Can someone with more experience please confirm or deny my suspicions?

[narmohare]

HELLO AFN friends. I have come here seeking advice yet again. Here's the rundown. I have two plants going. One in coco that's halfway through flower, and one in soil that is on day maybe 20. I noticed 2 days ago, a few gnats flying around my lung room after I had opened both my tents(they were from before but I thought I got them all). I decided to use some DE because both plants were due for a watering and the medium was dry. I put a good layer of DE on top of the medium(which I believe is my issue. I seriously probably used more than a whole cup) and yesterday, I watered. I came back today, and there's a score of issues. Yesterday, before watering the DE into the medium, it was fine. I will post some pictures below. I suspect it's a nutrient lockout due to adding wayyy too much silica because of the DE. Can anyone confirm or deny this? The plant seriously looked almost perfectly healthy a few days ago. As of today, I gave the plant its regular feeding again, but should I do a complete flush of my coco tomorrow? From what I understand, you should not EVER water coco with just regular water, which is why I gave the plant its regular feed today.

Specs for diagnoses
Light: Mars Hydro TSW 2000 at 75% strength and 23 inches above the plant, giving me right about 40 DLI.
Pot size: 5 gallon fabric pots
Medium: 70/30 coco/perlite
Nutrients: Following the GH light feed schedule with the trio, but only do half nutes.
Temps: 74-77F
Humidity: 45-65%, but during lights on hovers right around 52% and lights off it is right about 45%. The range is so wide because my lung room is a room that people walk through so as it opens and closes humidity fluxes.

I did check for bud rot around some of the leaves and as far as I could tell there were no signs of budrot. As an aside, I'll give a brief description of the issues in case the picture doesn't do it justice. Overnight, the majority of the leaves have turned shiny green, and some have curled tips as well. I would guess this indicates a nitrogen toxicity. As can be seen in the pictures, a few leaves also appear to have had their tips turn tan color overnight. If I had to guess, I think this is a potassium deficiency. Then, there's the clump of leaves together where you can see what appears to be a calcium deficiency. All of these things led me to conclude lockout. There appears to be other issues my eyes can't spot. I could be nowhere close to the correct answer though as I'm a new grower.

That's all of the relevant info I can think of at the moment. If I left anything out please let me know. From my inexperienced mind, and what my notes would tell me, the ONLY variable that has changed in my grow area in the past week has been me giving them the DE a couple days ago. Nothing else has changed, and this plant was thriving beforehand. So yea, can anyone confirm or deny my suspicion that its an overdose of silica that caused my plant to get locked out? Much love friends.

 

[JP1]

The DE will literally take forever to break down into absorbable silica so I don't think that's the issue at all. Fungus gnat larvae will eat roots so that might be your problem. I'm a fan of mosquito bits/dunks for fungus gnats but no matter what you do, it'll take a couple of weeks to go away. Once you kill the larvae in the soil, the ones that fly around will die off on their own shortly

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

@narmohare A cup is a lot of any mineral but I think your problem stems from over feeding. Your plants are very dark green and shiny. This is a sign of too much Nitrogen. I think you are in a lock out. You need to get the balance back in your pots. Coco is easier just flush with balanced nutrients at 400PPM. The soil is a crap shoot. You cannot flush it, that just makes it worse. Just PH water for a while?

You need to take care of the Gnats also! Farming ain't easy. The rewards are fun

 

[Bill.de.Cat]

Yellow stickies are your friend. Can show you have the critters before they get bad enuff to notice cause they are attracted to em.

 

[narmohare]

@narmohare A cup is a lot of any mineral but I think your problem stems from over feeding. Your plants are very dark green and shiny. This is a sign of too much Nitrogen. I think you are in a lock out. You need to get the balance back in your pots. Coco is easier just flush with balanced nutrients at 400PPM. The soil is a crap shoot. You cannot flush it, that just makes it worse. Just PH water for a while?

View attachment 1427676

You need to take care of the Gnats also! Farming ain't easy. The rewards are fun

Thank you! I will be feeding my coco with the trio at as close to around 400ppm as I can get, at ph 6.1. So, do you mean for the plant in soil I should only give it PHed water? I ask because I am using RO water, and I have not been PH-ing. I'm also using dry amendments for my soil and I am suppose to top-dress today actually, so I don't know if that changes anything. As far as the gnats, I'll put some more effort. Its a bit hard for me to see the little buggers as tiny as they are and none of my traps have caught a single one.

 

[narmohare]

Yellow stickies are your friend. Can show you have the critters before they get bad enuff to notice cause they are attracted to em.

This is what I don't understand. I'm starting to think its maybe just baby fruit flies, and not gnats. I say this because I have been told time and time again that the traps will tell you when the infestation is getting worse, but in the week I have had two traps up, I have not been able to trap a single gnat. I can see tiny little gnat like things fly around occasionally though, and I found what looked to me as a new grower as a couple dead gnats on the bottom of my tent. None on the traps though so far.

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

Yes you need to let your RO water stabilize then PH it to 6.3 for peat based soil and 6.5 for compost based soil. Reverse osmosis water is nearly pure water with a PH of 7. Reverse osmosis is a filtration method that removes more than 99% of all the contaminants in water. The result is nearly pure water, which has neutral pH of 7. But if it's exposed to air, RO water drops down to an acidic pH range of 5 – 5.5. It is much easier to PH it if you add a little calcium ~ 50 PPM.

Put your traps on the soil sticky side up. If you have a problem it will be obvious in a short time.

 

[narmohare]

Yes you need to let your RO water stabilize then PH it to 6.3 for peat based soil and 6.5 for compost based soil. Reverse osmosis water is nearly pure water with a PH of 7. Reverse osmosis is a filtration method that removes more than 99% of all the contaminants in water. The result is nearly pure water, which has neutral pH of 7. But if it's exposed to air, RO water drops down to an acidic pH range of 5 – 5.5. It is much easier to PH it if you add a little calcium ~ 50 PPM.

Put your traps on the soil sticky side up. If you have a problem it will be obvious in a short time.

Thank you, I really appreciate the response! I have not been doing anything to my Ro water, so I will definitely take care to start ph'ing it to 6.3 or 6.5 . I'll have to check which one of those is the base of my soil first.

 

[Going2fast]

I agree with @Mañ'O'Green. Not the DE as it takes a while to break down.

 

[MotaZona]

Those are some red petioles. Even the lower ones are red. I don’t know if that’s a clue or not.