Seedlings not doing good in hempy buckets under LED

[thizzness]

I am having a terrible time getting my autoflower seedlings to grow. I started 4 of the seeds in plugs and transferred them to a 3 gallon hempy tub once they sprouted up. However, they immediately showed signs of overwatering (really bad downward curling/rams horn), so I transferred those seedlings to individual 16 oz cups. They still haven't shown any recovery from their curling problem. Also, I stupidly gave them a really low dose of FF Grow Big (1/8 tsp/gal), but realized my mistake and flushed with tap water the next day. I haven't used any nutes since. What really confuses me then is that the seedlings are now beginning to turn really yellow, even though I haven't given them nutes for 2 weeks and have flushed multiple times since.

In addition to the 4 seedlings that have been tortured by my terrible gardening, I have 3 that I started about a week later. These have never been given any nutes. But they are showing the same stalled growth as my other plants.

Also, it's probably important to note that I'm growing under 126w LED. If any of you can take any guesses at what my problem might be, I would really appreciate it.

How long has this problem been going on? around 2-3 weeks
Are you growing in a PVC grow tent? (example: Hydrohut or any other non brand tents) no
What system are you running? (DWC? Ebb flow? Aero? Water Farm? Flood Tables? and so on...) Hempy
What STRAIN are you growing? Autoflower Himalaya Blue Diesel
What was the establishing technique? (Were the seed or clone?) seed
What is the age of your plants? Four of them are at 3 weeks and the others are at 2 weeks
How long have they been in there mixture they are in now?(coco,soiless etc..) 1 week
How tall are the plants? 1 inch
What PHASE are the plants in? (seedling, vegetative or flower) are the plants in? seedling
What Technique are you using?
What substrate/medium are you using?(Hydroton, RockWool etc.) Perlite
What is the Water temperature? ~60 F
What color are your roots? White? Brown? Are your roots slimy? White
What Nutrient's are you using?(If growing soiless) I used Fox Farms Grow Big on the older seedlings at a really low dose (1/8 tsp/gal), but switched back to tap water only
How much of each nutrient are you using with how much water? *Knowing the brand is very helpful*
How often are you feeding? (If using soiless) Watering every 2 days or so
How often are you giving nutrients? (If using soiless)
If flowering, when did you switch over to using Bloom nutrients?
What order are you mixing your nutrients? (example: veg nutes 1st, bloom 2nd ect)
What is the TDS/EC/PPM you are using?
What is the pH of the "Tank"? Water has a pH of 6.0-6.4
Are you sure your calibration is correct on your equiptment?
When was your last watering? Yesterday
What is your water temps? ~60 F
When was your last feeding change? (ie. grow-bloom-micro-additional)
How often do you clean your system: example: Flush out water replace with clean water and nutrients?
What size bulb are you using? 126 W LED
What is the distance to the canopy? 8"
What is your RH Factor(Relative Humidity)? 28% max
What is the canopy temperature? Usually mid-70s, but sometimes as low as 65, lights on
What is the Day/Night Temp? (Include flucutaion range) Same as day usually since lights are 24/7
What is the current Air Flow? (cfm etc.) Good enough
Tell us about your ventilation, intake exhaust and when its running and not running ? 2x 120mm fans running constantly
Is the fan blowing directly at plants? No
Is your water HARD or SOFT?
What water are you using? Reverse Osmosis (RO)? Tap? Bottled? Well water? Distilled? Mineral Water? I have been using tap water, but recently switched to distilled to see if that improves anything.
Are you using water from a water softener? No
Has plant been recently pruned, cloned off of or pinched
Have any pest chemicals been used? If so, What and When? No
Are plant's infected with pest's? No

Here are some pictures. First pic is one of the older, more stressed seedlings. Second is one of the younger, greener but still stalled seedlings. Third pic is of all the plants as a reference to their size.

