Having some Coco issues

Guest · Mar 9, 2007

Hey guys!

I am about 3.5 weeks into my first grow. I've got 8 Spice of Life Adventure mix babies, 5 of Master Thai's Heavenly (c99 x Romulan) and 4 of Brownpants's Very Berry Surprise x Bubblegum. The day before yesterday some of my plants started to get sick, so instead of my usual feeding last night, I flushed them. Today they look like hell, so I am not too sure what's going on..

Here's my specs first off. Plants are in 2 parts canna coco to 1 part coarse perlite. I have half of them in square 1/2 gallon pots and the other half in 1 gallon pots. I have been watering once nightly to runoff in the 15% range. I have been feeding them the following per liter, 1 ml each of Canna A and B, 1.5-2 ml of Rhizo and in the last 10 days 2 ml of Canna zym. I normally mix about 8 litres of nutes each night, so 8 ml of A and B, 15 ml or so of Rhizo and 15-20 ml of Canna zym. I PH to 6.0-6.2. I do not check my EC currently as my EC meter got submarine'd and has not been replaced, I have been feeding at this strength for almost 2 weeks now. I mix nutes with my tap water which has a PPM of about 80 from the tap. I foilar feed once a day usually when I am watering with a very mild liquid karma spray. I suspected that my PH meter was not working at first, so I cleaned the electrode, calibrated and put in fresh batteries. I water with just Cannazym once a week to a little more run off than normal just to clear out any built up salts.

About 3 nights ago I moved all the plants from my veg area which is about 400W of mixed spectrum flouro's, to my late veg/flower cabinet which is a 600W hps. Temps in both areas have been 76-80 F and the RH varies from 45-55%. Problems started after the move, the HPS was kept at least 30" from plant tops.

Here are some pics courtesy of my lovely wife:

I am really impressed overall with the coco so far, it is an amazing growing medium. If anyone has any advice on this please get back to me, thanks guys!

Guest · Mar 9, 2007

Well to me they look; over watered, and underfed.

I've never grown in any thing but Coco, but the PH levels are vital..
And I stand to be corrected, by those with more experience.

check out the Canna web site.

Peace an stuff.

Dalton · Mar 9, 2007

Hey supernuck, I think the foliar spray might be your problem. are you spraying during lights on..under the 600 watt bulb?

-VT- · Mar 9, 2007

Those plants look burned and locked out to me....I'd PH flush 2x a day for a day or two ...I did for two days when I burned my plants in my current grow...and it saved most of my plants....almost lost my GDP

good luck

Ono Nadagin · Mar 9, 2007

I would say fix your meter 1st and then the problem should fix itself after a flush of just pH'd water.... after a day or so then feed with ferts.

It looks like PH or lockout to me

Guest · Mar 9, 2007

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Based on your cumulative advice I will flush them today and tommorow with water ph'd below 6.0 and then begin feeding again.

A question about feeding though, I will be without a way of measuring EC for a couple weeks (the wife and I just spent the bulk of our free $$$ clearing up some debt to get a mortgage). Is there a guide/chart somewhere that can give me kind of a baseline idea of what my EC is going to be like based on the amount of A and B I am using? My tapwater is about 80 ppm to start and I have not been using anymore than 1 ml of A/B each per litre. Plants are very very well rooted in their pots (I could not believe the root growth at first, blew me away) and vary from 6-9 inches in height. I wonder if I am under feeding them? I have underfed in the past on my last grow, up until I started growing again this fall I had only ever used 100% organic soil mixes and really on water'd with plain tap water. I am possibly over cautious with my use of nutrients. Anyways, I will flush, cut out the foilar feeding for now and start nutrients again this weekend. Thanks again :wave:

Guest · Mar 9, 2007

Low the ph to 5,6 for some time, in order to increase Ca uptake. Flushing with a Epsom salt solution will help in reducing the Ca content in the coco, wich anyway is difficult to ride off once its fixed in the medium. Once the problem solved, you can use higher ph. If you want to run a fixed ph, 5,8 works better than 6 for coco, in my experience. Anyway, what ive found to work best to avoid Ca/Mg deff is alternate 5,6 and 6 ph waterings.

jesus! why would you flush with epsom salts in your coco!? and since when is running coco over pH 6 too high?

aeric · Mar 9, 2007

I was going to say lay off the foliar feeding...knna knows his shit so do whatever he says lol...and they probably need more nutes. The tapwater is not your problem IMO, sounds very good infact. My typical feedng rate at that stage u have them in is a steady 7-8 ml/gal (double yours = roughly 2ml per L) and my tap ppm is a bit higher.

