Need help with new clones!!! Showing deficiency

[hot cheetos]

Half strength is 550ppm? So that means they'd have you giving your starts 2.4ec

How are you measuring out?

I have 3' tall plants in full bloom. I'm backing off at 1.2ec (600ppm) because its too strong

It says 1/4 tsp per gallon which is full strength. .25 divided by 2 (half) is 0.125

0.125 tsp to ml is 0.6 ml


I added .6ml of Foliage pro and .6ml of Protekt and 1.5ml of calmag (botanicare). I measured the PPM of the tap water and it was 550ppm

 

[corky1968]

I measured the PPM of the tap water and it was 550ppm

Are you taking cold water tap water and letting it get to ambient temperature for watering purposes?

Reason: Hot water from the tap has much more dissolved solids in it.

 

[chronosync]

Tap water can work but 500ppm is considered too high, especially if you don't test its contents. What I do for seedlings and clones is to use bottled or rain water.

Keep doing what your doing (base nutes, cal/mag if you need it, and protkt if you wish) but with pure water.

0.8ec of appropriate nutrient fed as needed @ pH of 6.0 and I guarantee you will see an improvement.

 

[hot cheetos]

Tap water can work but 500ppm is considered too high, especially if you don't test its contents. What I do for seedlings and clones is to use bottled or rain water.

Keep doing what your doing (base nutes, cal/mag if you need it, and protkt if you wish) but with pure water.

0.8ec of appropriate nutrient fed as needed @ pH of 6.0 and I guarantee you will see an improvement.

The water was 77*F when i tested it for 550ppm. I do have a RO system as well, could that work as "pure water" ? I had some deficiencies when i used RO but that was because I wasn't supplementing with calmag.

 

[hot cheetos]

Its been almost 2 weeks since i transplanted in solo cups and ive had roots coming out the bottom since day 3 of them being in the solo cups. I'm going to transplant tomorrow since its been over a week since roots were coming out the drainage holes.

Should i transplant into 1gal pots or should i go straight to their permanent pot which would be a 3 gallon fabric pot?

 

[topset1976]

I see similar issues sometimes the first week after I transplanted from rooting dome into cups or small pots. Also you should expect the leaf that was cut in half before cloning to yellow or get a few spots. That leaf normally doesn't do well after first transplant so I'd only worry about new growth when dealing with clones. I have grown in coco for 10 years and I'd recommend adding perlite to your coco to help more O get to your roots. also be very careful not to pack your coco mix to tight in your cups. Baby roots sometimes have a tough time busting through hard tightly packed medium. No need to pack the coco, when you water it'll pack it down for you. I'd go for 500ppm or under feeds and do a feed, feed, plain phed water schedule making sure 15% of the plain water drains out the bottom. In small cups salts can build up very fast. You have much less margin of error when using solo cups when it comes to salt build up, ph swings, root bound, and poor root conditions so I'd transplant them straight to the final pots if thats possible. To go to 1 gal and then finally to 3 gal has no benefit unless you had space issues or another reason to go to 1 gal. Now if you were eventually going to transplant into a 10+ gallon i'd say go to a 1 gal and then to the 10+ but a 3 gal shouldn't take up much more room then a 1 gal so I'd go to the 3 gal asap. Once you see the roots coming out of the bottom its time to transplant. I am certain once they are in a larger pot they will be much happier and will have room to stretch out. Just remember for the 3 gal also make sure to not pack the soil to hard and if you can add 25-50% perlite. It'll really lighten up the coco and your roots will be very happy and keep with the feed, feed, water schedule even in 3 gal pots. Another hint is to make sure your pots aren't sitting in run off if they are in saucers. This is a situation that is begging for salts to build up. If using saucers put a brick, arrange 2x4s, or whatever you can think of to raise the pots above the saucers so they don't sit in the runoff. It isn't always an issue but I've had lock out issues and thought it was a deficiency when really I had salt build up from keeping my clones in solo cups way to long and then transplanting and letting the pots sit in run off. That combo lead to a bad start of the root system and when your plants are not in tip top condition it lets other issues have a better chance of occurring. good luck

 

[MoPho]

Its been almost 2 weeks since i transplanted in solo cups and ive had roots coming out the bottom since day 3 of them being in the solo cups. I'm going to transplant tomorrow since its been over a week since roots were coming out the drainage holes.