 

[stoney917]

not lookin to good u should try to raise ur temps and humidity at this stage they like it to be about 80-84 65 is nogood for babies and 50+ humidity also no nutes till 2nd set of leaves move ur light closer i put my led 3in from the tops and water only when ness
dont let it dry out completely best of luck also blue strains do not like nutes in full flower i only feed myne 900ppms
my bb plant

i also read that it is not good to transfer autos i think mdanzig said to start them in a 5l pot and let them finish there theres alot of info u need to read just look around on here youll find everything u need to grow em out healthy
peace stone

 

[bennyweed]

It is hard to tell, I have thrown seeds into dirt, came back weeks later to discover a healthy plant. No plan intended.
If I had to guess I would say it is the opposite of what your saying. Since your using hempy, you have a little water at the bottom. Since you started from seeds, the roots are not long enough to reach the water at the bottom, just to small. You are only watering once every two days and using 100% perlite so there really is no water retention and the small tap roots will dry out until they reach the resv at the bottom. I would say start by hand everyday with pure h20 until your roots reach the resv. at the bottom. Otherwise they will dry up which looks like what is happening.

Also your fans are blowing directly at your plants. Thats good for mature plants but little babies dont like that. They need moisture and your plants clearly indicate a lack there of. The yellow could be do to a pH problem instigated by your tap water.

 

[MynameStitch]

Benny is right on about the problem, not to mention since your pH of your water is low your water sounds like it may be very soft, using distilled water will only cause more of your problem to worsen, seedlings need micros in the water to help them grow, when you grow in perlite has no retention like benny said. You should have used a different medium until they were a proper size then put them into the hempy buckets.

THe yellowing is due to delayed rooting and using up food too fast, because they have no established root system.

Why are you pH adjusting your water if it's low already?

Stoney has a good point too; cold temps cause the plant to slow down it's growth and it's metabolism; this is terrible for the size of the seedling you got bring the temps up like stoney has stated.

peat pellet or rapid rooters

which one of those are you using right now? Which medium are you using for the seedling right now?

 

[thizzness]

Thanks a lot for the input everyone.

Let me explain a bit more about the water issue. I had been using tap water with a pretty high pH (around 8ish), so I adjusted it down to around 6.2. The yellowing started when I was doing this. I only started using distilled a few days ago, which didn't need any pH adjustment.

I have started to spray the seedlings with water in an attempt to increase humidity. There is no fan blowing directly onto the plants, only the exhaust fan, which I have turned down to increase the cab temp to mid-80s.

As for medium, 4 of the plants are in peat plugs and the other 3 are in rockwool. The 4 in peat are the ones turning yellow.

One question though, concerning watering: why are the seedling leaves still curling down a lot if there is a lack of water? I was originally told that all forms of rams horn is a sign of overwatering. But regardless I'll start watering daily and see how that works.

 

[thizzness]

Also I forgot to ask, but what should I use instead of distilled water? I don't really want to use my tap water cause its seemed sketchy lately.

 

[MynameStitch]

Your pH adjusting is what is causing this problem, I grown in both peat pucks and rockwool cubes.

Just water with the pucks will be sufficent, no pH adjusting just use plain tap water sat out.

DOn't worry about the pH right now, worry about that after they get a nice root system going and the cotyldons are gone.

Hopefully now they will recover.... now that the cotyldons are gone...... even though they are young you may in the end have to use an extremely weak amount of food for them, they used up stored nutes, because they were taking too long to root; the plant is supposed to have 2 sets of leaves at least and some root hairs by now to where they can start feeding themselves from the roots.

with the peat pucks you don't need to water everyday; that is only when they get big enough where roots are hanging down do you need to do so since your growing in hempy buckets.

 

[thizzness]

Thanks for the advice. I've still seen very little change, except that a couple little girls are growing pistils! Unfortunately, the plants are still only an inch tall so whatever buds they grow will be small as fuck.