Your lovely wife takes lovely pics.

Caligrown · Mar 9, 2007

knna said:
I believe you are overwatering, at first. Second, i dont like foliar feed evryday at all. In my experience, it gives you more problems than benefits, and anyway, it isnt required.

But the sign in the leaves arnt directly caused by that, but but for too high ph. You have a typical Cal/mg deff (of both), caused by running ph over 6, leading to Ca accumulating in the coco, and displacing Mg, thus the Cal/mg deff.

Low the ph to 5,6 for some time, in order to increase Ca uptake. Flushing with a Epsom salt solution will help in reducing the Ca content in the coco, wich anyway is difficult to ride off once its fixed in the medium. Once the problem solved, you can use higher ph. If you want to run a fixed ph, 5,8 works better than 6 for coco, in my experience. Anyway, what ive found to work best to avoid Ca/Mg deff is alternate 5,6 and 6 ph waterings.

Cannazym works greats, but it dont fight salts build up, as many people seems to believe. Runoff either. Salts build up refers to a bad balance in the coco between cations (Ca, Mg, K) fixed in it.

KNNA, What ratio do you recommend for the epsom flush? This stuff is confusing because coco is supposed to be inert....

BlueHaze · Mar 9, 2007

don't use esalt in coco. You having ph problem. try to get a ph pen the fastest you can or calibrate the one you have and flush and flush. Don't add any salt. Very wrong advise.

Guest · Mar 10, 2007

okeedokee =]

gaiusmarius · Mar 11, 2007

don't flush with epsom salts or cal mag. the whole point of a flush is that it's done with water at the correct ph, after you flush out the medium, you can add a dose of cal mag. i don't recommend using epsom salts. have seen it go wrong too many times in coco.

another good point was made about the spraying. once a day is too much. but even worse is spraying with the grow lights on, as it will cause burns on your leaves pretty much like you have.

the other thing is the ph point. how sure are you of your ph meter? using a ph of around 5.7 to 5.9 works great. if your ph isn't right, then nothing else can be right.

canna coco A+B approximate ml to ec ratios (with tap ec at 0.3):

1ml A+B per lt. = ec 0.8 to 0.9
1.5 ml " " " = ec 1.1 to 1.2
2ml = ec 1.4 to 1.5
2.5ml = ec 1.7 to 1.8
3ml = ec 2.0 to 2.1

i think you can safely move to 1.5ml per lt. or even 2ml a lt.

20kw dreams · Mar 11, 2007

lol...poor guy just wanted to know wtf was wrong with his plant..

coco's cec is lower then peat by the way. So basically there are no special rules which apply to coco other then it having high K, and perhaps Na if it was near a saltwater source.

Epsom is a bad idea.

The pour thru method works great to determine the EC of your medium. Search pour-thru method on the internet to get the values your looking for. I don't remember them off hand..

Anyways, I agree with the whole too much foliar thing. PH as well. looks to me just like the cal-mag lockout prob I was having. Prob the Liquid Karma though frying your plants.

gaiusmarius · Mar 11, 2007

knna old chap, the point of this site is that cannabis growers can meet up and document what works for them. now a lot of the growers here have started newly with coco and they need basic advice which will solve the problem without causing more problems.

you say you are tiered of hearing the same solutions, well my friend i have a surprise for you, coco growing is very simple and the problems are always the same ones, hence the same solution applies. note, that you don't see me telling people to add fucken epsom salts in their coco. i don't even use calmag, my plants are never low on any nutes. which is why i never recommend either of them. but if a grower feels he needs to, then calmag is the one to use. what use is it to a new grower to be told about the cec in coco? the guy has a problem so he gets given the solution. why should it be made complicated, when it can be explained simply?

