this! Hydro

[snichols1]

Hi all! New grower and member here! First off thank you all ahead of time for reading and replying. I have a few babies on their way out.
Just moved them into flower. They had a rough coming up but by the last week of veg they were strong. Got everything dialed in in the tent we had set up. Had a flood table with 60 degree 5.7 ph water at 6 to 800 ppm running the full soul synthetics line. Using mesh buckets that fit into the flo n gro system in the basement where we will flower. So we went to move the plants downstairs into nearly identical conditions except the light cycle being switched to 12 12. I dont know how to fix this issue. The plants almost immediately became shocked and began doing this. What do I do?
Thanks so much, Sam

 

[snichols1]

Sorry about that! Lost my way with the picture editing. Here you go.

 

[Papageno]

sorry bro...a little tough love though.


That is over watered. those cubes are meant to be broken up. nothing needs or wants to grow in rock wool that size. Whoever sold you those should be shot.

I am not going to explain it all because I already sound like a douche. But you can't grow a plant in rock wool cubes that big...you have to be a uber pro to make that work. And anyone who is that good would not even think about wasting their time doing what you are doing.

Honestly your best bet is to start a journal and we can coach you thorough a recovery. First thing is going to be cutting those things down by 80% or more and burying those in new pots because you can control the humidity properly in cubes that big. Not to mention you didn't bury them.


Have you ever seen any journals or posts of people doing what you have done?

 

[Papageno]

WOW..I just did a double take...you have rooting medium inside rooting medium.

OUCH!!!

 

[snichols1]

I have not seen any journals but I would love to look into them. We put a LOT of money into all of this equipment all at the same time. So I cannot believe that something this major has been ignored up until now.. What do I do now? Attempt to remove the cubes and cut them without disrupting the roots? Is there hope for these guys? What do we do differently next time? This grow was looking great up until now and there were roots flowing out of the bottom of the cubes. As soon as we moved them all downstairs they began sitting with water in the bttom of the buckets. I am at a loss here. Where are the weed gods? 430 dollars for first months electric and now this. lol..

 

[snichols1]

Village, Are you referring to the Cube inside the hydroton? Is this a nono? I have heard that they have nearly opposite rates of water containment.

 

[Papageno]

I don't know about Gods...but we can help.


This is not a 3 or 4 post solution. The problem is you have roots grown into a mess. We are going to have to cut back the mess and nurse it back to health.

The good thing is we are still in veg. So we can chop them back in half and let recovery take hold and grow double the weed. But it will take 3-6 weeks to get you through this.

I mean sure there is a good chance you can get the humidity just right but I would still top or train those and since you have cubes the size of Texas I would go full tilt and break them down.

Anything can be fixed in Veg. I am helping a guy recover a pythium problem in his DWC where he went weeks trying everything and nothing worked and he even cut off all the roots...and we got that under control... We can help you...but it is up to you what you are willing to do.

I personally have never seen something so outrageous with Rockwool. Lets give it a day and if no one responds who has dealt with that kind of rockwool I will ask you to start a journal on this web site and I will walk you through how I would handle it.

But this is not a 3 or 4 line post to solve it.

I mean unless you understand what it takes to cut those down and bury them. But I am betting as soon as you do they will not respond how you expect and will need follow up help.

This is not a frequently asked question. This is a long term project.


OR...the simple answer is move those into soil because you can't grow in Hydro that size of rockwool.

 

[snichols1]

I don't know about Gods...but we can help.


This is not a 3 or 4 post solution. The problem is you have roots grown into a mess. We are going to have to cut back the mess and nurse it back to health.

The good thing is we are still in veg. So we can chop them back in half and let recovery take hold and grow double the weed. But it will take 3-6 weeks to get you through this.

I mean sure there is a good chance you can get the humidity just right but I would still top or train those and since you have cubes the size of Texas I would go full tilt and break them down.

Anything can be fixed in Veg. I am helping a guy recover a pythium problem in his DWC where he went weeks trying everything and nothing worked and he even cut off all the roots...and we got that under control... We can help you...but it is up to you what you are willing to do.

