Grow Mediums AKsteel's First DWC, Mephisto Mystery Seed

[woody]

You'll get it figured out mate dont panic.
How is your ec/ppm reading? Going up or down? Heres a handy little snippet i always remember seymour buds telling someone.

Ph up and ec down= you need more feed
Ph down and ec up= you need less feed
Ph stable and ec stable= your dialed in

Also remember him saying that twisted leaves were a sign of N tox. Maybe they are too small too show leaf claw.

 

[AKsteel]

You'll get it figured out mate dont panic.
How is your ec/ppm reading? Going up or down? Heres a handy little snippet i always remember seymour buds telling someone.

Ph up and ec down= you need more feed
Ph down and ec up= you need less feed
Ph stable and ec stable= your dialed in

Also remember him saying that twisted leaves were a sign of N tox. Maybe they are too small too show leaf claw.

PPM was 220 with just root excelerator and voodoo juice and it stayed consistant. With the new res and nutes ppm=390. Water temp is between 66-68f

 

[HotBunz]

AK,

Hummm.......here is where I stand with my advice regarding how I just pulled what is going to be over 7 oz dry off my first Bubble Bucket with my Mephisto Sour crack. I know there is more than 1 way to skin a cat but this is what worked for me. I set the water level 1 inch BELOW the bottom of the net pot. I kept this water level till the plant was sucking up nearly a half gallon a day of water and then started raising the level till I was only 3 inches or so from the top of the bucket by the time she was in flower. Now keep in mind I am using HTG bucket tops/net pots. These have a channel up the bottom of the net pot so the root cube when placed in the pot sits at the top of the buck top. What I did was cut a hole in the net pot so the tap root had a huge opening to go through instead of having to fight through mesh. I may be explaining this badly but the way they are designed my tap root does not have to spend days fighting to get to the bottom of grow media and into the rez. Once the tap root is out of the root cube it is more or less already getting misted on from the bubbles in the bucket. I did not use any other additives on my first Bubble Bucket. I believe in the K.I.S.S method when trying new things. The more you have to add the more risk of jacking something up. I cringe when I see some newbie crashing a grow and have like 10 different nutes they are having to mix together whether it's a soil or hydro grow and can't figure out whats wrong.

As for you sir and your swinging ph levels. I too have the same thing in my rez. Again don't sweat the small things. I set my ph at 5.7 and in 12 hours she is at 6.0 or a little higher. It is what it is. Once my grow was further in motion and I was working up to full feed and she was pulling almost 1 gallon of water every 12 hours it would swing the other way down from my set point. As for your PPM level 390 seems really high for the stage you are at. At 1 week I kept the PPM at 100. over the next couple of days work up to 150 PPM and then let the plant dictate the PPM going forward. I am at day 10 of my Cherry Bomb Bubble Bucket. She has worked her way up to 250 PPM as of yesterday morning, last night she was down to 225 PPM at this point she is really using no water so the water level is the same. She has a tap root over 12 inches long into the rez. I added nutes to bring the PPM back to 250 and will up them again today to 280 PPM or so because I am sure she will be back down to 220 or so. She is telling me she is wanting more. With DWC let the plant talk to you and TELL you what she wants NOT some grow schedule on the back of a bottle or someone elses schedule. Unlike my first Bubble Bucket I am using HydroGaurd on this grow. Does your VooDoo Juice add to the over all PPM count? HydroGaurd did not. Following the K.I.S.S. ideals I saw hold off on the VooDoo Juice till she gets roaring for you. Just something else to add confusion/unwanted drama that you don't need right now.

Now with all of my ramblings out of the way what is going on with your sprout? I must say I don't see a new set of leaves coming out of the center where the top node should be forming.....hummm!

 

[AKsteel]

AK,

Hummm.......here is where I stand with my advice regarding how I just pulled what is going to be over 7 oz dry off my first Bubble Bucket with my Mephisto Sour crack. I know there is more than 1 way to skin a cat but this is what worked for me. I set the water level 1 inch BELOW the bottom of the net pot. I kept this water level till the plant was sucking up nearly a half gallon a day of water and then started raising the level till I was only 3 inches or so from the top of the bucket by the time she was in flower. Now keep in mind I am using HTG bucket tops/net pots. These have a channel up the bottom of the net pot so the root cube when placed in the pot sits at the top of the buck top. What I did was cut a hole in the net pot so the tap root had a huge opening to go through instead of having to fight through mesh. I may be explaining this badly but the way they are designed my tap root does not have to spend days fighting to get to the bottom of grow media and into the rez. Once the tap root is out of the root cube it is more or less already getting misted on from the bubbles in the bucket. I did not use any other additives on my first Bubble Bucket. I believe in the K.I.S.S method when trying new things. The more you have to add the more risk of jacking something up. I cringe when I see some newbie crashing a grow and have like 10 different nutes they are having to mix together whether it's a soil or hydro grow and can't figure out whats wrong.

