Help! Many problems with coco (pics included)

[MrDank]

A year ago I began growing with Botanicare cocogrow, and had my best harvest ever. I fed the entire grow with Age Old nutrients, and a little Cal-mag plus and had spectacular results.

I then began to recylce my coco, and I also increased my cal-mag and I began having more problems than I could deal with. I completely scrapped my old coco and bought all new coco. My plants look awful, and I can't figure out what what is going on here

I will start out with a nice rooted clone. I will let them get their roots to the bottom of the cups under the flouro's before I move them.
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Once I transplant them into a 1-gallon container, .I will continue feeding the same solution After being under the 400w MH for a few days, sometimes they look like this. And sometimes they will stay nice and healthy. Even if it's the same strain, sometimes one will go band and the other won't go bad. This is what will happen. Sometimes is more severe than others. The 3rd pic is of a Green Crack clone that was real nice and healthy, and as soon as I transplanted her, she got light green and got spots
IMG_1200_5_1.JPG IMG_1192_5_1.JPG IMG_1183_5_1.JPG

 

[MrDank]

Sometimes I will have a healthy 10" plant, and all of a sudden, the next day I find the top curling down and she has turned pale up top

 

[MrDank]

sometimes i get severe upwards curling like these

 

[shaunmulok]

Hey Mr. Dank the last 2 pics looks like heat stress with a bit of over fert.
What ph are you at?
I would fill out the sticky in the cannabis infirmary and post there
need more info
what e.c?
p.h.?
Temps?

 

[MrDank]

my environment is just fine. My temps are never over 80 and I feed at 5.9 ph. Since I feed with Age Old, the EC is really low since there are hardly any salts.

I know the bottoms of those last 2 pics are burn from too much cal-mag. I have cut the cal-mag down and I no longer get those bad burns anymore

 

[shaunmulok]

Have you tested the runoff to check the e.c and p.h coming out, they might need a flush

 

[MrDank]

yeah but I have always read that botanicare coco doesn't need rinsed. This is happening to new coco.

 

[simple green]

There's a thread around now about "overwatering coco" and it seems a lot of coco folks find coco can be overwatered when a fresh cutting hasn't filled in a cup or a fresh transplant hasn't fully rooted in it's new home.....

Not sure if this is it or not, just something to consider...I've had problems (especially this summer with too much humidity) due to keeping the medium too wet before roots are well established in their new homes....Some of my plants looked like yours...

A little hygrozyme and keeping the coco only half moist (letting dry out slightly) until roots were well established in pot brought my plants back pretty quickly.... treating it almost like a soil transplant for a little while...

Then once roots are well established they're fine with the coco being watered frequently...

Not sure if this is your issue, just something to consider....

 

[Cabri]

Say P-E-R-L-I-T-E 10-30%.

 

[chemsteady]

hmmm

hmmm

well add the perlite only if you want to water more frequently. it will most certainly add more air to your mix, but at the same time it will force you to have to water way more often once the plant has an established root system. this is fine if youre on drippers (coco mixes work best with constant irrigation in my experience) but if youre hand watering, it can kinda be a hassle.

mr dank, something that stuck out in your original post was when you said that after starting your next grow (after the successful first one, congrats!) you increased the cal-mag. why? im not sure why you would change the formula if you had success. i can only assume that you were having cal/mag def. if not, then im not even sure why youre using the cal mag in the first place. it seems as though you ve figured this out already, having cut the cal mag in half, right? a better question to ask is why use a nutrient mix that forces you to have to use additional supplements to balance your feed? im sure you have your reasons, i just wonder is all. another thing, try raising the ph a little if youre getting def. some times nutrients are more readily accessible at higher ph levels.

keep it simple mr dank. everyone always thinks "it the nutes!", but often its something a lot more obvious...say like over watering, too much cal/mag, or a light thats too close for newly introduced clones. this is what your plants are saying to you, from what i can see in your pictures at least.
-c

 

[Dhude]

Had similar issues with a batch of coco that was supposed to be pre-treated and ready to go right out of the packaging. I didn't treat it or soak in cal mag solution or anything, just hydrated with tapwater and put the clones in.

When the problems started, much like yours, Flushed it very well, lowered my nutes concentration (mine was also showing N tox) and that seems to have solved it. My current feeding sched is 1/day using GH flora series at 2ml/gal micro, 3ml/gal bloom and enough pH down (2ml/gal) to put me at 6.0. Water to 10% runoff. Super healthy and uniformly green now. Note that I am in an arid climate and always run leaner nute mixes than most people due to that.

