Durban Poison with Vivosun self feeding pots in coco/perlite

[JaBy]

Man, i had pretty much forgotten about the three stooges. gonna have to check some out.

 

[Mothman]

i'll have to do it in a word file, but my puter's on the brink and i can't open word.

Try Google Docs. It’s a free substitute for MS Word. Easy to figure out, and it automatically saves your work.

 

[W2Lucky]

A few more quick posts regarding the garden. Note that the phosphorous deficiency is only in Plant #1….the plant that I flushed more thoroughly than the rest this week. Once I added Liquid KoolBloom to her reservoir, the ppm climbed to 1100 and I adjusted the ph to 6.0. I then ran 1 gallon from the reservoir through her coco to increase the available nutrients in the root zone. Runoff ppm was 1100 too, so I don’t plan to replace the reservoir. She just needed some food.

Daytime Tent conditions shown below. Running at a VPD around 1.25.
View attachment 2332783

The wicking system on the Vivosun isn’t quite enough in my opinion. Their 1/6 inch wicks are small too. I’m only running 3 gallon fiber bags, so perhaps I would do better with 5 gallons. In the interim, I’m going to run two more 1/4 inch wicks across the center of the pot to see if I can get more nutrients to the medium.

Before and After Vivosun wicks on 1.3 gallon reservoirs
View attachment 2332781View attachment 2332782

I’m about to use mine for the first time. Great tip on the added wick. I’d love to know if it’s working. If I could ask one thing, do you prewet your medium before placing the pot in place or just let the wick do its thing on dry medium? I intend to obviously moisten it unless I learn otherwise. I would appreciate your input. Thanks.

 

[T_Dub]

I’m about to use mine for the first time. Great tip on the added wick. I’d love to know if it’s working. If I could ask one thing, do you prewet your medium before placing the pot in place or just let the wick do its thing on dry medium? I intend to obviously moisten it unless I learn otherwise. I would appreciate your input. Thanks.

The added wicks made a huge difference. My plants soaked up almost one gallon each today (in 3 gallon pots with coco). They had been taking up less than .33 gallons. This solved it for me. I believe I did top water a little at first before the tap root could reach the bottom 1/3 of the pot. I also wanted to settle the soil so I watered before planting. However, I planted them in their final 3 gallon container at a really young age (using pre-moistened soil).

Good luck with your grow. If I could do it again differently, I think I’d swap out coco coir/ perlite for ProMix HP/Perlite. That’s just a guess though as I haven’t tried it yet.

 

[W2Lucky]

The added wicks made a huge difference. My plants soaked up almost one gallon each today (in 3 gallon pots with coco). They had been taking up less than .33 gallons. This solved it for me. I believe I did top water a little at first before the tap root could reach the bottom 1/3 of the pot. I also wanted to settle the soil so I watered before planting. However, I planted them in their final 3 gallon container at a really young age (using pre-moistened soil).

Good luck with your grow. If I could do it again differently, I think I’d swap out coco coir/ perlite for ProMix HP/Perlite. That’s just a guess though as I haven’t tried it yet.

Big thanks. I just ordered 50ft of 1/4” wick material. I appreciate your guidance. I’m amazed at how little info is out there about the Vivosun pots as opposed to the ACI ones. I’ve hand watered all my grows and didn’t want to repeat other people’s hard learned lessons with these pots.

I’m using a 70/20 FF OF and #3 perlite, and a top layer of FF frog to help my transplant. I put your ProMix HP/ perlite recipe in my notes. Cheers.

 

[T_Dub]

Big thanks. I just ordered 50ft of 1/4” wick material. I appreciate your guidance. I’m amazed at how little info is out there about the Vivosun pots as opposed to the ACI ones. I’ve hand watered all my grows and didn’t want to repeat other people’s hard learned lessons with these pots.

I’m using a 70/20 FF OF and #3 perlite, and a top layer of FF frog to help my transplant. I put your ProMix HP/ perlite recipe in my notes. Cheers.

They’re a great design…but watch for nutrient burn symptoms and given them a good flush if you see that. My 5 gallon pots with coco went 10 weeks (in the ACI feeders) before I noticed nutrient burn. This happened much sooner, possibly due to having smaller 3 gallon pots?

Best of luck with your grow. If I can help along the way, just let me know.

 

[T_Dub]

After more research, it seems that the pots that dry out from wicks ultimately develop problems in the root zone, I had plant number one (far left of canopy) fixed with a flush (or so I thought), but now she’s lacking CalMag.

Plant number two is looking terrible after having dried up (bad wicks) and then after rehydrating. Look at the leaves on a couple of colas.

Plant number two looks like nutrient burn since she rehydrated. So….i flushed with 4 gallons of a 650ppm/6.1ph solution consisting of tap water, 3ml/g CalMag, 5ml/g of Kool Bloom (0-10-10). I then vacuumed out the reservoir and added solution at 750ppm and 5.9ph.

Runoff from the first 1.3 gallons was at 1350 ppm. Second 1.3 gallons of runoff ppm was 1150. Third runoff came in at 975. So it did lower the EC at the root zone.

Let’s hope the plants finish out with no more issues.

 

[T_Dub]

It looks like I haven’t updated the journal in two weeks. The past leaf damage from nutrient burn and deficiencies are still present but not getting worse. Four more weeks to harvest.

Noticed a bug infestation in my reservoir. Dumped all reservoirs and soaked them in bleach solution to kill everything off. I’ll be doing this weekly now that insects are present. Added fresh nutrients at 900ppm and 6.0ph.

See the bugs here.

I also sprayed the plants with Captain Jacks but didn’t observe any bugs on the leaves.

I took the advice of other growers and added airstones to the reservoirs now.

A few glamour shots….leaf damage and all. Four weeks to go.