As for you sir and your swinging ph levels. I too have the same thing in my rez. Again don't sweat the small things. I set my ph at 5.7 and in 12 hours she is at 6.0 or a little higher. It is what it is. Once my grow was further in motion and I was working up to full feed and she was pulling almost 1 gallon of water every 12 hours it would swing the other way down from my set point. As for your PPM level 390 seems really high for the stage you are at. At 1 week I kept the PPM at 100. over the next couple of days work up to 150 PPM and then let the plant dictate the PPM going forward. I am at day 10 of my Cherry Bomb Bubble Bucket. She has worked her way up to 250 PPM as of yesterday morning, last night she was down to 225 PPM at this point she is really using no water so the water level is the same. She has a tap root over 12 inches long into the rez. I added nutes to bring the PPM back to 250 and will up them again today to 280 PPM or so because I am sure she will be back down to 220 or so. She is telling me she is wanting more. With DWC let the plant talk to you and TELL you what she wants NOT some grow schedule on the back of a bottle or someone elses schedule. Unlike my first Bubble Bucket I am using HydroGaurd on this grow. Does your VooDoo Juice add to the over all PPM count? HydroGaurd did not. Following the K.I.S.S. ideals I saw hold off on the VooDoo Juice till she gets roaring for you. Just something else to add confusion/unwanted drama that you don't need right now.

Now with all of my ramblings out of the way what is going on with your sprout? I must say I don't see a new set of leaves coming out of the center where the top node should be forming.....hummm!

Thanks @HotBunz for your advice. I totally agree with your K.I.S.S. approach and you can't argue with the results my friend . Let me put some more numbers out just so I know I am on the same page with how to gauge my PPM. My water source has a PPM of 140, so do I subtract that from my total PPM?
I initially just wanted to accelerate root growth with a root accelerator and just have some beneficial bacteria in the water, but this did not seem to work out to well. I was also top feeding which I now think I was over doing as the results were no new growth and the leaves started to twist and show signs of damage. I saw no new leaves starting at all. It looked like she was starting to starve but I didn't know why. So this is what I have done in the last 24 hours.
I carefully removed the grow stone and removed the seedling from the pot. There are roots just starting to poke out the sides of the cube and the tap root was about 2 inches long out the bottom with little fingers coming of the tap root. I do not think this is very good growth for an 8 day old seedling.
The root riot cube felt very over saturated so I squeezed some excess water out. I then mixed a new res with .5ml of base nutes, .25ml voodoo juice all per liter. I then started putting grow stone back in the net pot and adjusted the water level so that I would have just a little water bubbling into the media. I put another layer of grow stone over the top of that so the bottom of the cube is sitting about an inch above the bubbles. Then I re-inserted the cube and seeding and back filled with growstone. 12 hours later I have signs of life. The first set of leaves are twisted and have some damage but I think I am seeing a new set of leaves coming out. Here are the pics I took 12 hours after re-potting and adjusting.

Keep in mind, there was no sign of any green coming out of the center if this seedling last night but I see something now. I even took my jewelers loop to make sure I wasn't seeing things. There is definitely proof of life there. So I will continue to monitor her and see what she wants to do.
Any ideas for lessons learned here? Maybe over watering while top feeding? Not setting the water level/media depth correctly?
Any ideas on the twisted leaves, or the damage spots? She was not getting any nutrients when this damage occurred. Unless it was the root accelerator. I don't think voodoo juice would have caused this.
Any thoughts or ideas would be great, that way I can process my "lessons learned".
FYI....I love you guys @Wile e Peyote @briman @sanguine @HotBunz , You guys rock and make AFN what it is!!!!

 

[HotBunz]

AK,

Water at 140 PPM is what I would start calling hard water and there are certain nutes that are aimed at hard water users. Or of course suck it up and drop a $1.00 a gallon for R/O water from the store. I guess I never thought about how you would or would not add in the base water PPM levels. I ran jugged store water with a PPM of 3 so I didn't need to worry about it for most of my grow. When I ran tap water again I didn't worry because my tap is 40+- PPM. Maybe run store bought R/O till a plant is 30 days into it.

