♥ 24 days veg, first aero grow, problem

bio1 · Nov 2, 2011

hey there,

so growth has really started to kick in lately. this is my first aero grow, but i have some soil grows under my belt (im impressed how fast they grow in aero..). i made a mistake in the beginning - i started feeding them too early but backed off the pps as soon as i saw it.

im using lucas formula, and kept the solution @ 300-450 ppm so far. ph is between 5.8 and 6.2.

i started from seed.

14 days old:

21 days old:

24 days old (today):

now i thought it was time to higher the ppm to 500, which i did yesterday. today this attracted my attention:

what could this be? a phosphorus def? what to do

thanks guys

FreezerBoy · Nov 2, 2011

pH is a bit high. 5.5-6.0 is closer to the norm with many suggesting a low point of 5.2.

You can over feed in aero but you can't start feeding too soon. Soil growers get away with not adding food at the start because soil IS food. Soil growers are feeding whether they feed or not. Aero is inert. Withholding food in aero is simply starving the baby.

Are EC and pH moving in opposite directions? If not, that's a problem. If they are, they're doing their job correctly. Now we just need to get them to swing on the time table of your choosing. What have they done over the last week?

EC up, pH down is too rich
EC down, pH up is too lean
EC flat, pH flat looks good on paper but needs to be avoided. No one pH number allows absorption of all nutes so flat readings guarantee unbalanced feeding and can lead to toxicity or deficiencies or both. You want pH (and thus EC as well) to swing.

bio1 · Nov 2, 2011

first of all: thanks for taking some time to reply!

FreezerBoy said:
pH is a bit high. 5.5-6.0 is closer to the norm with many suggesting a low point of 5.2.

alright, gonna use a lower ph from now on.

FreezerBoy said:
You can over feed in aero but you can't start feeding too soon. Soil growers get away with not adding food at the start because soil IS food. Soil growers are feeding whether they feed or not. Aero is inert. Withholding food in aero is simply starving the baby.

thats what i thought, so i just started feeding them right away. my mistake was to start with too much i guess

FreezerBoy said:
Are EC and pH moving in opposite directions? If not, that's a problem. If they are, they're doing their job correctly. Now we just need to get them to swing on the time table of your choosing. What have they done over the last week?

EC up, pH down is too rich
EC down, pH up is too lean
EC flat, pH flat looks good on paper but needs to be avoided. No one pH number allows absorption of all nutes so flat readings guarantee unbalanced feeding and can lead to toxicity or deficiencies or both. You want pH (and thus EC as well) to swing.

i always measured in ppm so far. i just checked ec and its @ 0.711.

i wanted to have them really flat. i would check in the morning and before i go to bed and set them to 5.8-6.2ph and my chosen ppm e.g. 400.

however, my ph needed some (so far) unusual readjusting. once it was at like 6.5 and once it was way below, like 4.8. i thought it could be caused by my ph meter but wasnt, i configured it and it read the same pH as before.
the last few days the ppm (and hence the ec) was dropping. thats why i decided to rise it from 350-400ppm to 500!

a few hours ago ph was @ 5.95 and now is at 6.05. ppm decreased from 500 to 470. so its too lean?

a new picture i just took:

the slighty smaller plant, however, isnt affected by this so far.

/e what kind of ec would you recommend at this stage?

Ultra Current · Nov 2, 2011

I would advise you to keep your pH between 5.8 and 6.2. It is too dangerous for you to go lower. If you stay below 5.8 for too long you can have magnesium lockouts and calcium lockouts. I like where your EC is at. That swing that you had that went to 4.8 was bad. What I would like you to do is check your roots and report back and I'll continue to help you get this sorted out. What strain are you growing? Also I think that you may be getting ppm confused with TDS. Ppm is EC x 700 and TDS is EC x 500. I got a bad feeing that you may be in the beginning stages of root rot but check the roots and make sure they are white and have no slime or brown tips. If they are all good then give me a list of the exact nutes that you are giving and how much per gallon. Trust me you have no deficiencies, when you went to 4.8, you locked out many nutes. I'll wait for the reply.

FreezerBoy · Nov 2, 2011

Ultra Current said:
I would advise you to keep your pH between 5.8 and 6.2. It is too dangerous for you to go lower. If you stay below 5.8 for too long you can have magnesium lockouts and calcium lockouts.

5.8 is probably the worst point for Magnesium absorption. Allowing pH to drift to 5.2 increases uptake of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium... well all of them actually. 6.2 can decrease uptake of Calcium, Phosphorous, Iron, Manganese, Boron, Zinc and Copper. 5.8-6.2 is a range more suitable to soil than hydro/aero

bio1 said:
i always measured in ppm so far. i just checked ec and its @ 0.711.

