My Plants Are Sick With Ugly Leaves, But The Smoke Is Good

[davem415]

Here are some details first:

• 5Gal DWC-Hydro
• I am growing Fastbuds Autoflower, using 50% nutrient strength with minimal problems for the past 2 years until now.
• Advanced Nutrients PH Perfect (Advanced Nutrients support says that I do not need to adjust the PH. These nutrients are good for PH between 5.0 and 7.0
• 300W LED Vipraspectra. There were at 12" but I move them up to 24" in case this is a light burn issue.
• Temperature in tent is normally between 68-80 degrees.
• Plants seem to be getting a slow start or become stunted

I have included a picture of a 7-week old plant that only has 2 weeks left to harvest, and a 3-week old plant that just started to have problems with the leaves.

For the 3-week plant, I just moved it to the 5 gal bucket, gave it about 300PPM of nutrients, and the leaves started to curl.

Please help if you recognize this. I'm trying to fix this but it's hard if I don't know if its the nutrients, lights, or other conditions.

 

[G gnome]

That plant has a lot longer than 2 wks left

 

[davem415]

Sorry, I was just estimating. The Autoflower usually finishes around 9 weeks, but you are right it can go beyond. I think I have between 2-4 weeks left. I check the trichomes to help me decide when to harvest.

 

[DGP]

What is your maximum water temperature running? I run a tent and a room and the average air temp will be pretty much always be the average water temp. I have a huge water res in one room and in a day or two it will be exactly the same temp as the average in the enclosure whether a tent or room. In my case if it goes much over 68 I am in danger of bad bacteria forming and slowly killing the root ball. Then my plants start looking distressed and wilting and then leaves die and dry up.

Don't know if this is happening in your case but I often see this in tent grows including my own. It's expensive but in the end I had to chill the water because running ice out to the reservoirs became too much work and still the temps weren't controlled well enough.

One thing I noted recently is there can be a 3 to 5 degree F difference between the top area of the tent and the lower area and that helps but often isn't enough to keep the water cool enough.

How do your roots look?

Dee

 

[davem415]

I just checked the water temp and it's 73, but that will probably go up in the next few hours as the temperature rises here in the bay area. I will check again at 2:00 pm.

Here are the roots of the 7-week old

My next grow will be in coco, which I am starting this week. I hope that will help me identify the problem a little easier.

 

[DGP]

You have some really vigorous main roots but the feeder roots seem quite brown to me. How does the root ball and water smell? How often do you drain and replace the water? Have you used any res conditioners or H2O2?

Dee

 

[Toaster79]

Those roots look anything but healthy. Get yourself some hydroguard if you're not able to keep your res temps at bay. Those plants won't live to see another two weeks.

 

[DGP]

In my experience using conditioners or H2O2 just wins a battle but never the war against anerobic bacteria. Keeping the water cool and out of the light (dark buckets) is the only way I found to win the war.

Often these tents are sold as hydro tents but they never tell you about this issue. I am running RDWC undercurrent with a chiller but back when I started single bucket DWC I had to run the AC at 68 or 69F to keep the air cool enough to hold the water under 70F. If you keep the tent at 70 or less the grow tempertures are not ideal for the plant.

The only low cost way I found was to run some kind of RDWC that circulates the water out of the tent to a larger reservoir that you can keep in a cooler enviroment or a res you can chuck ice into a couple of times a day.

Dee

 

[davem415]

You have some really vigorous main roots but the feeder roots seem quite brown to me. How does the root ball and water smell? How often do you drain and replace the water? Have you used any res conditioners or H2O2?

Dee

There is very minimal smell in the water/root ball. I change the res once a week by siphoning out the water and then refilling with new water. I'm not using H2O2 at this stage of the grow, but I do clean all of the equipment with H2O2 between each grow.

 

[DGP]

Fresh roots in nutes that are clear (no dyes):

Healthy roots but are stained fromn General Hydro 3 part FLora nutes that have an amber color to them and they stain the root a light brownish amber. There is a strand of roots in the picture that were starting to get root rot because I had just installed the water chiller. I clipped off the bad ones and the plant recovered very quickly. Are your nutes clear or do some of them have colorants (dyes) in them?