Today I transplanted 5 of the plants into a 3 gallon hempy tub. All of the plants have a decent set of roots, with the taproot plenty long enough to reach the bottom, so they should be fine in the tub now. I also fed them with 1/2 dose of veg and flower nutes since most cotyledons have shriveled off by now.

But I'm still confused as to what exactly is causing this stunting. pH doesn't seem to be the problem, as I have tried non-adjusted tap water, pH adjusted tap water (6.2 pH), and distilled water. None of these have shown any signs of affecting growth. I have also been foliar spraying in an attempt to increase the humidity, though no change has occurred from this either. But I will continue to spray. Most importantly, the physical signs of the plants, extreme downward leaf curling and extreme yellowing of leaves, are still rampant. The leaf curling is the most confusing to me. This doesn't seem to be an issue with overwatering or underwatering, as I have tried watering daily or watering only a couple times a week, and neither has caused the curling to stop. So this has led me to think that maybe this is a temperature or light issue. So today I put the plants in the windowsill and am more carefully monitoring and controlling the temperature. Hopefully natural sunlight and a steady temperature will perk these things up. Otherwise, I am completely stupefied as to why these wont grow! More input and suggestions are very welcome!

 

[MynameStitch]

not all strains can handy every system, this is one thing that has a lot to do with it; another thing is, the seedling may have been a dud, there are a lot that can grow a certain amount and stop; I have no other answer to as of why they do this, except that has to do with the stability of the strain.seeds

Which plants are showing pistils? Seedlings??

DO you have updated photos of the plants you are talking about now?

 

[GrnMtnGrwr]

Which plants are showing pistils? Seedlings??

DO you have updated photos of the plants you are talking about now?

Ditto on that question, and I'd love to see some updated pics too, that would be very helpful.



Your temperatures and humidity may not be optimal, but they're not causing your problem. The seedlings pictured below have been in a 65-75 degree environment, with an average RH of about 30%. It goes up to 40-45% for a brief period following their watering, but that's it.

Just to give you an idea of a time frame, these seeds were put into moist paper towels about 8 days ago. 2 days after that, they had all cracked and their taproots were all well exposed. I put them into coco, and here they are, 6 days later.



The only thing they've been watered with is 1/4 strength veg solution. Coco is basically inert, so I like there to be something there for them. Full strength veg isn't a strong feeding at all, so 1/4 strength is pretty minimal. If you're growing in an inert medium, like perlite, I would definitely have something in the water, even if it's just whatever minerals are in your tap water.

If you're having problems then I would cut out the foliar treatment, you need to keep it as simple as possible until you identify what is wrong. Growing in coco, I shoot for the low end on a 5.5 - 6.0 ph scale.

The only experience I have with Hempy Buckets is with a layer of perlite as thick as a full "reservoir" at the bottom of the container, and the rest pure coco on top. If the coco was drying out at all, then the reservoir was empty.

I'm not sure exactly how good the wicking properties of pure perlite are, but I know I've used wick cloners with nothing but perlite successfully. I would think that would be enough to grow a root system.

Most of my growing problems were with seedlings that looked like this, and I had issues until I switched from soil to coco and kept PH in the range mentioned.

When your plants are this small, the best way to do that is just by the feel of the medium, and with coco, how it looks. The picture above shows the difference between wet and dry. When the coco starts to dry out in the starter cells with plants in them, it's time for more water.

I would suggest not bothering with any sort of Hempy Buckets until you have a healthy, established seedling. Figure out the right PH for your medium, get to know what the right moistness of the medium looks/feels like. Until the plant has a few sets of leaves, let the medium dry out a little bit to encourage the roots system to search out water.

 

[moonie]

you shouldnt transplant a seedling into a 3 gallon pot and then back into a 16 oz cup, that shocked it right there, seedling to 16 oz to 1 gallon to 3 gallon. And you said they're autoflower strains so expect slower smaller plants, you're not gonna get a 5 foot plant, more like 15 inches