I personally have never seen something so outrageous with Rockwool. Lets give it a day and if no one responds who has dealt with that kind of rockwool I will ask you to start a journal on this web site and I will walk you through how I would handle it.

But this is not a 3 or 4 line post to solve it.

I mean unless you understand what it takes to cut those down and bury them. But I am betting as soon as you do they will not respond how you expect and will need follow up help.

This is not a frequently asked question. This is a long term project.


OR...the simple answer is move those into soil because you can't grow in Hydro that size of rockwool.

We can continue hydro and exne the rockwool correct? and do as you are saying with the cubes and cut them? Should we move the plants back upstairs into the veg tent?
Thanks, Sam

 

[Papageno]

I don't use rockwool for a bunch of reasons... but if I did i would not use ones larger than the smallest ones I could get. It is a rooting medium only. You do not grow plants in rockwool. You root them and bury the very small cube in the Clay pellets (the ONE site Hydroton was mined from was shut down years ago)( I don't use clay I use grow stones). The roots grow out of the rockwool and take hold in the pellets. What you have there in each pot is enough rockwool for at least 20 plants.

Rockwool will absorb and hold water. The worst thing for plants in hydro is the water. I know that sounds stupid but it is the truth. Without the air stones the plant would drown and die.

So you have a medium that will wick the water up and maintain a supper over wet root zone that will eventually rot and have a pithyum problem and will probably kill the plant.

In an aero enviro where you can shut off the misting you might be able to control that. In those buckets I can't see how you could slow it down enough.

 

[Papageno]

Lets give it 24 hours and see what the rest of the peeps here have to say.

My personal experience says to chop those cubes down to something not more than 1/2 inch round from the stem (basically as big as the original rooting medium they are in). That will cut out most of the roots and cause massive stunting. You will need to give them time to recover but roots grow amazingly fast... in a good aero environment you could be good to go in 2-3 days if done correctly.


Given stunting and rebound and a few other factors I see I would recommend to chop them in half... but that is unnecessary, just good if you want to get max yield. Since you are going through a massive recovery process we might as well try to get the best we can from them.


Normally for newbs I try to get them to the first harvest as easily as possible but I am recommending for this we go down a crazy path so lets go overboard.

 

[snichols1]

Lets give it 24 hours and see what the rest of the peeps here have to say.

My personal experience says to chop those cubes down to something not more than 1/2 inch round from the stem (basically as big as the original rooting medium they are in). That will cut out most of the roots and cause massive stunting. You will need to give them time to recover but roots grow amazingly fast... in a good aero environment you could be good to go in 2-3 days if done correctly.


Given stunting and rebound and a few other factors I see I would recommend to chop them in half... but that is unnecessary, just good if you want to get max yield. Since you are going through a massive recovery process we might as well try to get the best we can from them.


Normally for newbs I try to get them to the first harvest as easily as possible but I am recommending for this we go down a crazy path so lets go overboard.

So assuming we go with that, We will plan on going back up into the veg tent, and babying these bad boys? We have not been using Aero environment. We have been soley flooding using our flood table from the bottom up. I wouuld be glad to snap some pictures of everything and put them up. Im hoping to stay with the equipment we have and not have to go drop another 5 to 10k on another setup if at all possible. Fingers crossed!! We are getting ready to start our next batch of seeds in our propagation center. should we wait to do this if our other plants will be back to vegging? Thank you kindly for putting up with my slowness. This is my full time job and i want to do it right and keep the babies happy and healthy.
THANKS ALL!

 

[Papageno]

You can make everything yourself for cheap from parts at home depot.

But you don't need to change the equipment. I think you could make it work as is just it will be very difficult.

Roots need oxygen more than water. All forms of Hydro focus on this. Even in DWC where they sit in the solution the whole time the more airstones you use the better the grow. Without airstones in DWC the plants die in a few days.

Your problem is How do you get that rock wool to dry out between floodings. You can't. So the roots in the rockwool are going to rot and die. You have to get the roots dry between the floods. They should be mostly dry and flooded for a short time.

All you need to do is manage the flood and drain so the rockwool stays moist but not wet and preferably even drys out in between floods. That might mean flooding only twice a day.