Actually you haven't measured PPM. You don't have the equipment. What you have is "PPM". Note the quotes. What you measured was EC. Your pen just hides the answer and replaces it with babel. "PPM" and "TDS" are EC times any one of nearly a dozen different conversions. Hanna alone uses 4 different conversions. My 900 "PPM" may well be a weaker solution than your 500 "PPM", it may be stronger, it may be identical. Who knows? It's a mystery that is only solved by reconverting back to EC. "PPM" and "TDS" only have meaning to the individual who measured it. EC is EC to everyone, all over the world.

That said, plants are illiterate. They don't care that "PPM" and "TDS" are babel. If you can track numbers up and down, you're golden.

EC down, pH up is too lean and here's why. Water is an insulator, it does not conduct electricity. Its the stuff in the water (aka nutes) that conduct electricity. The more nutes, the higher the EC. Because nutes are acidic, the higher the EC the lower the pH. Your plants are drinking water and leaving food behind ("Grandma, I love you and your pot roast but, I'm stuffed. I just can't eat anymore. Please, could I have some water to wash it down?") This leaves more food in less water. More food means higher EC. Higher EC means lower pH.

What should your EC be? Only your plants know. I recently moved. Water went from 0.5 EC to less than 0.1. What years of experience and journal keeping told me was "proper" feed levels were now killing everything. I'm now feeding near double what I used to feed. It may be my old formula is right for you, or my new one, or neither. Your plants know and they'll tell you through EC and pH readings.

Ultra Current · Nov 2, 2011

Freezer boy I respectfully disagree with your pH levels and your chart that you posted. I respect you as a grower so don't take my comments the wrong way. You told him to stay at your pH range for a time of his choosing which is not good. You should never be below 5.8 for more than 3 days. Magnesium locks out at 5.7 and below but you usually won't see it if your pH gets above 5.7 after a few days. 5.8 is the perfect Place to be at to absorb everything but you get less of some nuts if you stay there but there is still plenty for the plant to be happy. Like I said I respect you but I disagree. There's plenty of other charts that are very different from the one that you posted. Here's a quote taken from mynameisstitch from the sticky in the the common sense of the infirmary.

"Magnesium gets locked out of Hydro and Soil less Mediums at ph levels of 2.0-5.7
Magnesium is absorbed best in Hydro and Soil less Mediums at ph levels of 5.8-9.1"

FreezerBoy · Nov 2, 2011

Well then I have to respectfully disagree with you. A flat reading at any number guarantees unbalanced feeding. 5.8 remains the worst spot for mag absorption. 5.3 allows as much mag as 6.3 (certainly more than 5.8)

When running pH at your levels I had wide spread mag deficiencies that I treated with heaping teaspoons of MgSO4. Once I adjusted pH to proper hydro range, tap water alone was enough to supply all the Mg I needed and I could drop the MgSO4.

socialist · Nov 3, 2011

Bio1 unless every tip of every leaf looks like that I wouldn't be to stressed about the situation.

FreezerBoy knows his shit and he is dead on about the pH. I also grow in aero and my pH tends to get higher between nute changes therefore I start at 5.2 and when I change my nutes they have drifted to 5.9-6.1 The chart freezer boy uses is scientific proof at why this is the way to do it. The most important thing you can do do is check your pH DAILY! as far as your ppm is concerned I don't think your high at all. Lots of people including myself use a much more aggressive ppm schedule. Although the strain itself does have a preferred range.

bio1 · Nov 3, 2011

ok, that explained a lot and it makes sense that you would want to have your ph swing.

im using osmotic water, which has like 20ppm (didnt measure the ec yet but it should be almost at 0) and a ph of 6.5

how do you make it swing? do you take part in this directly by using e.g. nitric acid to lower it and potassium hydroxid to rise? maybe it would be enough to use the nutes to lower it and fresh water to rise it.

so for example i would want my ph to swing from ~5.2 to ~6.0, whats the cycle? should i go 5.2 to 6 and back in a week? every second day? i know this cant be generalized so just give me a rough idea.

i checked my ph and ec - within six hours it went from:
ph 6.05 ec 0,709mS
to
ph 6.1 ec 0,699mS

ec down, ph up. it should be too lean!

here is what im gonna do now: feed some nutes (careful^^) and lower the pH to 5.2 and let it rise. i can use my ph/ec meter to log ph/ec for some hours with an intervall like 5 minutes and put it in an excel table. (its with an sd card

) this will probably give me an idea!

heres a pic of a rootball btw:

im using an airstone to pump 100l/h of air into the solution, which should be enough?