Should i transplant into 1gal pots or should i go straight to their permanent pot which would be a 3 gallon fabric pot?

If you don't mind the extra step. I would highly recommend transplanting to the 1 gallon then once the roots fill out transplant again into the 3 gallon.

 

[chronosync]

I go cups to 1 gal and keep them there.

People will tell you that transplanting too much is bad. Tell that to a healthy root bound coco plant. They tear right through new coco and don't give a fuck either way. I have six 3 footers all in 1 gal. The only reason I'd up pot is so I didn't have to feed them twice daily.

It all depends how your gonna grow it. Shotgun DTW hydro, or slow and gentle like a soil.

If you go from cups to 3 gals you gotta go easy or you will muck them up easy by not being able to provide enough activity in the root zone. Shit won't dry and you end up with swamp-pot.

 

[hot cheetos]

Thanks guys. When people say to feed at a certain PPM does that mean the PPM of the final solution or the PPM of just the nutrients? If I have water thats 200ppm and someone says to feed 300ppm does that mean to add 300ppm of nutrients to the water and bring the final solution up to 500ppm? Or does it mean to add 100ppm of nutrients to the water and bring the final solution up to 300ppm?

 

[chronosync]

That's a tough one (for me) to answer straight. Generally speaking; ec is ec. Your water ppm contributes to the total ppm/ec of the solution. Its conductivity, and how *hot it is. If you can use RO then you are taking a blind spot out of the equation, unless of course you know what is in your water and its contents happen to suit your mix or at least not interfere.

I have hard water so I have to balance my feed accordingly the best I can. For instance I must have plenty of Calcium because if I add cal/mag like most need to growing in coco especially, I end up with ca toxicity.

I'm switching to RO asap

 

[chronosync]

But to answer your question by example. If your source water is 200ppm and you want to feed 300ppm you could (I would) add nutes until I reached 500ppm and call it 300ppm nutes. Basically ignoring the water because most of the time the worst thing in tap is chlorine etc, and it usually has acceptable amounts of Ca, Mg, etc

Call it 0.6ec and hope for the best.....

 

[Mikell]

When I am speaking of EC, I refer to total EC. Others may differ.

 

[hot cheetos]

That's a tough one (for me) to answer straight. Generally speaking; ec is ec. Your water ppm contributes to the total ppm/ec of the solution. Its conductivity, and how *hot it is. If you can use RO then you are taking a blind spot out of the equation, unless of course you know what is in your water and its contents happen to suit your mix or at least not interfere.

I have hard water so I have to balance my feed accordingly the best I can. For instance I must have plenty of Calcium because if I add cal/mag like most need to growing in coco especially, I end up with ca toxicity.

I'm switching to RO asap

I have RO but opted not to use it. Would it be much better in that case to use RO if i have calmag? My RO is about 20-30 ppm. Calmag to 150 then use base nutes?

So with RO what PPM should i be feeding my fully transplanted clones? They currently sit in 3 gallon fabric pots and have a full root structure (pics). Yesterday after transplanting i watered them a bit. I used 3/4 of a gallon of RO and 1/4 gallon of tap which put me at about 150ppm. Then i added 1.25ml protekt, 1.25ml grow, and 2ml calmag. The ppm changes are as follows respectively; 150, 160, 240, 320.

So this put my PPMS at 320. Does that mean im feed 170ppms? Or do i need to factor out the calmag ppm that i supplemented in the water too? the calmag alone raised the ppm by 80. It was 150 to start with, added protekt made it 160, "grow" brought it up to 240, calmag brought it up to 320.

Speaking of which, what do you guys think about these roots? Did i transplant too late? Is this considered root bound or does it look good or what? Thanks in advance!!!

 

[hot cheetos]

But to answer your question by example. If your source water is 200ppm and you want to feed 300ppm you could (I would) add nutes until I reached 500ppm and call it 300ppm nutes. Basically ignoring the water because most of the time the worst thing in tap is chlorine etc, and it usually has acceptable amounts of Ca, Mg, etc

Call it 0.6ec and hope for the best.....

Woops, didn't realize you responded. So then referring back to my post above, am I drastically under feeding? It would definitely explain all my deficiencies. So worried about over feeding, burning, over watering, over loving...that I'm starving my poor babies.

