[Thatoneguyyouknow_]

Got sent down a rabbit hole thanks to @cpurola 's diary. Did some reading and forum hunting here and elsewhere, and managed to find several links between fungal septoria and mold mites over past years.

Pretty sure your plants have a fungal septoria causing the weird deficiency look alike on the newer growth and the leaf fall, and those are probably mold mites like @Eledin mentioned eating the fallen leaves because of it.

After hours of research I must say that I learned more about tap water. Since it doesnt show in the typical analisis of tap water, I had to investigate for hours the content of silica of various people that used strips to meassure silicates. Some of them were growers, some of them were owners of fish tanks. The major concern about it seemed to be that in zones that you might encounter more silica the pipes can eventually clog and it can also cause diatoms to appear (which is totally fine). I found that for most parts of the world the standard is from 5 to 30mg/L which is a huge difference and in some places even 100mg/L naturally occur so I can see why you could be concerned about too much silica in your outdoors garden. Thank you for making me take the journey needed to learn something new! I like to learn about outdoors because I dont have one but I sure want to and will have one some day in the future. It has been way more productive than what I thought initially hahaha.

i actually have well water, its saturated to about 450 ppm after rain storms mostly with potassium, silicates, and calcium acetate, as well as other gnarly stuff. Lots of sulfides and other shit lol.


The best way to find out how your water is treated if it's a municipal supply, is to call your local treatment facility. At least in the USA they will forward you to someone who can answer your questions because it is your right to know exactly what is in your drinking and food preparation water.

You can cross reference this information to what you get testing your own water at the tap, and if you have concerns they will even send officials from the state to test your water for you at no charge if you are on a municipal hookup. They even test it free if you are on a well pump. They just wont fix the issues if any for free lol.

There are inexpensive reagents you can obtain online to test the heavy metal, calcium, silicate, etc concentrations in your water as well.

That being said, if you run an RO filter and modern multi part nutrient regiment designed to need it, and follow instructions on a bottle like it's the 10 commandments, you're prob gonna need that silica supplement. Prob gonna need some cal-mag with a good amount of iron in it to boot

 

[Rama777]

Got sent down a rabbit hole thanks to @cpurola 's diary. Did some reading and forum hunting here and elsewhere, and managed to find several links between fungal septoria and mold mites over past years.

Pretty sure your plants have a fungal septoria causing the weird deficiency look alike on the newer growth and the leaf fall, and those are probably mold mites like @Eledin mentioned eating the fallen leaves because of it.


i actually have well water, its saturated to about 450 ppm after rain storms mostly with potassium, silicates, and calcium acetate, as well as other gnarly stuff. Lots of sulfides and other shit lol.


The best way to find out how your water is treated if it's a municipal supply, is to call your local treatment facility. At least in the USA they will forward you to someone who can answer your questions because it is your right to know exactly what is in your drinking and food preparation water.

You can cross reference this information to what you get testing your own water at the tap, and if you have concerns they will even send officials from the state to test your water for you at no charge if you are on a municipal hookup. They even test it free if you are on a well pump. They just wont fix the issues if any for free lol.

There are inexpensive reagents you can obtain online to test the heavy metal, calcium, silicate, etc concentrations in your water as well.

That being said, if you run an RO filter and modern multi part nutrient regiment designed to need it, and follow instructions on a bottle like it's the 10 commandments, you're prob gonna need that silica supplement. Prob gonna need some cal-mag with a good amount of iron in it to boot

Well I’ll be damned, I think you MAY be on to something..

So the plant that you and I talked about that at first you thought may be manganese deficient, is that the appearance that you’re connecting to septoria?

 

[Eledin]

Got sent down a rabbit hole thanks to @cpurola 's diary. Did some reading and forum hunting here and elsewhere, and managed to find several links between fungal septoria and mold mites over past years.

Pretty sure your plants have a fungal septoria causing the weird deficiency look alike on the newer growth and the leaf fall, and those are probably mold mites like @Eledin mentioned eating the fallen leaves because of it.


i actually have well water, its saturated to about 450 ppm after rain storms mostly with potassium, silicates, and calcium acetate, as well as other gnarly stuff. Lots of sulfides and other shit lol.


