6000w 14x18 sealed room with vertical bulbs

[castrau5]

I cant seem to figure out whats causing my plants to droop so much. When the light first turns on the plants are perkier but after a few hours the leaves get heavy and start to drop. She's about 5 weeks from clone and 24in tall. I'm watering every other day with nutrients at .9ec and ph of 5.8. Drip clean with every watering and sometimes i don't get any runoff. Temps 80 with lights on and humidity from 65-70% but i just lowered it to 55%.
Light first comes on:

After about 4 hours:

 

[Snow Crash]

I can throw some guess out there...

Plant cell rigidity is pretty much all about the internal Turgor Pressure, Vacuoles, and Lignin. There's another factor though and that's the plant's own control of the leaf's to keep them out of direct light during the heat of the day in order to reduce stress on the "cooling system" the plant uses. Root health is also a concern as a plant can only take up as much water as the root system is capable of. If the roots cannot support your Vapor Pressure Deficit you should expect some wilting as the pressure drops. Sodium buildup from water softener is notorious for causing this issue with potted house plants.

Since it's not a clean issue I'd suggest a few different approaches. Address the water quality first. Drip clean is intended to be run from the start. If this was a recent addition then that could have loosened up some precipitates and you're starting to see the effect of that. I'm also not a very big fan of zero runoff and think that could be a contributing factor even with drip clean. If this were my own garden I'd mix up a solid batch of my nutrients and remove 50% of what I added as runoff at the next rinsing. Don't let them drink that back up.

Increasing your Relative Humidity to accomodate the VPD of the room at 80f is a good idea as well as improving your air circulation. If you're not battling mold or mildew 70% RH is about where I'd want to be. Over doing the air circulation is really, really, hard. Adding in another oscillating fan could be the difference maker in helping the leaf tissue stay cool, removing expelled 02, and better distributing the CO2 for photosynthesis. Plants don't have muscles and lungs to pull in air and breathe out the exhaust. They need us to basically breathe for them, and we do that with fans. The leafs should be aflutter.

Finally, I'd just assume my roots were all jacked up. I'd drop in a root support product, like Rapid Start, and an enzyme or bacteria that help break down dead root tissue. Cannazym, AACT, or another "zyme" of your choice.

Best of luck!

 

[Ichabod Crane]

When you check your RH do it in the middle of the lights on. If you do it first thing lights on you get a high reading. Give the lights time to burn up the moisture your plants put out during the dark phase.

You should be watering till run off. A heavy fast watering is best. It will flush out stale air when the water fills the pot and drains out. Also build a ridge around the edge of your pot to keep the fluids in the pot and not running down the sides. Cloth pots suck like that.

And what snow said above.

 

[castrau5]

The water quality should be good there fed with RO water ppm start at 20 then brought up to 100-120 with cal-mag. Drip clean has been used all the way. I'm wondering if its the start to nitrogen toxicity. I was adding 1.25ml of nitrogen boost to my watering but have stopped using it all together now. When i pulled my plants out of the room and looked at them under the sun they looked to be overly green. The plant pictured above is my best looking one I'll post some pics of the worse ones below. As far as airflow goes i think I'm good there's 5 16in wall fans, 1 8in Honeywell on the floor and plus the a/c always runs to circulate the air. co2 is kept at 1500 ppm's by a Titan controller hooked up to a 20lb tank.

 

[bobthegrower]

back your co2 off to 600ppm and see what happens

 

[Normlfightr]

Id back off co2 as well. Are you allowing your co2 PPM to drop during lights off, and exhausting periodically?

In some builds it harder to dial in the c02

 

[castrau5]

I cant back off the co2 with my controller its preset at 1500ppm with a photocell that only works while lights on. The only exhausting the room gets is when we walk in and out of the room everyday.

 

[loveOG]

You can grow trees in 1 gal smarties but good luck from keeping them from falling over without any support. A 4-6 ft tree in the end of flower is going to be pretty top heavy. I would personally use 2 or 3 gal

they definitely can't completely dry out. They fall over in one gallon smart pots unless you use a screen. I learned that one.

 

[castrau5]

This is what she looked like today after 17hrs of light.

Shortly after the lights turned on the co2 tank ran out so the levels were way low today. Sunday i measured her to be 21.5in tall and today was 25in so whatever is making her droopy doesn't affect the growth to much.

 

[Snow Crash]

This is so freaking strange. I've seen some plants droop like that at night. It's a way of keeping their internal temperatures up during cool evenings.

What are your temperature swings like? Anything over 10f degrees between high a low tends to stress plants out. Ideally, plants want about the same temperature day and night indoors. If your night temperatures are dropping under 70 then I would probably work on that first... but still... so weird, and just shooting in the dark on that one.

 

[castrau5]

I'm not sure what the temperature swings are like. The lights run at night when its the coolest but when the lights are off i don't have a heater to raise temps i figured it was the summer no need. I really need to get a thermostat in there at plant level now all i go by is the a/c temp.

 

[Granger2]

A couple of things I noticed. Are you removing the runoff from your dishes. Don't let it soak back up. http://www.homedepot.com/p/Bucket-Head-Wet-Dry-Vaccum-BH0100/202017218

You're in an attic, right? And you don't have a thermometer? Thermometers are cheap. Get several cheapys and put them all around.

