New Grower Need an experienced grower advise please.

[Cannabiskollektivet]

I might have found the cause of the problem... I usually don't drain my runoff until maybe 1-2 days after feeding, sometimes I just let my plants soak it up.. apperantly alot of sodium gets soaked up and causes the nutrient lockout? Can anyone confirm or deny this? And if this is the cause for the lockout should I flush my plants with PH:ed water and then resume normal feed? @Arthur @Olderfart @low_and_slow

 

[Builder0101]

I might have found the cause of the problem... I usually don't drain my runoff until maybe 1-2 days after feeding, sometimes I just let my plants soak it up.. apperantly alot of sodium gets soaked up and causes the nutrient lockout? Can anyone confirm or deny this? And if this is the cause for the lockout should I flush my plants with PH:ed water and then resume normal feed? @Arthur @Olderfart @low_and_slow

You should remove the runoff from time to time. I bottom feed in a large drip tray. I Fill the tray and let them drink for 2 days. I made the mistake of not running water top feed to runoff and removing runoff. Same thing really. It did create buildup and I got a bad lockout. The different genetics expressed the lockout in different ways so I started by chasing deficiencies which, od course, made it worse.

 

[low_and_slow]

I always drain runoff immediately, for exactly that reason. I feed with a pump sprayer, counting out 8 "peanut butters" per plant, then come back with a big ass sponge and soak it all up. I throw it on my garden and some ornamentals indoors so it's not just going down the drain.

I have very strong feelings against bottom watering hydro nutes in coco, unless you're doing a F&D with a very large reservoir, I think it's a recipe for disaster as the pH and EC will swing around like crazy without any clear way for you to control those variables consistently. Adding in plain water only further complicates things by altering pH and EC significantly.

Plants basically want one EC their whole mature lives, and then a narrow little range of pH fluctuation to get a full nutrient profile. If you're moving the EC all around by letting your runoff concentrate or by flushing with plain water, you're really not going to know what you're actually exposing the roots to.

 

[Olderfart]

I always drain runoff immediately, for exactly that reason. I feed with a pump sprayer, counting out 8 "peanut butters" per plant, then come back with a big ass sponge and soak it all up. I throw it on my garden and some ornamentals indoors so it's not just going down the drain.

I have very strong feelings against bottom watering hydro nutes in coco, unless you're doing a F&D with a very large reservoir, I think it's a recipe for disaster as the pH and EC will swing around like crazy without any clear way for you to control those variables consistently. Adding in plain water only further complicates things by altering pH and EC significantly.

Plants basically want one EC their whole mature lives, and then a narrow little range of pH fluctuation to get a full nutrient profile. If you're moving the EC all around by letting your runoff concentrate or by flushing with plain water, you're really not going to know what you're actually exposing the roots to.

My autopot experience to date is moving me in your direction... I like the convenience, and independence from electricity, but am tired of the lockouts. I may give them another try, but if I do, I will be doing intermittent top waterings or minor flushes to check runoff. If this doesn't do the job, I may set up a pump/timer/top watering setup similar to the diy setup described in cocoforcannabis.
When I flush, I use nute solution at the pH and EC I want to give the plant after the flush, not water - as you note, plants don't like having their osmotic environment changed drastically.

Have you done any grow journals on line?

 

[low_and_slow]

Have you done any grow journals on line?

Not in a while, I've got some photoperiod photos in my media from an ongoing grow, waiting a bit to open a journal on the ALF#5 autos I'm growing, probably start a thread this week about them.

 

[Olderfart]

Not in a while, I've got some photoperiod photos in my media from an ongoing grow, waiting a bit to open a journal on the ALF#5 autos I'm growing, probably start a thread this week about them.

would love to see what you are up to.

 

[Cannabiskollektivet]

Now i'm even more confused.. I did a slurry test on the soil with batterywater (EC=0, PPM=0, PH=7.0) and it came out good. PH was around 6.5, PPM was around 150 and EC was 0.3..

Should I keep flushing or resuming feed? At this point im worried they are underfed? @low_and_slow @Arthur @Olderfart @Builder0101

 

[low_and_slow]

Now i'm even more confused.. I did a slurry test on the soil with batterywater (EC=0, PPM=0, PH=7.0) and it came out good. PH was around 6.5, PPM was around 150 and EC was 0.3..

Should I keep flushing or resuming feed? At this point im worried they are underfed? @low_and_slow @Arthur @Olderfart @Builder0101

Hmmmm....

How high above your canopy is your light? My recommendation right now is to put you in gardener "time-out" lol. Raise your light to the max height you can get it, then do NOTHING AT ALL until the pot feels noticeably light, like it's ready for a watering. This might take up to a week.

Once you get there, let's see some pictures with the light on, then turn the light off and take some pics with normal room light, then turn all the lights off and take a picture with the flash of your camera. That will give us 3 different color rendering indices to view the leaf color and better gauge what might be going on.

The fact that the bleaching is occurring at the top of the plant and not at the bottom indicates that it's either light bleaching from too much intensity (a possibility, you have a gorilla of a light in there!) OR you have an immobile nutrient deficiency.

Immobile nutrients include calcium (Ca), boron (B), chlorine (Cl), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo), silicon (Si), sulfur (S) and zinc (Zn).

A true deficiency of one of those nutrients seems IMPOSSIBLE given you're using All Mix and a cannabis-specific nutrient. My guess is that one of those immobile nutrients is locked out due to pH or an excess of another nutrient that causes it to lock out. That's assuming your issue isn't just a straight-up sunburn from too much light intensity.

 

[Cannabiskollektivet]

Hmmmm....

How high above your canopy is your light? My recommendation right now is to put you in gardener "time-out" lol. Raise your light to the max height you can get it, then do NOTHING AT ALL until the pot feels noticeably light, like it's ready for a watering. This might take up to a week.

Once you get there, let's see some pictures with the light on, then turn the light off and take some pics with normal room light, then turn all the lights off and take a picture with the flash of your camera. That will give us 3 different color rendering indices to view the leaf color and better gauge what might be going on.

The fact that the bleaching is occurring at the top of the plant and not at the bottom indicates that it's either light bleaching from too much intensity (a possibility, you have a gorilla of a light in there!) OR you have an immobile nutrient deficiency.

Immobile nutrients include calcium (Ca), boron (B), chlorine (Cl), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo), silicon (Si), sulfur (S) and zinc (Zn).

A true deficiency of one of those nutrients seems IMPOSSIBLE given you're using All Mix and a cannabis-specific nutrient. My guess is that one of those immobile nutrients is locked out due to pH or an excess of another nutrient that causes it to lock out. That's assuming your issue isn't just a straight-up sunburn from too much light intensity.

Light used to be 40cm from the highest canopy, now i raised it to 60cm, so around 80cm from the shortest canopy.
I will post some pictures before the next feed per your request. Thanks a bunch for the help, appreciate it alot.

 

[low_and_slow]

This light is so frustrating, all the manufacturer specs show PPFD at 1m, but the highest value is like ~300 micromoles per meter square seconds. That's not enough energy for flowering, so you definitely need to hang it inside of 1m, but the manufacturer provides no details about intensity within 1m. So it's like if you want to flower correctly with their light, you're on your own to figure it out...lame.