DWC Plants Dying Please Help

[TheOhmOne]

Hello All, let’s get straight to it. I’ll preface this with saying I appreciate anyone who takes the time to go over all this and provide feedback.

Equipment & Setup:

120L Coleman Cooler (30 gallon capacity to bottom of net pots)
TrolMaster Climate Controller and Sensors
BlueLab Guardian PH/PPM/
6x 3” Net Pots
160LPM worth of air pumped
8 air stones, 2 air discs
400cfm CanFan and Filter
12k BTU AC Unit
Scrog net 4x5
Gorilla Tent 5x5
Growers Choice Roi720 LED Light


Conditions & Data:

Ambient Temperature: 75-80f
Relative Humidity: 30-40%
Water Temp: Never above 68
PH 5.6-6.1
PPM 100-300
Sterile System

Nutrients:

Advanced Nutrients Sensi Grow
Bonticare Cal-Mag
General Hydro PH up and down
General Hydro Rapid Start
H202

Water Source: RO consisting of 5-10ppm, ph around 6

Medium:
RockWool and Hydroton

I purchased 6 clones from a local dispensary.

I rinsed the hydroton in a large net pot until water was clear running off.

I placed clones rooted in rockwool, directly into the bottom of the net pots.

I filled the 3” net pots with the clay pebbles and covered the top of the net pot with reflective tape.

The water level initial was just at the bottom of the net pot. Maybe 1” below. PPM at 150 and PH starting at 5.6, daily it would rise for the first 10 days to 6.3 in 24 hours and I would lower back to 5.6 with ph down.

During this time the PPM was also rising by about 10 per day. So I decided to do a Res Change. Not knowing If the PPM and PH rising together (slowly &controllable) was due to an underlying issue or due to the clones still rooting.

This res change is lowered the PPM to 100 and started with a PH of 5.6 again.


Within 10 days all but one of the clones had roots out of the bottom of the net pots and into the water. They were looking fantastic and really starting to take off at this point. 3 of the 6 were double the size of the smaller struggling clone.

At this point I lowered the water level to about 2-3” below the net pots. Like I normally do.

Shortly after this, all the roots that were above the water line began to have a grey hue to them. All the roots below the water line were sparkly white and normal.

Within a day or two, and seeing no improvement with the grey. I decided to raise the water line back up because I had come across information that made it seem as though it may not be needed, to have the air gap.

Everything continued well for a few days , tons of growth each day. As the PPM dropped little by little, I slowly got to the point of 300PPMs and the PH stays steady at 5.8 I do not need to adjust it at all currently.

Since 3 of the plants were growing at a much more rapid pace than the others, I decided to top them at around the 4th-5th nodes, and I tied them down LST slightly to allow the others plants to catch up.

For the week remaining after this everything has gone to shit.

I have seen no growth.
The roots have grey matter throughout now. This grey matter is hard to get out, the roots have grown around it. It almost looks like some tube of grey fiber looking material.
Tons of leaves are dying. The plants are wrinkled and looks like your hands when your in the pool for 6 hours. The are curling downward, They have brown spots, yellowing, purple stems. Damn near everything.

Last night I ripped the smallest girl out to inspect for mold or damage.
Everything honestly looked fine to me except for one thing. The Rockwool was drenched. I mean I squeezed of way more than I would have ever though that a cube could hold.

the root development on a plant that was nearly 3 weeks old is pretty sad.

I think raised my water level again after the plants had rooted essentially suffocated them?

Can anyone point out anything else that I should tighten up?

I appreciate you all taking the time to read that long post

 

[TheOhmOne]

Early stages

 

[TheOhmOne]

As you can see I also had a brown ring around my water line. I couldn’t figure this out either. I was assuming just from nutrients not being uptaken much as plants were still rooting ?

 

[TheOhmOne]

Topped plant

 

[TheOhmOne]

Browsing issues begin to be more present

 

[TheOhmOne]

Current status

 

[chemistry]

Looks like you have the start of root rot, drop your water down two inches under your pots. I would dump the silver foil thing and let your medium breath.

 

[TheOhmOne]

Looks like you have the start of root rot, drop your water down two inches under your pots. I would dump the silver foil thing and let your medium breath.

Great thank you!!
I have dropped the water level to about 3-4” below the net pot.

I will remove the foil ASAP. I was concerned about light leakage due to the net pots being so small.

Do you think I’m better of grabbing some new clones and starting over ?

do you recommend anything different next time ?

thanx again!!

 

[Mospeada]

It's strange seeing root rot with controlled water temps. In regards to water levels I wouldn't say that was the issue, personally I fill up my system as full as I can get it, usually the pots sit in an inch of solution and right now when I switched to an air cloner to a straight out bath I saw much better rooting in my clones. I think you should start over. Try adding silica to your feed, it acts as an anti fungal, humics and fulvics are amazing too to help buffer a lot of things and kelp extract is awesome too for plant health and defence. I've got this in photos on my current diary here if you want to see what I was talking about.

