Yes I agree. They do look like the early stages. Although, mine do look a bit more burnt and brown? I'm going to get some calmag tomorrow and go from there. As long as we are ruling out N burn then I'm happy as I would have had to get up and go and flush 20 plants right this second so you saved me over 6 hours :) how much cal mag should I be using?This is what I find with my water, so I just add Calmag. You can see the damage on my leafs are like your early stages. Yes, I think water can be to hard, it seems to lock the Calmag out to a point the plant seems to eat it's self, even though it's green.
Yes I agree. They do look like the early stages. Although, mine do look a bit more burnt and brown? I'm going to get some calmag tomorrow and go from there. As long as we are ruling out N burn then I'm happy as I would have had to get up and go and flush 20 plants right this second so you saved me over 6 hours :) how much cal mag should I be using?
You're in coco, shit happens fast growing hydroponically. It looks like your problem is on the higher leaves only, going by the pics. The newest fan leaves basically, the bottom ones look relatively ok in comparison, yar? So you're dealing with an immobile element. Meaning unlike say nitrogen which is mobile, the plant can't pull from its resources and steal some from lower down the plant, from the 'sacrificial' leaves let's say. Now there are more than a couple of plant immobile elements but since I think you said you're using hard water, I'd start with ruling out Calcium and Iron, both of which are more likely to be in the water equation. You'll find these in CalMag etc so that's WHY I'd start with the CalMag. Don't need a lot, 50ppm works for me. I mentioned it in another post recently but I like to use Flower nutes when mixing CalMag into the feed as most of these supplements so far as I'm aware contain around 2% Nitrogen. The 2% is whatever but you're in Veg and I'm assuming you're using veg nutes so they'll be getting plenty N anyway if you're feeding modestly. Flower nutes contain less N but you're topping it up with the CalMag so it's all good.
Everything here purely drawn from my experiences, except how elements work, some other guy discovered all that :D
Keep in mind also that Calcium is such a critical element to plant life. When freely available to the plant it helps everything from water and nutrient uptake, strengthening the vascular system and cell walls of your plants and generally just makes everything happen more efficiently, almost the oil of the works if you like. It may well be a Calcium deficiency but since lack of it blocks other elements it may show up as something else. CalMag is not necessarily something you use as standard unless you know your water is seriously lacking in Calcium or you're using RO water. But it's a must have in your armoury if you're growing in coco.
You can see in my grow log that very recently I had a deficiency and I have to confess that although I was asking the question 'what's causing the deficiency', I was getting a second opinion because I'd already made up my mind what it was. I came to a decision about what I was gonna do cos I'd spent the last 3 and a half years fucking up plants and getting a little better each one after. I'm having to take this shit mega serious because my future success and fulfilment pretty much depends on me becoming hot shit at growing. I'm completely nowhere near that yet by a long shot, and I can't imagine a time when I'll finish learning about this plant. But I know for damn sure that since I've chosen to do so I have to sit down and learn the elements and why they affect the plant the way they do. It's a complete pain in the ass my friend but especially since you've decided to grow in coco, you have a lot of homework to do. Honestly I don't mean that in a dickhead way, but in my experience, you can come on here and ask a question, people will set you in the best possible direction, but it's mere speculation because only you the grower know your plant as an individual and its full history. Plus it's a BOSS feeling when you diagnose a problem correctly and fix it yourself. :D hope I helped
Dan1989 has been giving some solid coco advice. Look how dry the coco is in your picture below. It should never get that dry on the top. When you let coco dry out chasing nutrient def is like chasing phantoms. EC/ppm within the medium rises fast and pH either dips or rises causing havoc. The beauty and curse of coco is it holds plenty of oxygen at full saturation so it needs to be fed at least once a day with a consistent nutrient/pH dose. They can definitely come back through daily consistent feeds imo. How hard is your water anyway? and when you get an EC meter let us know the feed strength and what all you are adding.
I like to shoot for low dose nutrients and try to ride the build up and then taper off nutrients in the end weeks. Generally my solution comes at around 450-500ppm or .9-1.0EC at the peak and I ride that all the way through. My starting water is r/o and tap at 150ppm or .3EC
My mistake my tap rides at about where your does actually. I meant to say I mix tap and r/o together to get .3EC for my base starting water. It seems to keep my pH more stable than if I went with straight r/o plus a longer life membrane as a result.Damn you got some clean water dude mine rides between 0.6 - 0.7, hence why I'm looking at RO units
Dan1989 has been giving some solid coco advice. Look how dry the coco is in your picture below. It should never get that dry on the top. When you let coco dry out chasing nutrient def is like chasing phantoms. EC/ppm within the medium rises fast and pH either dips or rises causing havoc. The beauty and curse of coco is it holds plenty of oxygen at full saturation so it needs to be fed at least once a day with a consistent nutrient/pH dose. They can definitely come back through daily consistent feeds imo. How hard is your water anyway? and when you get an EC meter let us know the feed strength and what all you are adding.