I agree with you I do think there are leaves showing in your newer pictures. But hearing how small the root growth is I am questioning the seed might just be a flop. It happens....I had a Ultra Lemon Haze that was super slow growing at 14 days she looked like a 4 day old. I ended up pulling her and she had almost ZERO roots. Go figure.

Keep your head up we are going to get you on track and together the group here on AFN are going to help you BLOW THIS GROW UP!

 

[AKsteel]

AK,

Water at 140 PPM is what I would start calling hard water and there are certain nutes that are aimed at hard water users. Or of course suck it up and drop a $1.00 a gallon for R/O water from the store. I guess I never thought about how you would or would not add in the base water PPM levels. I ran jugged store water with a PPM of 3 so I didn't need to worry about it for most of my grow. When I ran tap water again I didn't worry because my tap is 40+- PPM. Maybe run store bought R/O till a plant is 30 days into it.

I agree with you I do think there are leaves showing in your newer pictures. But hearing how small the root growth is I am questioning the seed might just be a flop. It happens....I had a Ultra Lemon Haze that was super slow growing at 14 days she looked like a 4 day old. I ended up pulling her and she had almost ZERO roots. Go figure.

Keep your head up we are going to get you on track and together the group here on AFN are going to help you BLOW THIS GROW UP!

Thanks brother for the support. I am going to just have to make the tap water work for now but an R/O system is probably next on the home upgrade list . I got a feeling that I was drowning her with the top feed. I do have another seed germinating now just in case, but I got a feeling she is gonna pull through. I will keep the new seedling in the germination chamber once she sprouts for a week or so and let her tap root establish better and then make the call on whether to pull the old one and start over or just put her in a smart pot and try to find some extra room for her.

 

[HotBunz]

Thanks brother for the support. I am going to just have to make the tap water work for now but an R/O system is probably next on the home upgrade list . I got a feeling that I was drowning her with the top feed. I do have another seed germinating now just in case, but I got a feeling she is gonna pull through. I will keep the new seedling in the germination chamber once she sprouts for a week or so and let her tap root establish better and then make the call on whether to pull the old one and start over or just put her in a smart pot and try to find some extra room for her.

Sounds like a solid plan sir! That way you don't lose a seed. The thing with hydro is things happen fast whether god or bad and you will know in a day whether this sprout is going to truly pull out of this funk.

 

[AKsteel]

Update. New life

New growth is still forming but slowly in my opinion. Water ph has stabilized at 6.0. My other mystery seed failed to germinate so dropped a DP auto ultimate. I am glad now that I have a seed buying addiction.
Still no roots coming out of the net pot. I either stunted the hell out of this girl by to much top feeding or the seeds were just not up to my abuse. Either way, I will probably pull her once I get a solid seedling going. I refuse to give up . Here are a few pics I took this morning

 

[A4]

She doesn't look bad bro and you have some good advice from members. My few cents, your slight problem, slight because I don't think it is that big of a deal right now, is water related. DWC success is very dependent on quality water. Do you have the ability to catch rain water? Even in 5 gallon buckets sitting outside? I use pure rain water for all of my plants, DWC and soil. Zero PPM, no buffers at all and responds very well to pH adjustment. If you decide to do that, just don't let it set too long outside. Once you get a full bucket, bring it in, put an air stone in and a cover on it to keep light out.

Best of luck bro! I will sub up to help out when asked. I try not to stick my nose in unless I am asked, lol, but I would love to see your first DWC being a great success!

 

[AKsteel]

She doesn't look bad bro and you have some good advice from members. My few cents, your slight problem, slight because I don't think it is that big of a deal right now, is water related. DWC success is very dependent on quality water. Do you have the ability to catch rain water? Even in 5 gallon buckets sitting outside? I use pure rain water for all of my plants, DWC and soil. Zero PPM, no buffers at all and responds very well to pH adjustment. If you decide to do that, just don't let it set too long outside. Once you get a full bucket, bring it in, put an air stone in and a cover on it to keep light out.

Best of luck bro! I will sub up to help out when asked. I try not to stick my nose in unless I am asked, lol, but I would love to see your first DWC being a great success!

Thanks for the advice. I will be working on the water issue.