when you tell a guy to flush with e salts, that's dangerous advise. my advise is always gonna be beneficial for both medium and plants, because i only advise things that i have done which worked. one should always flush the medium with plain ph'ed water. then add a dose of what ever one feels is needed. flushing with a certain ingredient like e salts will cause a huge over load of e salts.

this is a weed we are growing, it's not complicated or difficult, so why should i try and make that impression. later on when a new grower is getting his yields with coco, he can read more advanced stuff on how and why it all works. in fact i encourage you to start a thread called; "the scientific side to coco growing" or some thing like that. there we can all discuss the scientific side of coco growing in detail.

:wave:

Guest · Mar 14, 2007

First of all, thank you everyone for all your advice, however brief or indepth it was. I read through all of it and copied most of it into my 'save this info' notes for future reference.

I decided to throw caution to the wind, and feed everyone about 50% more than I had been feeding, with very small amounts of cal-mag added to the standard a+b, rhizo and Czym. After a few days of this everyone had stopped showing signs of additional damage and new growth has started and all appears to be nice and healthy.

Plants have started showing sex with all the stress they went through so I am slowly giving all the boys the axe. I have been unable to get to the thread lately as we have had some very serious family issues to deal with and the small amount of free time I have had has been spent in the basement with my plants.

I'm going to veg everyone for about 2 more weeks and have germinated some ak97, deep warp and hashberry to take their place in my veg'ing spot. Thanks again for all the help :wave:

SilverSurfer_OG · Mar 14, 2007

Hey guys, lots of good advice here :yes:

Very interesting about the P and K being absorbed and released by the coir...

Epsom salts are no longer part of my feeding schedule as i had problems last grow with them... having said that i would be happy to use them for a one off dose of mg.

My grow shops dont stock cal/mag but i use dolomite lime in my medium and this has worked well so far.

:smoweed:

gws35 · Mar 14, 2007

Would try to keep it simple...its just a weed after all and would probably thrive in a crack in the sidewalk it left on its own.

As others have said I wouldnt over do it, sometimes less is more...take it slow and dont do too much at once. First thing Id do is ck your PH, (probably whats wrong) very important cause if your ph is off nothing else will help. If its off correct it first thing.

I wouldnt foliar feed em anymore, more problems than anything else....also be careful not to over water, once every few days at most. You want the top of the soil to dry out before watering again..if they need more theyll tell you (theyll start to droop, then perk back up an hr after you water em)

ferts, wouldnt over do it either....better to go easy on em... they look nice and green, no yellowing, no burnt tips... it looks like youre doing fine with that...

I see youve started some AK97, Im sure theyrd be a lot of interest ( I know i am) in them as it looks like youre the first to grow em out......would you consider doing a seperate thread on em? :lurk:

Guest · Mar 14, 2007

gws35 said:
....also be careful not to over water, once every few days at most. You want the top of the soil to dry out before watering again..if they need more theyll tell you (theyll start to droop, then perk back up an hr after you water em)

Don't wanna sound ignorant dude...but thats bad advice in coco. You start letting it dry out like a peat or soil based medium, and your askin for trouble. If your plant has an established root system...then you can't overwater, unless you don't have drain holes. The more you water coco...the more the plant grows. I water mine 4 times a day. When I first started using coco...I would treat it like a regular soiless medium, and use the lift method...what a mistake.

Cheers,
SH

gws35 · Mar 14, 2007

No need to make things more complicated than it needs to be....being that its his first grow things should be kept simple and straightfoward..... a general guideline is what I gave him......less things to f*uck up eh?

If you reread my post youll see I mentioned letting SOIL dry between waterings...nothing about coco... as i mentioned its probably the PH thats causing his problems...he needs to ck his ph first and correct it if its off...

gaiusmarius · Mar 14, 2007

yes but this is the coco section and the thread starter is growing in coco.

Hey SuperNuck

glad to hear your plants are back on track man, good job sifting through and understanding what applied to your grow.

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