//edit: the strain is GHS white rhino fem btw

Ultra Current · Nov 3, 2011

Here's a quote taken off of general hydroponics website:

"In general, hydroponic systems work well at a pH of 5.8 – 6.0"

So I guess your saying that mynameisstitch is wrong. It's all good we all have our own way of doing things. When I drop my pH below 5.8 I always have mag lockouts. I never go below 5.8 but i don't want to argue. just want to help out this grower who is having problems.

Ultra Current · Nov 3, 2011

bio1 said:
ok, that explained a lot and it makes sense that you would want to have your ph swing.

im using osmotic water, which has like 20ppm (didnt measure the ec yet but it should be almost at 0) and a ph of 6.5

how do you make it swing? do you take part in this directly by using e.g. nitric acid to lower it and potassium hydroxid to rise? maybe it would be enough to use the nutes to lower it and fresh water to rise it.

so for example i would want my ph to swing from ~5.2 to ~6.0, whats the cycle? should i go 5.2 to 6 and back in a week? every second day? i know this cant be generalized so just give me a rough idea.

i checked my ph and ec - within six hours it went from:
ph 6.05 ec 0,709mS
to
ph 6.1 ec 0,699mS

ec down, ph up. it should be too lean!

here is what im gonna do now: feed some nutes (careful^^) and lower the pH to 5.2 and let it rise. i can use my ph/ec meter to log ph/ec for some hours with an intervall like 5 minutes and put it in an excel table. (its with an sd card ) this will probably give me an idea!

heres a pic of a rootball btw:

im using an airstone to pump 100l/h of air into the solution, which should be enough?

//edit: the strain is GHS white rhino fem btw

Your roots look nice. That's good. If you lower you pH to 5.2 and notice more problems, please raise it to 5.8 and you will be good. Take care.

bio1 · Nov 3, 2011

ok ph is at 5.13 and ec at 0.705 now

just saw that my ph/ec meter cant log both ec and ph parallel, only one of them which kinda sucks.

lets see what will happen.

bio1 · Nov 3, 2011

so within 9 hours ph increased from 5.13 to 5.54 and after that would start to decrease again (its at 5.45 now).

ec decreased from 0.705 to 0.676.

in conclusion i think that my problems were caused by nute lockouts. hope this will be fixed by just letting my ph swing from now on.

here the chart:

why did it start to decrease again? i read that plants can actively change the ph to reach the nutrients they need. is this what happened?

FreezerBoy · Nov 3, 2011

bio1 said:
how do you make it swing?

By over or under feeding. Either one will force EC to move. Move EC and you move pH.

While flat readings (no movement) over time are bad for you, start by getting EC to go flat. Now you know the plant wants an EC of "X".

Before my recent move*, I would feed at X+0.1 and 6.0pH. Over 2 weeks pH dropped to 5.4-5.5, EC would rise 0.1-0.2 and 4 gallons of straight tap water would lower EC and raise pH back to my starting numbers. I could go for months this way (one plant, BIG tub) changing the tank 1-2 times in a six month grow.

Because EC only tells us total strength, "proper" EC does not always mean proper nute proportion. Run a tank as long as I did and some nutes build up while others deplete. Fortunately DWC recovers as fast as it fails. As soon as plants start to droop or yellow, swap the tank and by nightfall, you'd never know the problem existed.

* I mention my recent move because of this. My old, big city, metropolis gunky water was 0.5EC and growing was a dream. My new, little mountain town, crystal clear water is too low to measure (lower than 0.1) and growing is a nightmare. My pH climbed 1.0-1.5 every day no matter the feed levels. It's getting better as I experiment with mineral additives to replace essential elements that the water suppliers have stripped out. Point being, RO/distilled/ demineralized water is much harder to work with. Hydro is hundreds of years old and it's first lesson was purified water is dead water and the worst kind of water to grow with.

Is your tap water poison? Does it burn your skin when you bathe? If not, why RO? If you drink your water, brush your teeth, wash your dishes, water the lawn, give it to your dog, then there's no reason not to feed it to your plants. I'd seriously consider disconnecting the RO unit and work with tap water for a few weeks. It may well improve the garden and would certainly save time and money.

highonmt · Nov 5, 2011

FreezerBoy said:
By over or under feeding. Either one will force EC to move. Move EC and you move pH.