 

[Nate_in_AK]

+1 for apparent root-rot. I dealt with this on my first grow. Anti-fungal may be too late to fully rescue this grow, but it's worth a shot.

 

[Mospeada]

From afar my roots looked fine but when I looked closer I did notice I had some kinda fungus growing on them...The only parts that had it were the roots that stuck out of the water though. I forgot to mention Chitosan which I think helps prevent disease as well.

 

[Nate_in_AK]

Those bristles are normal part of the roots, just invisible in the water.

 

[Mospeada]

Those bristles are normal part of the roots, just invisible in the water.

I thought so too but when it gets wet it doesn't disappear right away but slowly disovles away over time which makes me think it's something other than root material

 

[Nate_in_AK]

I think you're just seeing microscopic air bubbles clinging to the bristles, that pop/dissolve after some time in the water. I'm not certain you have root rot, but your plant looks like it, and you said you were attempting to run a sterile system... it would add up.

I'm 99+% certain the bristles are normal.

 

[Growrx]

Curling leaves and random yellow spots appearing out of nowhere, very similar to the situation I had to deal with. I raised my ph to 6.0ish and went sterile. Plant is doing way better now.

 

[chemistry]

Great thank you!!
I have dropped the water level to about 3-4” below the net pot.

I will remove the foil ASAP. I was concerned about light leakage due to the net pots being so small.

Do you think I’m better of grabbing some new clones and starting over ?

do you recommend anything different next time ?

thanx again!!

Raise your pots and you'll see a big difference. Some cuttings just start off rough, yours are saveable.

 

[FourthCity]

Current status

I agree with chemistry about root rot. You can see in the second to last pic of this post how wet the rockwool is, its causing the rot because the material is too saturated to receive enough oxygen and fostering bad bacterial growth. While raising the pots and lowering the water will help, those 3 inch net pots are not ideal if you are using rockwool, its better to have larger netpots with more hydroton so the rockwool never gets too wet.

Your setup is more like a cloner, good for propagating cuttings but unnecessary for ones like you purchased that are already well rooted into the rockwool. If your plan is to grow these plants to term in that one reservoir then you are going to have bigger issues down the road. I would recommend switching to individual 5 gallon buckets with 6-9 inch netpots or an rdwc system for all but the earliest stages of growth.

Trying to run a sterile dwc will be a losing battle in all but the most controlled environments. Your best defense against bad microbes is your own army of good microbes. Its much easier to give the good guys what they need and in addition to defense they can provide your plants with nutritional benefits they would otherwise miss out on in a sterile environment.

Lastly, your humidity is far too low, causing what must be a very high vapor pressure deficit. Do some research on VPD and it will help inform you on all kinds of important things like where your temps and humidity should be as well as light height and intensity.

 

[Entropy]

There's been a lot of great tips so far, but is 300 ppm enough feed at this point? To me they look hungry, whether it's missing from the root zone or the roots can't assimilate what's there is the question.

Advanced Nutrients Sensi Grow
Bonticare Cal-Mag
General Hydro PH up and down
General Hydro Rapid Start
H202

Do these products contain all macro's and micro's you need for optimum growth? AN and GH do split up their nutrients into different bottles so perhaps your feed is missing something?

It also couldn't hurt to break out the scope and check for pests/mites
Cal-Mag

 

[GreatWhiteShart]

Honestly
I grow in a humid environment I cannot say much about vpn..... the lack there of, its not a problem I experience.
I can say lower your water level, you have soaked Rw, they don't feed well with rotting roots. Once they tap into the rez u need to be much lower or you are playing with fire.
And your ppms are very low imo, I run 700+ at that point.
As for the 3 inch net pots, I would never grow any adult plant in anything less than 5, I use 6, some can do 4 inch, but I have 2 inch stalks in my dwc, 3 is way to tight for a large plant. Maybe auto flowers can roll in 3.

 

[FourthCity]

There's been a lot of great tips so far, but is 300 ppm enough feed at this point? To me they look hungry, whether it's missing from the root zone or the roots can't assimilate what's there is the question.


Do these products contain all macro's and micro's you need for optimum growth? AN and GH do split up their nutrients into different bottles so perhaps your feed is missing something?

It also couldn't hurt to break out the scope and check for pests/mites

The plants are hungry but feeding them more now is like asking someone to eat while you are choking them. With the rockwool more dry and properly oxygenated, humidity at least close to 50%, and all rot removed from the reservoir, they will eventually recover and need more food. Most of what you feed them now is just going to the bad microbes anyway.