 

[snichols1]

SO if the better route is home depot that will be what we do. But we stll need to chop the rockwool down for these guys right? and take them back upstairs? Then i can set up the basement for aero? Should we have airstones in each flo n gro site for the basement? And how much of the plant should we try to cut off both above and underground? Thank you for dealing with my noobiness. I appreciate you so much.
Thanks, Sam

 

[snichols1]

Here are some pics of the veg tent upstairs with rez underneath and the flo n gro downstairs. I hope this helps. These guys are looking worse and worse and all I want to do is help them. Thanks

 

[snichols1]

Also, a few of these guys have tremendous roots coming out the bottom, and they appear white and clean. THe one that has the most roots is also the bushiest and healthiest looking. Just throwing in all the info I can.

On another note, we have all of our seeds now. Should we begin propagation or wait?
Thanks, Sam

 

[Papageno]

wow slow down there Nelly...


The only reason to whack back is if we stunt them and have issues. We may be able to get these turned around without any major repair needed.

The more oxygen you can have in the nutrient solution the better and that goes for any form of hydro. For one it helps to reduce bad bacteria and Pythium.

Your system is the type you can put some air stones in the external res and that should be fine since the bulk of the time they should be in the air surrounded by wet medium.


One issue you face is your type of system is meant to grow clones that are identical. Since you have all of them hooked into the same nutrient solution and running the same flood and drain schedule they better be plants that are of the same age and strain otherwise you wont be able to run it optimally. You may nail one of the plants but not the other ones.

If these are all from seed are they feminized or are we running unknown and some may be males? If unknown then we want to take clones and bloom these and get on to a controlled run of identical females.

Cloning is supper simple so don't fret about that.

But this all leads me to the point you brought up. Some are clearly more healthy than others. So running them on the same flood and drain schedule is probably not correct. That one clearly needs to dry out. Maybe it has an infection in the Rockwool. if that gets place in the same system as healthy plants maybe the infection spreads.

You have a very nice high class setup there. I am very jealous. But you gotta crawls before you can walk. That setup ifs for a certain type of growing. You may not be ready for that yet.


I was talking to the owner at one of the bigger grow stores in Portland. He has 3 different setups in the front window. We were talking about what he should have there instead. He wants to move all the fancy stuff to the rear of the store and have a basic setup up front. He says people come in all the time and asked for the best they can buy so they can get the best results possible and 3 months later try to return all of this used top of the line equipment because they crashed their grow. You can't buy your way to success. It takes years and patients.

We can help you solve problems...but we need you to slow down and understand what your equipment is designed for and what you are setup to do.

 

[Papageno]

The ones that look over watered lets put them back upstairs and let them dry out. After they have dried out nicely we will put in a solution with enzymes and see how they look. If we can get them back inline soon we can run them side by side the healthy ones.

 

[snichols1]

We have strong oxygenation in the rez. They are all feminized seeds but not the same strain. The next batch is all the same strain because we learned fast that we made that mistake. I will take all the time necessary to learn how this all works. Frankly I thought I had it all down. We have an Ezcloner which we have not yet used. Im afraid to flood any of these. Should I? I can pull that guy out of his bucket? but he still needs water. I am not ready to give up though. And thank you for your willingness to help. I believe it takes years to get this down. Do you think that given that all the equipment is payed off, it is a good idea for us to continue learning it and use it to reach as near perfection as we can over time? Whats next right now? I guess I am a mess.
Thanks, Sam

 

[snichols1]

Oh sorry I posted without seeing your addition. I will do that now. Should i put a nute solution of just RO water and hygrozyme? or should i use soul synthetics line? This probably means I need to go out and buy another water chiller now.

 

[Papageno]

Well you are talking to a guy who promotes using a living res and beneficial bacteria instead of chemicals. And I do it for cheap. But I also have all the stuff. I just saved a guys grow with my tea. He tried everything e could find and ran the chiller cold and nothing stopped his infection. One day with my tea and it is all fixed. So baby steps, we will get there. But you may not have a problem yet. Left wet for a long time you are guaranteed to have problems. So lets dry it out and see where we are.

I would dry it out then do a light watering with hygrozyme and low nutes just in case. If you stunted them we need to drop the nutes in half of what you have been doing.