Is this normal, or what?

[Eledin]

It was so much easier when I could just stick to the GWE chart and the plants would grow exponentially. Now that there's an issue, I'm second guessing everything--which I know I shouldn't do. I just fed them with 2/3rd strength nutes at 6.15 ph to about 20% runoff. The feed water had an EC of 1,550 and the runoff was 3,300. Too high? Ph was 6.2.
It's interesting that the chart I'm using says I should have stopped giving CaliMagic a week ago, which implies the plant either has enough in it, or doesn't need it anymore. Neither seem true with my plant.
The sick plant is mine and I don't use much weed, so if I get a couple ounces, I'll be thrilled. The other plant is for a friend and it seems to be rolling right along.

Thats a shit ton yes. Also flushing involves using 3 times as much water and then introducing nutes again, you just fed them again with a bit of runoff not sure that will eliminate the issue. Your soil is saturated, if I had to guess its mostly calcium from lack of magnessium in micro and nitrate (or any other chemical that helps assimilate calcium) in calimagic because 1-0-0 is way too low nitrogen for a non organic calmag. Your chart has half the ammount than the official chart right? Seems about right that they were doing well then because they tend to put a bit too much sometimes in official charts but if youre feeding half strenght and have that many ppms something is not being absorved and I bet its calcium like we already suspected. FloridaMike seems to think its a possibility too.

 

[Eledin]

Its different from the flushing period. If you wanna flush a saturated pot you need to use a lot of water. On the other hand during the flushing period towards the end of flower you just avoid nutes and if you want add some epsom salts or any finisher from any brand but you dont heavily water.

 

[Eledin]

Forgot to mention that if it's just one plant, it could just be
a sissy that is very sensitive to ph and nute fluctuations.

Also this, very true, sometimes some phenos are just way too sensitive, but I still think that your EC is very high so you need to do a good flush with only water, 3 times the ammount of water you would use or more, calcium is a bitch to get out of the pot. Once you watered several times the ammount of water the pot can hold the EC should be way lower, test it and if its still too high keep flushing. For coco 2000 is already on the high end, not many plants can eat that much, let alone 3000ppm. And is not just that they cant eat that much, in your case since you dont feed a lot thats clearly a nute that is not being absorved saturating your soil, most likely calcium as we said.

 

[Eledin]

Did you skyp calimagic like the chart says the previous times that this problem didnt happen? Also maybe the others can tolerate a higher EC but that one cant.
Also you are using well water, it should have plenty of calcium already, plus micro has calcium too, plus the calimagic... I start to see it clear. Also how many ppm does the water have by itself without nutes?

 

[carlosescobar]

The yellow tips seem to be on the leaves mid-level in the canopy, while the damaged leaves are up pretty high. I included the light in this photo:
View attachment 2376915

The worst damaged leaves are about 15" from the light now, but they were closer and the light was at 100% (Spider Farmer SF1000). Also, and I'm not sure how I've not realized this, I had added a third light to the tent a few weeks ago. Everything was going great for a couple weeks, so I didn't think much of it. I have since moved it away from the sick plant, so now only the one light is hitting it. I found a page with pictures and descriptions of every cannabis malady on GWE and the only ones that seem to match are calcium deficiency or phosphorus deficiency, but with phosphorus she says the problem usually starts down low on the plant. So from what everyone is saying and from what I've studied, it seems this must be a calcium issue, right? And since calcium seems to affect the way a plant handles light, the fact I had the lights too bright for it really exasperated the problem? The question now is, how do I fix it? I've turned down the lights and moved them away, but what about the calcium and ph management?

now that i see that pic it makes more sense, it looks like light stress (im just learning about this , the hard way lol) theres a difference between light stress, heat stress and led light burn....light stress on a plant will make it lock out potassium (i guess as a defense mechanism) so then the leaves go yellow then start crispin up

 

[Grownsince95]

It was so much easier when I could just stick to the GWE chart and the plants would grow exponentially. Now that there's an issue, I'm second guessing everything--which I know I shouldn't do. I just fed them with 2/3rd strength nutes at 6.15 ph to about 20% runoff. The feed water had an EC of 1,550 and the runoff was 3,300. Too high? Ph was 6.2.
It's interesting that the chart I'm using says I should have stopped giving CaliMagic a week ago, which implies the plant either has enough in it, or doesn't need it anymore. Neither seem true with my plant.
The sick plant is mine and I don't use much weed, so if I get a couple ounces, I'll be thrilled. The other plant is for a friend and it seems to be rolling right along.

Seems high to me. I've been a GH trio user for over 20 years and most runs top off at 850-1000 ppm in my setups. I would also drop the cal mag once flowers started. Calmag is an EC hog! It will increase the value more than any of the other nutes. I found that the GC micro alone has enough Ca for flowering. The runoff numbers you got are definitely concerning

 

[FloridaMike]

The formulas seem to be different aswell, but the pictures are the same. Name is not the same, ingredients are not the same but the bottles look the same hahaha. I think one of the partners that partially owns it decided to do its thing because the guy in the US wanted to change the formulas and he wanted to stick with the originals. Thats something I read, an internet, roumor no way of knowing if its true. Anyhow I noticed that your floramicro does contain calcium but not magnessium... the calmag should of course have magnessium but its weird that they didnt decide to add more, maybe it comes in another bottle, from micro or grow

GH flora series has been notoriously lacking in ca & mg for almost 50 years, as long as they have been making it.

