Droopy plant in a coco grow

[Shneex0338]

Hey guys, so I currently have this plant living it's days here, and I feel like something's just.. off.

It never really perks the leaves up, they do go a bit higher for 3-4 hours daily, but this plant already droops insanely around 3-4 hours before the lights go out, and stays that way for 3-4 hours after the lights turn on (18/6). It never had praying leaves or anything similar, it always looks medium sad, or really sad.

I'm running 70/30 coco perlite, pre buffered. pH between 5.8 and 6.3, EC currently at around 0.9 with the canna coco nutrient line. I want to add that I use tapwater with around 210ppm by default. Temps are okay, 74-76f, humidity is okay at 55-65%. I water daily with 15-20% runoff.

PPFD has been tried daily to see how the plant reacts, but nothing helped. I'm currently at a DLI of 25, with no changes to the plant.

I don't know what exactly is wrong, as I'm 100% new to Coco. New growth seems rather lime green, top leaves are clawing a bit. The top stem also droops to the side for whatever reason. I did fim it yesterday, but the symptoms have been here for a few days already. Was it dumb? Sure, but.. eh, it happens.

Can someone maybe tell me if somethings wrong? I'm an absolute noob. Am I using too many nutrients? Too little? This coco stuff is just so weird, even though I followed a few guides already.

 

[ArtfulCodger]

To me, that looks like an otherwise healthy plant that's under more light than it wants, based on the taco-ing, edge curl, and droop.

 

[SHAKELLY]

Are you using calmag? I would also water less and see if that helps. Go by pot weight to see if it needs watering as yes coco needs to stay wet but that doesn't necessarily mean water every day.

 

[Shneex0338]

To me, that looks like an otherwise healthy plant that's under more light than it wants, based on the taco-ing, edge curl, and droop.

It's a MarsHydro FC3000 at around 2ft (60cm) and 35% intensity, it gave me around 25DLI (~400ppfd). I also tried 30%, 40%, and 50% each for a day, with no change. I'm currently trying to lower the light intensity to around 25% to see if it changes anything, but I remember that the plant never tried perking up even with very low PPFD / DLI. I feel what you mean, the taco leaves, the minimal curling of the edges, the drooping of the leaves, it looks so much like a light problem, which is what's confusing me too.

Are you using calmag? I would also water less and see if that helps. Go by pot weight to see if it needs watering as yes coco needs to stay wet but that doesn't necessarily mean water every day.

Yes I do have BioBizz Calmag and I pretty much always use it in small amounts. Didn't want to buy an extra CalMag just for the coco grow, so I used the BioBizz stuff from my organic time. The coco is canna coco professional plus or whatever it's called, apparently already ready to use and prebuffered "to perfection". I informed myself a ton about that stuff, and apparently it is indeed ready to use, so I didn't do anything special with it. Only added 30% perlite.

I read so much about watering at least once daily, as most people even do 3-4 or even 5 times a day, but that just felt like too much work for me, so I wanted to chill with one watering til runoff with ~20% waste. I feel like it may be worth to skip a day or two, just to see where I land!

What I do notice though - I usually feed with an EC of 0.9-1.0, and my drain EC read at 1.6 today. Is this suspicious? I heard .2 more than input is more than fine, but it's .6 more than what I put into the substrate. I always water to waste, so this kinda surprised me. I feel like this may be worth mentioning.

 

[ArtfulCodger]

It's a MarsHydro FC3000 at around 2ft (60cm) and 35% intensity, it gave me around 25DLI (~400ppfd). I also tried 30%, 40%, and 50% each for a day, with no change. I'm currently trying to lower the light intensity to around 25% to see if it changes anything.

In my experience, a day isn't enough time to see a plant's reaction to the light level, unless it's extreme. More like two or even three days for small changes. I know this is a contrarian take in 2023, but if that were my garden, the light would be hanging at the top of the tent and set to 25%. Then, if they're praying an hour before lights-out, I'd turn them up a little. I'm in the less-is-more camp...you can always add, but over-doing anything tends to cause problems.

 

[Shneex0338]

In my experience, a day isn't enough time to see a plant's reaction to the light level, unless it's extreme. More like two or even three days for small changes. I know this is a contrarian take in 2023, but if that were my garden, the light would be hanging at the top of the tent and set to 25%. Then, if they're praying an hour before lights-out, I'd turn them up a little. I'm in the less-is-more camp...you can always add, but over-doing anything tends to cause problems.

Yes this is my plan from now on, it's at the top of the tent (tent is a bit taller than 5ft). I will lower the intensity for now. The praying sadly never happened, they already droop severely around 3 hours before lights go off, then extremely droopy at night. It takes around 3 hours after lights go on again for the leaves to move up slightly, but they will always claw slightly and never even go horizontal or anything.

The strange thing is - My seedlings do pray or at least look healthy by looking at the position of the leaves. I have one auto in organic peat, and another Gazzurple by HSC (The same as the big one) in coco / perlite, same nutrients, everything, just watered down and pH adjusted with lower EC for seedlings. They both pray, but the Gazzurple seedling is actually not looking healthy color-wise, rather lime-green than a healthy green.

This is my auto in organic peat, it looks wonderful so far, yet a bit tiny for 9 days :

This is the other Gazzurple (photo) right now, it seems fine, but a bit pale, 10 days old. Gets around 0.6 EC daily at 5.8-6.0 PH:

 

[Shneex0338]

Just a little update - Nothing has changed. Weird deficiencies / lockouts are appearing, plant is still drooping. Growth is slow. Some deficiencies similar to magnesium, and also strange brown tips that don't look like nute burn though. I do add calmag.

I stopped watering daily to check for changes. At first it seemed to get better, but then it started drooping again. Watering doesn't help, even when the pot becomes light. I currently feed at 1.4EC, pH 5.8-6.0, but doesn't work. Lowering light intensity hasn't changed anything, too.

Images below show the plant right now. It was shortly after lights off, but sadly it does look pretty much the same with lights on, too. Maybe 10% less droop at mid day. New growth also sometimes kinda funky, with leaves that have no serrated edges. Let me note that my Apera PH20 pen is fully calibrated with two point calibration and ph7 / 4 solution.

Just as a quick sheet:

* 70/30 coco perlite
* 76F, 60% humidity
* Watered once daily with 20% runoff (droopy)
* Now every 2-3 days, little runoff (still droopy)
* PPFD I don't know right now, but way too low already. Probably around 150-200.
* oxygenated water, room temp
* 18/6 cycle
* canna coco nutrient line, 1.4EC, 5.8-6.0 PH