The best way to find out how your water is treated if it's a municipal supply, is to call your local treatment facility. At least in the USA they will forward you to someone who can answer your questions because it is your right to know exactly what is in your drinking and food preparation water.

You can cross reference this information to what you get testing your own water at the tap, and if you have concerns they will even send officials from the state to test your water for you at no charge if you are on a municipal hookup. They even test it free if you are on a well pump. They just wont fix the issues if any for free lol.

There are inexpensive reagents you can obtain online to test the heavy metal, calcium, silicate, etc concentrations in your water as well.

That being said, if you run an RO filter and modern multi part nutrient regiment designed to need it, and follow instructions on a bottle like it's the 10 commandments, you're prob gonna need that silica supplement. Prob gonna need some cal-mag with a good amount of iron in it to boot

Max I got was a report from last year that doesnt mention silicates whatsoever that is available for anyone but I guess I could try to contact the local goverment and see if they can give me something more detailed, thanks!
I plan on using RO at some point because of all the stuff in tap water specially in a rural area where I live. For now I use tap water and finish them off the last weeks with store bought RO water to try to purge as much crap from tap water as possible before I harvest. I dont know if it makes a difference but it makes me feel better

 

[Rama777]

Max I got was a report from last year that doesnt mention silicates whatsoever that is available for anyone but I guess I could try to contact the local goverment and see if they can give me something more detailed, thanks!
I plan on using RO at some point because of all the stuff in tap water specially in a rural area where I live. For now I use tap water and finish them off the last weeks with store bought RO water to try to purge as much crap from tap water as possible before I harvest. I dont know if it makes a difference but it makes me feel better

I use rainwater most of the year. I imagine I would benefit from silica.

I have a gallon of AgSil solution I put together. I used it in my first grow during veg a few times. I also added a non-organic ph down when I added it to my water because gotdamn that shit kicks the ph up to high hell.

What’s the deal when working with that? Do you have to ph down or does it not have enough “total alkalinity” to exert too much pressure on the buffers in organic soil?

I didn’t have any issues with it but I would prefer to not use chemical ph down and, with my limited understanding of indoor plants, I wasn’t sold on using organic acids to buffer the solution.

I’m still open to using it, I just need to understand what’s going on before I do.

 

[Thatoneguyyouknow_]

I use rainwater most of the year. I imagine I would benefit from silica.

I have a gallon of AgSil solution I put together. I used it in my first grow during veg a few times. I also added a non-organic ph down when I added it to my water because gotdamn that shit kicks the ph up to high hell.

What’s the deal when working with that? Do you have to ph down or does it not have enough “total alkalinity” to exert too much pressure on the buffers in organic soil?

I didn’t have any issues with it but I would prefer to not use chemical ph down and, with my limited understanding of indoor plants, I wasn’t sold on using organic acids to buffer the solution.

I’m still open to using it, I just need to understand what’s going on before I do.

I rarely if ever have to use PH down personally. After RO my water here sits under 6ph at like 10ppm. Dont think ive bought any in like a decade either. I use pure potassium bicarbonate as PH up from home brewery suppliers though lol.

 

[Rama777]

I rarely if ever have to use PH down personally. After RO my water here sits under 6ph at like 10ppm. Dont think ive bought any in like a decade either. I use pure potassium bicarbonate as PH up from home brewery suppliers though lol.

Yeah me neither, but when you add silica powder in solution!!?? I don’t really know what the ph is because I use ph solution matched to colors and the color only goes up to 8 but the amount of ph down I used to bring it down to like a 7 or so made me think it must have brought the ph to at least a 9..

I definitely was not using more per gallon than most people do and in fact I used about 1/4 or 1/8 (can’t remember exactly) of what people seem to normally use because I never go hard with anything until I see if there’s a potentially negative response.

 

[Thatoneguyyouknow_]

Yeah me neither, but when you add silica powder in solution!!?? I don’t really know what the ph is because I use ph solution matched to colors and the color only goes up to 8 but the amount of ph down I used to bring it down to like a 7 or so made me think it must have brought the ph to at least a 9..

I definitely was not using more per gallon than most people do and in fact I used about 1/4 or 1/8 (can’t remember exactly) of what people seem to normally use because I never go hard with anything until I see if there’s a potentially negative response.