Lots of people say that you can't overwater coco. Untrue. Do like Snow Crash said and get your containers rolled down to 3 gal. Also, after you water, pick the pots up and mental note the weight. Don't water till they are considerably lighter. Water till runoff, and remove the runoff right away.

That Titan controller is doing you wrong. 1500 ppm is excessive. Put it on a timer
http://www.amazon.com/Joshs-Frogs-Mistking-Digital-Seconds/dp/B00481UME6 and play with it so it comes on with the lights and runs till it gets to no more than 1100 ppm, then shuts off, comes on when it gets to 8-900, and so forth. Have it shut off soon enough before lights off so you're at about 400 when the lights turn off. Are you inoculating with anything, and are you using a root stimulator? Good luck. -granger

 

[Snow Crash]

I really need to get a thermostat in there at plant level...

Yeah you do!!!

 

[RedBeardy5]

What kind of fluctuations should there be between night and day. If I remember correctly when night gets to cold it causes the plants to stretch. I never worried about night as long as it does not get in the 50s.

 

[castrau5]

A couple of things I noticed. Are you removing the runoff from your dishes. Don't let it soak back up. http://www.homedepot.com/p/Bucket-Head-Wet-Dry-Vaccum-BH0100/202017218

You're in an attic, right? And you don't have a thermometer? Thermometers are cheap. Get several cheapys and put them all around.

Lots of people say that you can't overwater coco. Untrue. Do like Snow Crash said and get your containers rolled down to 3 gal. Also, after you water, pick the pots up and mental note the weight. Don't water till they are considerably lighter. Water till runoff, and remove the runoff right away.

That Titan controller is doing you wrong. 1500 ppm is excessive. Put it on a timer
http://www.amazon.com/Joshs-Frogs-Mistking-Digital-Seconds/dp/B00481UME6 and play with it so it comes on with the lights and runs till it gets to no more than 1100 ppm, then shuts off, comes on when it gets to 8-900, and so forth. Have it shut off soon enough before lights off so you're at about 400 when the lights turn off. Are you inoculating with anything, and are you using a root stimulator? Good luck. -granger

Up until about 6 days ago i would water them while they were sitting in the black trays then just pour out the runoff that was collected. i found this to be a big pain and you could never collect all the runoff from the bottom so i went out and bought a tote and made a draining station. It's a bit of work still placing the plants on it and waiting for it to drain and when i get 24 plants rockin its going to be some work for sure. Now im watering every other day with 10% runoff and the plants look perkier today.


I guess you could consider this room in an attic. It's built above a 4 car garage that's uninsulated. The only part insulated is the 14x24 space that we used to construct all 3 rooms. With the lights being off during the day i figured it would stay pretty warm up there so i only installed an a/c at the moment. The a/c is set at 82 and ill soon be adding thermometer's everywhere.

I can't adjust this Titan controller for my co2.

 

[castrau5]

Oh and as far as a root stimulator i use roots accelerator by H&G. That brings me on to my next question i was watering today and i went to put my finger into the soil to see how moist it was and noticed that roots are growing to the top there only about 1/8 in from the top. Is this normal in coco or is it a sign that my plants are getting a lack of oxygen to the roots?

 

[Snow Crash]

I can't adjust this Titan controller for my co2.
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=55418&pictureid=1305452&thumb=1]View Image[/URL]

And you know what sucks... A Kronus 4 Digital Controller is only $289.95. This would control your entire environment really intelligently. It's only $260.95 this weekend with their coupon: 10off

How long have you had that Atlas 2? I'd return it if I could.

Even an Atlas 7 for under $200 can do 1000/1250/1500 depending on what you want. Those Altas 2's are kind of whak, yo.

 

[RedBeardy5]

Castrau5- by the time your done flowering the it will look like one big ball of roots. I don't like taking the time to reuse my coco because of this. It's a very good thing.

 

[castrau5]

I'm back everyone with some updates on the garden. I went out and bought some thermostats and figured out my flowering room stays between 77-82 but my veg was around 85-87 with only T5's running.so we went out and picked up another a/c this ones 6000btu and added a 400w metal halide to the room and temps stay at 79 all day now. At the moment there's about 18 plants in veg. 17 kalashnikova's and one sweet tooth.

 

[castrau5]

Last night i switched my plants into 12/12 and just after the first day of 12/12 hairs starting showing up. These first 4 plants are my first ever growing in coco and i cant seem to figure out the cal/mag. All the plants are showing deficiency's of magnesium and i dont know how to fix it. currently this is what im feeding them with

R/o water ppm 20
Botanicare cal/mag+ 3ml per gallon brings ppm up to 120 but last feeding i brought it up to 160. I use a hannah meeter so that's 2.4-3.2ec before adding base nutes.
H&G coco A+B 5ml/G
PH 5.8
.4ml/G drip clean
.5/G roots XL
2ml/G amino acid
3ml/G multi zen
That's it and i'm watering everyday with runoff.
Is the problem just as easy as adding more cal/mag? I read on here that H&G coco's has plenty of cal/mag already in it but by the look of it my plants need more. Really don't think its a lockout issue but i could be wrong. Here's some pics any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.