About to water right now. Used pure RO at 30ppm, added:

1.75ml protekt brought me to 50ppm
2ml calmag brought me to 150ppm
2ml grow brought me to 290ppm

Adjusted to 5.9 PH. Is this still low? Minus out the starting water I'm feeding 260ppm. Am I doing the math right?

 

[chronosync]

Yup, that's right.

Starting water @ 30ppm is negligible, so its up to you, I guess I'd factor it in.

I would top the mix off at 350-400ppm with base nutes (grow)

Also figure out if you need that amount of call mag, if you can back off it a little, that leaves more "room" for base nutes. Unknown dissolved solids in my water was once referred to me as Junk Food. In my case my mystery water works pretty good when I ignore it and ghost feed, but its really been a lot of trial and error, and luck.

I'm using RO or rainwater from now on. One less variable and unknown. I'm sick of guessing. Good luck.

 

[chronosync]

Oh ya those roots look good

I'd say getting pot-bound by soil standards but in coco its fine, you just feed more. It looks like a good time for you to pot them since you were.

 

[chronosync]

When I am speaking of EC, I refer to total EC. Others may differ.

What does your source water read? How is hard water accounted for in hydro? Is this why people claim to feed @ 2.0 + ec and say its great?

 

[TnTLabs]

from page to page i was hoping that someone would say it, but i didnt see anyone mentioning that your plants are underfed! basicly, when a cut has rooted you can start feeding it, if they were in cups already and roots down to the bottom you should already be feeding just under full strength 1.2 - 1.4 EC (600 - 700ppm) total EC!
Full stength would be 1.5 - 1.6 (750 - 800ppm)
PH in Veg 6.0-6.4, in Flower 5.8 - 6.2.
Best would be to mix with RO water so you have a starting EC of around 0.1 EC / 200ppm

From what i learnt is if you want to have healthy cuts that explode right after rooting, you give them the same strength nutrients the mum gets, once properly rooted!

 

[TnTLabs]

I have RO but opted not to use it. Would it be much better in that case to use RO if i have calmag? My RO is about 20-30 ppm. Calmag to 150 then use base nutes?

So with RO what PPM should i be feeding my fully transplanted clones? They currently sit in 3 gallon fabric pots and have a full root structure (pics). Yesterday after transplanting i watered them a bit. I used 3/4 of a gallon of RO and 1/4 gallon of tap which put me at about 150ppm. Then i added 1.25ml protekt, 1.25ml grow, and 2ml calmag. The ppm changes are as follows respectively; 150, 160, 240, 320.

So this put my PPMS at 320. Does that mean im feed 170ppms? Or do i need to factor out the calmag ppm that i supplemented in the water too? the calmag alone raised the ppm by 80. It was 150 to start with, added protekt made it 160, "grow" brought it up to 240, calmag brought it up to 320.

Speaking of which, what do you guys think about these roots? Did i transplant too late? Is this considered root bound or does it look good or what? Thanks in advance!!!

totaly underfed! you could have transplanted a week ago, but its not a biggie.. BUT those pots are too dry man, problems are imminent..
when you mixed your coco or from bag? did you soak it in nutrient solution? if not you are going to need to "charge" it now! with the plants inside it will be a little stress for them but it will be fine.. you need to have to coco moist, not wet! all the time.. top layer can be a little lighter and drier.. but never as dry as in those pics.. thats just asking for trouble

 

[hot cheetos]

Thanks for the replies. The coco im using, "california substrates coco" is "double washed" and extra buffered or something. I was under the impression that this wouldn't have to be "prepped" like other coco brands since it got a lot of preperation processes during the production of them.

I had a strong feeling ive been under-feeding for a while now but i was just confused with the labeling. On Grow it says 1/2tsp per gallon on the label which is about 2.5 ml, that would be considered full strenght right... I just fed them 3ml grow (more than full strenght!) and my ppms were still under 400, about 350-370. But then when i look at the feeding recommendation charts on the website of Dynagro, it says 4,6,8,10 milliliters for weeks 1,2,3,4 respectively. Thats WAY more than what they say on their label!!!

Is the chart perhaps not for coco and instead for a flood and drain or drip routine?

TNT, when you say 750-800ppm whats the conversion for that? My figures are based on a 0.5 conversion.