I think i mentioned the alkalinity issues with potassium silicate already, but i dont know much about silca dioxide. I assume it's one. If its silica dioxide and the PH raises you have to bring it back down or itll change to another form of silica i believe. Dont quote me on that. But silica can only exist in its dioxide form at a certain ph range iirc. I was thinking dioxide was an acidic form of silica. Im too lazy to look it up though. Yours must be potassium silicate though?

I think most people use liquid silica additives. That's what i have and have always messed with, Chances are the solutions are already pre buffered a time of manufacting to some extent, but idk, ive never had PH spiking up problems with it before that bad though.. Maybe spikes it up 1.0-1.5 or so from where it was but i also use it pretty sparingly, it can make buds seem a bit dry, and kief super easily. It does raise PH though, and when using in in DWC you do use probably 2-3 times the amount of PH down you would without it.

And also, the more PH down or up you add to a solution, the less effective that same volume becomes used again on the solution because the PH's of the two solutions are now closer together. It's an exponential thing. It works kinda like a drug tolerance lol.

and I do know potassium silicate can fuck up an already healthy soil chemistry and cause alkalinity problems over time if its being used where it isnt necessary, it wont be all uptaken and will stack in the soil with subsequent feedings/evaporation if never flushed. In clay/shale rich soils, the topsoil doesnt want to let go of potassium or silica very easily either one. If i didnt already know that, and if i didnt have my well water tested, id be up shit creek with the outdoor ladies already lol. Just from the levels of potassium and silicates in my well water and how hot and dry it's been. I imagine lots of outdoor growers have messed up with potassium silicate additives over the last 10 years and never knew what went wrong because they were buffering it back down and running it in-ground where 1/4 of every watering evaporates before plants can even access the moisture fully. Where it's 99/100 times completely unnecessary as well lol.

. I havent run any yet here either because i just havent bothered to yet. Ive got a bottle of ArmoSi ive yet to open but plan on using in flower while the seeds are coming along indoors.

 

[Eledin]

Yeah me neither, but when you add silica powder in solution!!?? I don’t really know what the ph is because I use ph solution matched to colors and the color only goes up to 8 but the amount of ph down I used to bring it down to like a 7 or so made me think it must have brought the ph to at least a 9..

I definitely was not using more per gallon than most people do and in fact I used about 1/4 or 1/8 (can’t remember exactly) of what people seem to normally use because I never go hard with anything until I see if there’s a potentially negative response.

I have never used silica in liquid form to fertilize the plant so I dont know about that I use a little potassium silicate (way less than the recommended dosage) when my PH goes down during the first 3 weeks of flower because of Iguana Juice, Big Bud and Alfa Boost. I just need to add a little bit. As for the diatomaceous earth, if you top dress with it and you PH your water you shouldnt even worry, just dont put too much, like 2 big spoons is enough for big pots if you wanna kill insects if you mix well. Also silica benefits from PH lower than 8 to be absorved, wether is solid or liquid form. What kind of silica are you using? When I started using the diatomaceous earth I had to PH the runoff so I would feel safe and it was totally fine.
About potassium silicate ruining your grow, of course, everything that has a PH way off of what you need can fuck your grow, you can burn them with low PH too, I got this bottle of Alfa Boost and it has 3 PH, if you use the recommended dosage good luck trying to go up to 6 or 6,5. With any product that changes your PH you need to act accordingly and if you do you'll be fine. For the potassium silicate I have the recommended dosage is 0,5ml per liter and I still think is too much but as I said I only need a little bit to correct the extreme acidity of Alfa Boost and the other 2.
If you used alfa boost and used the recommended dose in flower which is a lot, I dont use that much, but if you were to do that and you didnt check your PH your soil would be fucked. Plant would start absorving heavy metals too like alumina which is toxic for you and the plant and it usually stays on the soil as a buffer. I dont think they would make it unless corrected quickly.
So yeah I would extend it a branch and say that whatever youre using, always check the PH and you'll be fine. And what I learned from @Thatoneguyyouknow_ dont use too much silica. Im still gonna top dress with DE but Im glad Ive never spent money in expensive supplements.