While flat readings (no movement) over time are bad for you, start by getting EC to go flat. Now you know the plant wants an EC of "X".

Before my recent move*, I would feed at X+0.1 and 6.0pH. Over 2 weeks pH dropped to 5.4-5.5, EC would rise 0.1-0.2 and 4 gallons of straight tap water would lower EC and raise pH back to my starting numbers. I could go for months this way (one plant, BIG tub) changing the tank 1-2 times in a six month grow.

Because EC only tells us total strength, "proper" EC does not always mean proper nute proportion. Run a tank as long as I did and some nutes build up while others deplete. Fortunately DWC recovers as fast as it fails. As soon as plants start to droop or yellow, swap the tank and by nightfall, you'd never know the problem existed.

* I mention my recent move because of this. My old, big city, metropolis gunky water was 0.5EC and growing was a dream. My new, little mountain town, crystal clear water is too low to measure (lower than 0.1) and growing is a nightmare. My pH climbed 1.0-1.5 every day no matter the feed levels. It's getting better as I experiment with mineral additives to replace essential elements that the water suppliers have stripped out. Point being, RO/distilled/ demineralized water is much harder to work with. Hydro is hundreds of years old and it's first lesson was purified water is dead water and the worst kind of water to grow with.

Is your tap water poison? Does it burn your skin when you bathe? If not, why RO? If you drink your water, brush your teeth, wash your dishes, water the lawn, give it to your dog, then there's no reason not to feed it to your plants. I'd seriously consider disconnecting the RO unit and work with tap water for a few weeks. It may well improve the garden and would certainly save time and money.

.1 ec is really low dissolved solids must be from a hard rock reservior granite or something. The water in our little mountain town is from a lime stone range and is crystal clear but contains a good amount of carbonate hardness and plenty of calcium. Glad you're getting it figured out with mineral additives what are you adding if you don't mind my asking.
HM

ps Kindness going out to you for all the great help you give to growers...

thefalsediviner · Nov 5, 2011

Not that anyone should need convincing, but, Freezer Boy is dead on as usual when it come to tech. As far as real life goes he could be wearing a diaper at his PC in the basement, so I can't vouch on anything other than the tech........

tfd

bio1 · Nov 7, 2011

after some ph-related problems the last days (it was dropping to like 4.7 all the time, even after adjusting it over and over again) i decided to take the water out the reservoir and put in a new solution.

this seems to have worked. i dont know why it happened though.

today, day 28:

will wait a few more days and put them into 12/12

F. Dupp · Nov 7, 2011

Per usual, I have to respectfully agree with everything FreezerBoy told you. Unfortunatley I also have to agree with thefalsediviner, in that I too believe FreezerBoy to be wearing a diaper.

Your plants look pretty good man, no need to stress. If you are going to flower them out in that wimpy little machine, I would put em into 12/12 ASAP. Also trim off some of those bottom branches.

I used to try to maintain a 5.8 pH in aero and I have found that letting pH swing between 5.4 - 6.0 produces much better results. I do use a small amount of cal/mag, but I use RO water also.

After your fresh rez change your pH should slowly rise. After a rez change my pH usually rises more dramatically for the first 3 or 4 days, but then levels out and rises maybe .3 per day at most. In aero the ability to read whats going on in your rez should alert you to any problems before they are visible on your plants, so keep a close eye on your rez and your roots.

These pics were taken at day 37 from seed. 84 plants 19 different strains. (im going to have a fucking mess on my hands with so many diff strains)-

I stressed when I started running aero too, if you can avoid root rot your golden. As far as Im concerned aero is the only way to fly.

bio1 · Nov 9, 2011

yo tuco

nice plants you got there, too bad i dont have the space (1-room apartment..).

so i put them into flower yesterday and i am really curious about how they will develope. even though this run has been far from perfect, i am still very satisfied with how things went. i have to agree, aero is the way to go!

i know they could need some trimming but im afraid to do it somehow

i wouldnt know where to start and where to stop. i have always let them grow natural of LST'd them the past grows. this + topping has always worked out nice. i can still use the popcorn buds to make some qwiso :dance013:

day 2:

FreezerBoy · Nov 9, 2011

Woo hoo. We be growin' now! Time to graduate to the big boy pants...

The act of pruning isn't fun. No one enjoys tossing out growth hand over fist. That said, plants love it and our mission, in limited space, is to max the cab rather than the plant. Small cabs haven't the space to allow plants to reach full potential. As long as you pack the cab, corner to corner, with 100% pure bud, your mission is a success.

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♥ 24 days veg, first aero grow, problem

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