 

[FloridaMike]

I use cal-magic @ feed chart #s right through til the last week or 2.
I run @ 1250-1400 ppm of 10 part Flora series with added Silica Orca,
Hi-Brix molasses, Hydro Gaurd, Diamond Nectar and Purpanator.

After this run however I am going to switch to Greenleaf Nutrients
(powder) as per @TheGoldenRoad & @Captspaulding recommendations

 

[Weedly]

Thanks everybody. I’ll flush today with plenty of plain well water ph’d to 6.0. My well water is EC 370 and I do see lime deposits around the faucets, so as long as calcium carbonate can be absorbed by the plant as calcium, I would think between that and whatever is in the FloraTrio, there should be plenty enough available to the plant throughout the rest of flower. Will there be enough magnesium if that’s what it needs?
Yes, the other plant is a different strain and seems to be doing just fantastic with the same feeding and actually twice the lights. Maybe Grape Ape is just more finicky and delicate. Or perhaps Larry OG is just extra robust.

 

[Weedly]

Now I'm in the middle of my flush and I have no idea what's going on! I am flushing with well water ph'd to 6.0, EC is about 420, but the runoff water ph has been steadily rising and is sticking at about 6.65. I've ran at least 5 gallons through the 5 gallon pots, although the coco has settled down to about three gallons. I'm in the middle of recalibrating my pen, but it's reading the fresh water fine and the two gallons when I had 6 ml ph down fine like it always has, so I don't think that's it. At first I wasn't watching temperature of feed mix too well and it was probably in the upper 70's. The last three or four gallons I corrected to 70 degrees, which is what the soil in the pot is. Any ideas? I feel like I am slaughtering my plants!

 

[FloridaMike]

Are you transposing ec with ppm's?

ec (electrical conductivity) is small numbers like 1 or 2 point something (1.2 or 2.3 etc)

The numbers in the 100's are (as far as I know) ppm (parts per million) of tds (total dissolved solids.)


If I'm mistaken, or there's something I'm missing, somebody please correct me.

 

[Weedly]

I think my pen measures in micro EC so my 1,000 is actually a 1.0. The water going into the pots is EC 438 which I suppose is everyone else’s .438. Regardless, the ppm’s are 219. But what’s concerning me is the fact I can’t get the runoff ph down no matter how much water I’m putting through it at 6.0. It’s staying above 6.6. I just calibrated my pen an it was off by less than .1, so I don’t think that was it. Why won’t the ph come down?

 

[FloridaMike]

I think my pen measures in micro EC so my 1,000 is actually a 1.0. The water going into the pots is EC 438 which I suppose is everyone else’s .438. Regardless, the ppm’s are 219. But what’s concerning me is the fact I can’t get the runoff ph down no matter how much water I’m putting through it at 6.0. It’s staying above 6.6. I just calibrated my pen an it was off by less than .1, so I don’t think that was it. Why won’t the ph come down?

Ok, I understand now, I'm learning here too. Thank you. Did you buffer the coco b4 using it? I grow in rockwool which I buffer @ 5.5 & then run @ 5.8-6.2. I don't know a lot about coco, but it seems if it's coming out that high, you could put it in lower, say 5.5 or 5.6 and see if it helps to get the coco conditioned. you won't hurt anything going down as far as to 5.5, which some charts show for hydro anyway. Once the coco gets conditioned you can go back to 6.0

Where are all the coco growers?

 

[Weedly]

Well, it’s hard to tell what I’ll wake up to tomorrow. I discovered after about the sixth round of flushing that my ph pen was fluctuating wildly. The reading would change just by how I was holding the pen in the water. After so many flushes to get the ph down, the EC ended up at .46, down from 3.2, which I thought was too drastic a change, so I gave two more rounds of nutes at 2/3rds, which was an EC of 1.1 at around 6.0 ph. I used the test drops, but I don’t see color well, so that was kind of a crapshoot too. The final runoff EC was .95.
So I took some family photos for posterity and put the plants to bed. I also turned down the lights some, so if they do get stressed they won’t fry tomorrow before I can check on them.
Thanks everyone for all the support and wisdom. I think they’re going to be okay, at least I hope so, but they are soaking in a drastically different medium tonight. Any thoughts on where I should go from here?

 

[Weedly]

Well, I’m pretty sure I halted the decay a couple days ago—at least it hasn’t gotten any worse. I think, after listening to everyone, that the problem was some sort of lockout rather than the lack of anything. The solution seems to have been the massive flush I did. That the runoff EC was 3.3 to start with was a big clue, so I got it down and am keeping a close eye on it. I’m also certain the light was too bright for it, especially when it was stressed. I think the fact the plants were doing so well all through veg with me just following the GWE FloraTrio chart allowed me to get complacent to things like nute burn/deficiency/lockout and other clues like runoff EC. Also, I took too lightly the oft mentioned fact that plants get a whole lot more finicky in later bloom weeks and I was a little slow to react to signs of stress. And it didn’t help that the plant right next to it was absolutely thriving with the same feedings and twice the light.
So if anyone is still with me, my final question is: should I remove the affected leaves? I’d like to because they look terrible and are blocking light to healthy leaves and buds, but I don’t want to stress an already stressed plant anymore, especially since the affected leaves are up fairly high and are right next to the bud sites. The picture really doesn’t do the damage justice

And just a pick of a bud I’m praying survives a couple more weeks. Thanks everyone for the help and giving me the opportunity to keep trying!

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