Deficiency or PH imbalance? Help!

greenflair · Apr 22, 2025

Hello, I’m experimenting growing with coco and my plants lower leaves are showing me signs of something. But I can’t quite figure out what.

I’m not sure if it’s a PH balance issue or some deficiency with the plant.

important info: I transplanted them from a little soil pot to a 3 gallon coco coir pot.

I’ve been watering almost everyday at ph: 5.8 and around 1,5—1,8 EC.

any ideas of what this could be?

the photos are all lower leaves.

BB22 · Apr 22, 2025

I grow in soil. Just asking , possibility of insects ?

CuriousGardener · Apr 23, 2025

greenflair said:
Hello, I’m experimenting growing with coco and my plants lower leaves are showing me signs of something. But I can’t quite figure out what.

I’m not sure if it’s a PH balance issue or some deficiency with the plant.

important info: I transplanted them from a little soil pot to a 3 gallon coco coir pot.

I’ve been watering almost everyday at ph: 5.8 and around 1,5—1,8 EC.

any ideas of what this could be?

the photos are all lower leaves.

Looks to me like phosphorus deficiency

Coconutz · Apr 23, 2025

The ec is high for me I'd use 1.0/1.2ec depending on the environment, what are the temps and humidity?

Are you feeding to run off every day?

greenflair · Apr 23, 2025

I believe I might have a clue on what’s going on. This is my theory:

Because I’m new to coco, when I transplanted the plants, I thought that after watering for the first time I wouldn’t have to water for a few days, and so I have been watering every other day with no run-off.

I guess this caused some stacking to happen and raised the EC too much.

So last night after realizing that, I decided to flush the plants with 1,5L of plain water until runoff (I was giving them 500ml every other day)

From now on I will water them 500ml everyday, but I guess I’ll feed nutes every 3 days.

Any recommendations on that??

I’m growing in 3 gal pots.

CuriousGardener · Apr 23, 2025

greenflair said:
I believe I might have a clue on what’s going on. This is my theory:

Because I’m new to coco, when I transplanted the plants, I thought that after watering for the first time I wouldn’t have to water for a few days, and so I have been watering every other day with no run-off.

I guess this caused some stacking to happen and raised the EC too much.

So last night after realizing that, I decided to flush the plants with 1,5L of plain water until runoff (I was giving them 500ml every other day)

From now on I will water them 500ml everyday, but I guess I’ll feed nutes every 3 days.

Any recommendations on that??

I’m growing in 3 gal pots.

I grow on Cocos and never miss nutes.
You dont have nutrient burn and again it looks like phosphorus deficiency wich can happen when overwatering. Just always check the weight of pot if light water it.
Even my first try with autos i blast them with nutes everytime and no issue

gwindajoannhare · Apr 23, 2025

CuriousGardener said:
Looks to me like phosphorus deficiency

And do you see those little holes in dirt .have you knowtised and knats buzzing around

gwindajoannhare · Apr 23, 2025

Blonde here i had that with the holes it was the knats laying eggs in dirt and the little bug eats the roots off your babies and they die.

greenflair · Apr 23, 2025

CuriousGardener said:
I grow on Cocos and never miss nutes.
You dont have nutrient burn and again it looks like phosphorus deficiency wich can happen when overwatering. Just always check the weight of pot if light water it.
Even my first try with autos i blast them with nutes everytime and no issue

Interesting. What’s your EC like when u feed?

It makes sense to me to water only when the pot is light with soil, but with coco I’ve always been told it’s almost like hydroponics; meaning you HAVE to water everyday and you pretty much can’t overwater.

So I’m a little confused with that.
would you mind sharing how big your pots are and how your feed schedule looks like?

And yes it does look like phosphorus deficiency a bit, but I’ve been feeding them with Athena Pro line and I’m not entirely convinced its P deficiency.

Do you water by hand or drippers?

greenflair · Apr 23, 2025

gwindajoannhare said:
And do you see those little holes in dirt .have you knowtised and knats buzzing around

Nahh, haven’t noticed flies around and also I have yellow traps that are clean. Also I’m running and experiment tonight with potato’s to rule this hypothesis out. So let’s see.

can’t wait to sort this out.

Glomus · Apr 24, 2025

Yeah it actually does look like a phos deficiency, which is pretty rare, considering most blast the fuck out of their plants with it.

CuriousGardener · Apr 24, 2025

greenflair said:
Interesting. What’s your EC like when u feed?

It makes sense to me to water only when the pot is light with soil, but with coco I’ve always been told it’s almost like hydroponics; meaning you HAVE to water everyday and you pretty much can’t overwater.

So I’m a little confused with that.
would you mind sharing how big your pots are and how your feed schedule looks like?

And yes it does look like phosphorus deficiency a bit, but I’ve been feeding them with Athena Pro line and I’m not entirely convinced its P deficiency.

Do you water by hand or drippers?

