Eledin said:

Since Im responsable for the advice I gave him I will explain why I would flush, precisely because of this:
"If your meter is broken and you don't know your runoff pH or ppm why would you flush plants in peak flower?"
When you have no idea of what your parameters are, a good restart can save your harvest. Organic liquid fertilizers are absorved quick enough to avoid deficiencies if you flush, specially if you use epsom salts which will wash away nutes when you flush but the epsom salts that remain in the soil will help nutrient uptake.
Now that he restarted his medium, he is certain that they have the correct ratio of nutrients, starting at 1/4 of the strenght perhaps is too little, I would have gone for 1/2 but you can always adjust depending on how they respond even though I agree that being in flower risking low nutrients in the soil after a flush will affect final yield.

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Grownsince95 said:

Except the op never mentioned a ppm meter, just a GH pH tester which are the same as the drops you use to test pool water. Not accurate enough IMO. Combine that with feeding FF trio on top of FF soils with no ppm readings and it's a recipe for disaster.

From the OP's diary it does look like they had the feeding spot on until the lollipopping regardless of ppm readings. But things went off the rails soon after.

What conclusions would you draw from that?

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RoadKillSkunkHunt said:

If thats the full path they have taken ... stress.

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Eledin said:

I obviously went through his post before giving him advice as soon as he mentioned it to see how they evolved. I dont think I really adviced to flush more than 2 or 3 times since Ive been here. The conclussions I mentioned already, the plant shows nitrogen and magnessium deficiency, he was only feeding 1 out of a tripart nutrient solution so its obvious that the nutrients in the soil are not in balance anymore. He mentioned his ppm meter being broken. GH ph tester is more than accurate enough, in fact is way more accurate than a cheap PH pen. The only difficulty you might find is that organic nutrients are usually brown which difficults at first to identify the color but you get used to it. Been using them for more than 10 years and I never had a problem. They are not made for pools, they are made for testing water for weed so they need to be accurate.

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Eledin said:

How about feeding only 1 part of a tripart solution? Nothing to do with that?

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Grownsince95 said:

My bad, I thought it was one of those that you put the drops in the water and it changes color

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Grownsince95 said:

Exactly what I was trying to say... they're starving.

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Grownsince95 said:

My bad, I thought it was one of those that you put the drops in the water and it changes color

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Eledin said:

How about feeding only 1 part of a tripart solution? Nothing to do with that?

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Eledin said:

Yes, I saw that you mentioned that since he defoliated he depleted them from their storage which is true but since the problem came after he did it its just unfortunate that he wasnt feeding correctly and the leaves who took the hit were the only ones remaining.

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ohigrow said:

The decision to flush wasn’t based just on Eledins advice. It was based on my own thought process behind things once they had mentioned that the trio should have been fed in unison. And upon checking that chart it’s recommended to do flushes between the feedings at certain points so naturally being close to that section on that chart flushing and feeding the correct mixture(I did 3/4 strength) after seemed to be the appropriate thing based on my observations and the chart itself. I have lollipopped in the past and had no issue. I usually do living soil or micro amendments though so there’s a constant supply of food. Not the case if I messed up on the feedings with this trio line though as it would make sense for the plant to start cannibalizing itself if there’s a lack of food available in the medium. As I said it’s only on some plants and it’s not affecting the whole plant so with this adjustment I’m pretty confident they’ll be fine. With proper food now they won’t have to eat themselves. 4-6 weeks to go depending how they do so only time will tell.

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Eledin said:

Their spectrum is more limited than a good PH pen but you dont really need to know more than what they provide. You are never gonna go below 6 or above 7, ideally.
View attachment 2434979
In Europe its called Terra Aquatica but you can see the GH logo on the bottom, well GHE (General hydroponics europe).
Im done with calibrating PH pens, but everyone has their preferences.

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Grownsince95 said:

If you can judge tenths of a pH by looking at the color those test kits provide, more power to ya!!

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Grownsince95 said:

According to the way the plants looked before he lollipopped them, they were being fed perfectly fine. The stress induced by that plus the increased need for food approaching peak flower exasperated the problem to what we see now.

The rule I follow is always do your biggest defol before you flip and let them recover before 12/12. Once you go there there's no turning back. That's why new growers have so many problems with autos.

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Eledin said:

It is! But they are accurate General Hydroponics formulates stuff for weed. Even if they say you can use it in your garden, everyone knows who they are targeting

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Grownsince95 said:

If you can judge tenths of a pH by looking at the color those test kits provide, more power to ya!!

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