 

[davem415]

Fresh roots in nutes that are clear (no dyes):

View attachment 780934
Healthy roots but are stained fromn General Hydro 3 part FLora nutes that have an amber color to them and they stain the root a light brownish amber. There is a strand of roots in the picture that were starting to get root rot because I had just installed the water chiller. I clipped off the bad ones and the plant recovered very quickly. Are your nutes clear or do some of them have colorants (dyes) in them?
View attachment 780935

Nice. How do you use the H2O2? Do you add this weekly? if so, how much per gal?
I'm using advanced nutrients and they are pretty dark. One of the products is B-52 and it's basically black. The base nutrient is brown.

 

[DGP]

I don't use the H2O2 now that I have a chiller keeping the water at 66+-1 degree. I only use it to battle the pythium and whatever other root issues arise. However, the drug store H2O2 has wierd stabilizers in them that I dont want in my plants so I buy a quart bottle of 33% at the grow shop. Be aware however, it can hurt you so wear gloves and glasses and be real careful not to splash. Make a dilution in some water and slowly add it to the buckets. The directions say 1-3 ml per gallon.

So far my reservoir smells super clean and looks good but I still drain and refill the res once a week.

Not familiar with autos or that strain but since they don't appear to be really large plants I would wonder about the feeding levels but one way to figure it out is to start low and measure and record the ppm daily. if it goes down and the water level goes down you need higher ppm. If the water goes down but your ppm remains the same you hit it right on. if the water level goes down but the ppm goes up your over feeding and wasting money or could burn the girls. Maybe a master grower will chime in and say if I laid that out correctly:)

Dee

 

[davem415]

I don't use the H2O2 now that I have a chiller keeping the water at 66+-1 degree. I only use it to battle the pythium and whatever other root issues arise. However, the drug store H2O2 has wierd stabilizers in them that I dont want in my plants so I buy a quart bottle of 33% at the grow shop. Be aware however, it can hurt you so wear gloves and glasses and be real careful not to splash. Make a dilution in some water and slowly add it to the buckets. The directions say 1-3 ml per gallon.

So far my reservoir smells super clean and looks good but I still drain and refill the res once a week.

Not familiar with autos or that strain but since they don't appear to be really large plants I would wonder about the feeding levels but one way to figure it out is to start low and measure and record the ppm daily. if it goes down and the water level goes down you need higher ppm. If the water goes down but your ppm remains the same you hit it right on. if the water level goes down but the ppm goes up your over feeding and wasting money or could burn the girls. Maybe a master grower will chime in and say if I laid that out correctly:)

Dee

Thanks for talking about the PPM! After feeding them, the water goes down but my PPMs goes up which didn't make sense to me. I called the support hotline and they told not to worry about it and to follow their feeding chart. They seem to like to push using more nutrients than less.

 

[DGP]

If your nutes are staining the roots that can make it hard to diagnose. However, the pythium I have seen will kill the roots and you can see they get dark brown and deteriorate. Also, will have a kind smell which is hard to describe but once you have smelled it you will remember it for the future. It is not always strong or really repulsive but kinda earthy like stuff decomposing in soil.

Dee

 

[DGP]

Thanks for talking about the PPM! After feeding them, the water goes down but my PPMs goes up which didn't make sense to me. I called the support hotline and they told not to worry about it and to follow their feeding chart. They seem to like to push using more nutrients than less.

I beleive that situation you described indicates over feeding (water level down ppm up).....

 

[davem415]

Overnight update.

My plant is drinking about a gallon a day now (in 7th week of flower). The PPM yesterday was 1175. Overnight the plant drank about 1.5 gallons of water and the PPM when up to 1875. I just added 2 gallons and the PPM is now at 1065.

I also raised my LED yesterday, and overnight the top grew 4 inches.

Any thoughts on what is happening with the water?

 

[DGP]

Well if she is drinking that much (good indication the plant is really working and vigorous) and the ppm goes up then she is not using all the nutes you are giving. I think that means you can dial back the strength of your nute mix.

You could lower the concentration today by say a couple hundred and see if your ppm stays more stable. Add water everyday and see if the next lower ppm satisfies the plants needs.

Dee

 

[davem415]

That sounds like a good plan.

 

[DGP]

Also, how big is she? That's a lot of water for one plant to use if she is suffering from a root problem but I guess it could happen that way. There is always something with Canna culture that surprises me. However, you are near the end of flower and that is where I usually see my plants consuming a gallon or more a day.....amazing.

Dee

 

[DGP]

Was just thinking (could be a dangerous thing) that you might have a problem that is beyond root rot as a result of water temperature but the foliage issue could be also partially due to overfeeding? maybe some burn and the root issues stressed the plant????