Well from my own experience you can definitely overwater on cocos
I have autos in the tent, 5gallon pots and water them by hand every day around 0.25gallons sometimes skipping one day and giving 0.5galons next day, but these autos are very thirsty,maybe temperatures are adding up to that since i dont have cooling system there.(my first try with autos aswell so can't advise much on it)
In my main growroom i have 90 3gallon pots always grow photoperiodic there. They sit in the pool so i put around 80gallons there and they're good for 5-6days.(bottom feed)
My ec starts at 1.5 and ends with 2.2 by the end of crop, ph range 6.1-6.3
Temps i keep at 26celcius and co2 i do piramid starting at 500ppm with peak 1000ppm
Hope it makes sense im not from US so maybe we do it a little differently here in EU

CuriousGardener · Apr 24, 2025

Glomus said:
Yeah it actually does look like a phos deficiency, which is pretty rare, considering most blast the fuck out of their plants with it.

If he overwaters them it could be plants locked out from some nutes but thats just my guess

Glomus · Apr 24, 2025

CuriousGardener said:
If he overwaters them it could be plants locked out from some nutes but thats just my guess

That too, coco is doesn't make sense to me, either grow in soil or just go for hydro or aero. Coco just seems like your asking for constant moisture issues. Also not all coco is made equal. I get the appeal of having more control with nutrition percision but it seems like coco is best with a rez and drip emitters anyway so why not just grow hydro or aero?

CuriousGardener · Apr 24, 2025

Glomus said:
That too, coco is doesn't make sense to me, either grow in soil or just go for hydro or aero. Coco just seems like your asking for constant moisture issues. Also not all coco is made equal. I get the appeal of having more control with nutrition percision but it seems like coco is best with a rez and drip emitters anyway so why not just grow hydro or aero?

I'm a coco guy myself coming from mapito. Much less work if you have big numbers of pots. Just dump lots of water in the pool and leave it be for 5-6 days but thats just me. My friends are die hard mapito users

Glomus · Apr 24, 2025

CuriousGardener said:
I'm a coco guy myself coming from mapito. Much less work if you have big numbers of pots. Just dump lots of water in the pool and leave it be for 5-6 days but thats just me. My friends are die hard mapito users

If I was going soilless I would do a peat moss and vermiculite mix, But i do enjoy the challenge of the guessing game of organic growing.

CuriousGardener · Apr 24, 2025

greenflair said:
Nahh, haven’t noticed flies around and also I have yellow traps that are clean. Also I’m running and experiment tonight with potato’s to rule this hypothesis out. So let’s see.

can’t wait to sort this out.

Glomus said:
If I was going soilless I would do a peat moss and vermiculite mix, But i do enjoy the challenge of the guessing game of organic growing.

My only goal was to make minimum amount of noise so that neighbours next door wont hear the sprayers and water pump humming
So soil is too dense for my liking to do bottom feed and coco just hits the spot.
Haven’t tried peat moss and v mix but sounds more expensive( need 320gallons of coco for every crop)

Glomus · Apr 24, 2025

CuriousGardener said:
My only goal was to make minimum amount of noise so that neighbours next door wont hear the sprayers and water pump humming
So soil is too dense for my liking to do bottom feed and coco just hits the spot.
Haven’t tried peat moss and v mix but sounds more expensive( need 320gallons of coco for every crop)

When I grow in soil I recycle my soil and have my soil tested before amending. You can get a similar control will soil in fabric pots by having dishes under your pots. But yeah peat moss and Vermiculite is the best soilless medium. 50/50.

greenflair · Apr 24, 2025

Update:

So it’s not fungus gnats for sure as I don’t have flies around and I left some potato’s on the pots overnight and no signs of worms, so that’s ruled out.

I feel like I could be overwatering that cause some lockout. it’s the only thing that makes sense.

The thing is: its very tricky to hear online that’s impossible to overwater coco and then some people saying that you need a wet/dry circle (which makes sense to me) buuut it’s very goddamn confusing.

Also, it could be that my pots are too big for plain coco (3gal), so next time I’m going to mix perlite in to have better drainage.

NOW THE MAIN QUESTION IS:

After I flushed the coco with 2L of water now the pots are heavy as fuck, should I just wait as many days as needed for the pots to get light???

I guess I’ll do that, cuz it doesn’t make sense to add more water to those water logged pots.

greenflair · Apr 27, 2025

greenflair said:
Hello, I’m experimenting growing with coco and my plants lower leaves are showing me signs of something. But I can’t quite figure out what.

I’m not sure if it’s a PH balance issue or some deficiency with the plant.

important info: I transplanted them from a little soil pot to a 3 gallon coco coir pot.

I’ve been watering almost everyday at ph: 5.8 and around 1,5—1,8 EC.

any ideas of what this could be?

the photos are all lower leaves.

Just wanted to post an update and final answer to my problem.

So after a lot of observations, I belive I know what happened.

I got a little freaked out when I noticed the problem, because it was my first time with coco. So I overlooked one details, which is:
It was happening to only one specific phenotype. (Im growing 4 different phenotypes from the same strain).

So after trying to look at the big the big picture i noticed it was happening only with pheno #10 and i had one light with #10’s on soil and one light with #10’s on coco AND BOTH SHOWED THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM.

Not only that, no other pheno ahowed that problem. So the PROBLEM WASNT WITH THE COCO, it was with that specific pheno.

so it was either stressed from the transplant or it got a little too much nutrient for that specific pheno Orr something else I don’t know.
But I do know that it only happened to that specific pheno, and it already recovered pretty quick.

Im glad I’m doing this experiment after all, so I can select the best pheno.

Deficiency or PH imbalance? Help!

Deficiency or PH imbalance? Help!

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