Ok so thanks so much for the replies guys. It's been a while since I did hydro, I'm an outdoor soil guy by heart, however I've been learning a lot, for the better. I seemed to have solved most of my problems.
Main issues:
1) Humidity. Since my tent is only a 2x4 and my reservoir is below, these two 4' y'all girls are generating a lot of humidity on their own through transpiration and the soaked hydroton. I noticed now that the outdoor temps are rising the ambient temp of the room and the humidity has been changing, all winter the room was dry and I was able to generate my own humidity. Now that they are mid flower I didn't want to get mold, the humidity was getting in the red zone. I picked up a Dehumidifier and the room is perfect.
2)Athena cleanse: I always was running a sterile reservoir but the problem was with my Emerald goddess nutrient which is part of the emerald Harvest series it uses all organic stuff like kelp etc so do to me always running a low solution of that in my reservoir I was counteracting the beneficial bacteria. So I've stopped running that in the reservoir. Hope I don't regret it some people said that they foilar feed that nutrient but I don't want to be bothered with that and others said no reason to run sterile through the grow like that.
3)Top offs: I really wasn't topping off my reservoir which was really just inexperience. I always took readings with my blue lab pens and noticed slight increases in ppm but thought that was normal. I guess through vegetative and early flower it wasn't as big of a deal but now that they were drinking a heavy amount it must have threw the levels off too much. My Ec and ppms got really high at the end I believe like 1800 and 3.3 or something. That's what made me realize I probably had tons of salt in my tray. Also saw the plants halt growth it seemed. So now I top off every two days. It seems like the readings have gotten much better and my pH isn't dropping anymore!!
4) Solution strength: I was always running the recommended dose on the emerald Harvest page but people have stated that that's always the max amount you should probably use so I've lowered it to three quarters of that amount. This brings me to around 900 PPM at the start of the solution. Hope it's not too low now.
So basically between fixing the humidity, running a slightly lower nutrient solution, and topping off has seemed to fix my growth halt. My pH is staying steady not dropping anymore, my ppm and ec are much more stable. They are really looking good now. Smell incredible. What ppm would you guys recommend in mid to late flower? Some of my lower branches the buds are a little pale green, do you think this is just a light issue since there's such heavy canopy blocking down there?