I like to shoot for low dose nutrients and try to ride the build up and then taper off nutrients in the end weeks. Generally my solution comes at around 450-500ppm or .9-1.0EC at the peak and I ride that all the way through. My starting water is r/o and tap at 150ppm or .3EC
Dan has been very helpful! Thanks Dan! Big thumbs up!
Right then, back to the serious part. Today I bought a proper grow humidifier (£400) some cal/mag, a blue lab truncheon and some ph buffer. I got to work! First thing I did was calibrate my ph pen which was spot on anyway. I then mixed my normal feed up ( I ran out of shogun root booster so this wasn't included but normally would be, pretty sure the 1ml per litre of cal/mag they had which they normally wouldn't would make up the ppm's for the missing root booster if you know what I mean) so they had 1.5ml per litre of plagron coco A and 1.5ml per litre of coco B and 1ml per litre of cal/mag. PPM (TDS? This is the part I'm meant to be using isn't it? Not the 700?) was 600ppm and I ph'd at 5.8. I took the worst plant, the one with burns on the leaves and fed to a run off. The run off PH was 5.9 but the PPM was 1800! She was locked out. What has caused this? The first nute solution that I used to saturate the pots was 2ml per litre ( I know, school boy error thinking more is better ) but every other feed after that has been 1.5ml per litre, the same as the solution used in this one. So I flushed her through with 25 litres of the 600ppm feed till the run off was 700 ppm. Was this right to do? I was just using common sense. The medium is full of salt (1800 ppm!) so flushing through with a 600 ppm solution with eventually ( which it did ) make the coco sit at 600 ppm. Ph was 5.9 after I finished.
I then went for the biggest plant. Not as bad. 600ppm in, 1400 out. Ph was 6.1 on this girl though. Flushed through the same to 700 ppm and the ph of the run off finished on 6. Is this ok? Have I done everything right? I'm guessing if I just feed every day with the same ppm feed then it will stable. I will never let the pots dry out again.
I would appreciate yourself and Dans help here. Cheers lads!
Just flush them through with plain water not even ph'd water, you are physically removing salts. Wouldn't bother with light nute feed, you're not gonna leave the coco for long without feeding it. Then run back through with a feed of say 0.9 or 1 and go from there but I too like justiceman rarely need to go above 1.1 range. If you're feeding light and regular you will have no worries just find the nute strength it likes DAILY and ride with that. Other than that get reading on coco, I really can't think of anything else to say on it. Good luck
Thanks for the speedy reply. So just flush all the plants with normal 250ppm tap water ( that's what my water is. ) and don't ph the water? Is there any reason for this? In my thinking, the 250ppm tap water which contains minerals etc which are locked out with high or low ph levels? So I will still have lockout but with a ph problem and not a high ppm content? I know I will be wrong but it's just my thinking?
Well if it's full of salt the ph at the roots will go to shit anyway so I just give a flush with plain water straight out the tap and immediately run it through with the fresh nute solution. When applying the nutes after the salt flush is the only time I'd bother with runoff. The big reason I don't PERSONALLY ph the flush water for cleaning salt is because your nutes are best absorbed in the 5.8 range, so you'd be flushing out the good stuff, right? That's why you flush with ph'd water when you're getting ready to harvest, to start burning off the nutes. But you just wanna get rid of the hard stuff at the bottom of the pot
Ah ok! Thanks mate. I wouldn't be able to run it straight from the tap as it would be far too cold here. Thanks a lot for your help. I'll post a pic in a few days
Well I'm in UK too I just fill the bath a little with hot water, and sit my bucket of water in that while I'm mixing up and it should be near room temperature by the time you're done
You need to flush the 1800ppm out, it's a lot for a small plant. Just use plain 5.8ph water, and keep watering in stages depending on how many times your normally feed in 24 hours, you don't want to drown your plant, and water until your PPM's drop to around 350, that's 150 for your water and 200 of nuits.
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