Started some herb plants (basils, etc) at the same time in same batch of coco. Seeing problems in them also, looks like Cal def, although harder to diagnose on basil seedlings since I don't have much background growing it. It's a tad harder to flush (not really harder, just takes longer) since I have to do bottom-feed on the herb plants...top feeding the seedlings just knocks them down/over and kills a lot of them, their young root structure is minimal and fragile.

 

[Solidopc]

I mix my coco with perlite and hand water. In peak flowering, a 3 foot plant in a 12litre pot needs 2-3litres every 48hours. Goes about 3-4 days either side of that. I only grow around 5 flowering plants at a time mind, so i dont find it too much work.

I see you adjust your ph to 5.9. I allways go lower than this and have good results. I'm happy with anything from 5.7-5.85. 5.8 is supposed to be the best ph, and a .1 increase is 100times more or less acidic, so it could have an affect. The coco i buy says it has a ph of 6.0 before use, this is canna or biobizz coco though, not botanicare. If yours is the same, perhaps the ph is a little high for uptake of some nutrients. Just a guess really.

Other than that, the overwatering thing is an issue as someone mentioned when the roots dont fill the pots. I had a bit of a funky one when i was too lazy to do repots, and put germed seeds right into 12litre pots of coco and perlite. Thehy grew fine at first, but the coco wouldn't dry out, and they wanted a strongfer feed, and i had to overwater to give it to them. They developed spots and went pale like you say. Good news is, they came back well after they got bigger.

With coco you can let the plant grow larger than usual in a smaller pot. Until it has a very heatlhy large rootball, then when you repot, you can eother score the bottom gently with a razor, or loosen the bottom roots so that they are going downwards. Both these should promote the roots to grow more quickly.

Edit: does your coco come in bricks? Just seen someone else who uses botanicare coco bricks and he says he allways flushes them well before use. Just a thought.

 

[dontae1000]

i think your doing just to much of a good thing, cut back on the food and water, esp food. u should be back on track soon after that-

 

[Guest 18340]

Say P-E-R-L-I-T-E 10-30%.

Will only cause him to have to water more often.

 

[~fvk~]

Gotta agree with heat stress for sure on the third set of pics... How far away is your light man?

All of your plants look recently fed but a lot of them look underwatered, and look deficient or overtoxed because of it. The fans look pretty dry and I also see the claw. The claw/ram's horn usually happens when there isn't enough moisture in your coco and the plant gets burnt to hell on nitrogen, hence the clawing of the leaves and dark green color. It also inhibits the transpiration rate... The ones that are lighter probably have the same problem, just less N in them or at least more uptake of it considering their size... Giving you rootbound like affects.

Throw in a minor cal deficiency on the clawed plant, but it doesn't seem to be too much of a problem with the others. I think maybe some post mortem magnesium deficiency too...? I remember the yellowing of the edges but it's been a minute since I've seen it.

You should try GH Flora nutes with Head's formula, or any other nutes designed for coco like Canna or CNS17. I think you'd be stoked with the results. Otherwise I'd try plain watering in between feedings with a small amount of something containing cal/mag (not too much if you're using it from the bottle) along with less nutes on the smaller plants. I used to use Earth Juice in coco after using promix for a year and I just couldn't dial the shit in like I wanted to. When I started getting the hang of it, I had results like yours. Other people seem to really good at it though. Organics are most generally used once a week, and they don't flush out like chem nutes do, so if you're underwatering, yeah burn or deficiency dude.

Don't take my word for it though, seriously.

 

[Legalmeduser]

Hey MrD. Please contact MSM.

 

[MrDank]

Thanks for the tips everybody. I definitely think I am overwatering and over-feeding

Legalmeduser - why, what's up?

 

[Legalmeduser]

He picked up some new genetics you might want.

 

[CuZZn BooBerry]

I prefer the bcuzz coco and and always use new coco for each grow. I think the cost is more than worth it vs the hassle of washing out old stuff.

bcuzz + nutes + h2o + light = BIG AZZ BUDS

 

[turgor]

MrDank, what was the verdict on this original thread? I am 5 weeks veg with the Golden Goat I'm using canna coco and the full line humboldt master a/b. i repotted from 1 gals to 5 gals, moved from mh to hps. 3 days later i am seeing "ram's horn" curling, leaves folding up, weird-ass crinkling...WTF?! any ideas? i was talking to you in the store last week about weird leaf deformities on the golden goat...any help is much appreciated!