What is PH supposed to do if plants are growing? my PH is staying steady not going up or down

ryn5669

Well-Known Member
Stopped growing? It's been less than 24 hours since your last update...

If the EC is staying steady, the water is going down, and there are no clear deficiencies, then just let the plants do their thing. Don't love your plants to literal death.

As for light, what is the light you're using, hanging height and dimmed setting?
2 spider farmer sf1000. 22in. was on full last night. will dim them just a bit. they should be able to handle full power but its making my tent a little to hot. I think im just paranoid. i don't know.
 

ec121

Well-Known Member
yes, i can dim them to %50 if you think that would be better. I'm following the instructions but i guess thats for 1 light.
I don't know, I gave up on guessing and use a meter. Shane from Migro did a test with the Photone app for iPhone/iPad and it looked fairly reasonable for a phone app. If you have a newer model iPad/iPhone, you may just want to get that as it's probably better than guessing. Veg should be like 280-550 PPFD. Alternatively, you can take a Migro PAR test and hang it at the same height he ran the test and then dim it appropriately (e.g., if avg PAR is 700 @ 12" on one light, you can dim it 50% and be roughly at 350 for one light).
 

Delps8

Well-Known Member
Your lights are putting out about 400 µmols at 100% at 22". Seeing that they're arranged end to end, I'd posit that the PPFD map for that configuration will look a lot like putting two copies of the map side by side. LED's are directional and have light fall off at the periphery so my guess would be that your plants are being exposed to the light levels from the end of PPFD map, not the center.

All three plants appear to have some parts of some leaf tips that are curling. I'm not convinced that's because of light exposure because your light levels are not very high and I'm not seeing light avoidance. Light avoidance in cannabis is usually manifested by tacoing ("canoing") of the leaf and/or rotation about the horizontal axis. I'm not seeing either of those symptoms. Instead of tacoing, it looks like one side of some of the leaves is folded up or perhaps is still in the process unfolding.

How many days has it been since these plants germinated? With that number, I can compare your light levels with the light levels for my GG autos.

A manufacturers recommended light level will tend to give you a good crop and will definitely err on the side of caution — the last thing they want is to have light levels that are too high and that end up damaging plants.
 

Bucsfan80

Well-Known Member
still having problems. roots look great now. but now my ppms don't move 416 or something. PH rises from 5.5 to 5.8 over 10 hrs.

Plants seem to have stopped growing. 1 on left had some curled up leaves the right one dropping. my left spider light is stronger than my right 1. i think the left got to much light maybe. I have no idea. This grow has me baffled. once I think I got it something new comes up.
They look a really good healty green and roots look great. They might have just been shocked from the high ppm you had at the beginning. Just keep ph between 5.5 - 6 and let them recover. Like said above don't love them to death. They should take off like crazy they just gotta recover. Your getting some real good advice from these guy and they will get you thru.
 

Bucsfan80

Well-Known Member
That's a great way to put it!

I'm "detail oriented" (!) and I was definitely a "plant helicopter daddy" for my first couple of grows. I'll keep your words in mind.
During my first few grows I spent my whole evening after work in my grow rooms. No exaggeration like hours upon hours my wife no like lol
 

ryn5669

Well-Known Member
im going put some pics up maybe in a few days. me looking at them 24/7 i probably don't notice them growing. i know they are the leaves are starting to hang off the side of res. now.
 

ryn5669

Well-Known Member
what is light orange spots on leaves? on my left plant. update on roots still a small amount brown. but they grown more. ph rises usually from 5.5 to 6.0 overnight. PPMS seem same so far.
 

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Bucsfan80

Well-Known Member
what is light orange spots on leaves? on my left plant. update on roots still a small amount brown. but they grown more. ph rises usually from 5.5 to 6.0 overnight. PPMS seem same so far.
What nutes do you use? It could maybe be cal deficiency, wait for other reply and see what they say. The plants look pretty good over all imo.
 

Bucsfan80

Well-Known Member
Is your water level going down at all daily? They are small but have a decent root structure and I would think the level would go down a little bit daily at least.
 

ryn5669

Well-Known Member
OK, FINALLY today i checked the ppms they were down from 416 to 323.

I bumped it back up to 483 with just a small amount of Magical, Root 66, and BC grow.

the net pots are still just 1in. above the water line in the res. Do I have to add water?

I was plaining on changing out the res on Monday which would be a little over a week. or is it ok to go 2 weeks without changing out the water.

this is one thing I forgot about hydro was how often do you need to change the entire res. ????

sorry 1 more thing. the power cord going to the water pump feels a tiny bit slimy right at the base underwater??

thx.
 

rkymtnman

Well-Known Member
when your hydroguard runs out, get southern ag garden friendly fungicide. same stuff, million times more concentrated and cheaper
 

Delps8

Well-Known Member
In the short time that I've been growing cannabis (One grow in 2017, three since 1/21) I've read advice about how to deal with a reservoir from which nutrients have been taken up and that advice has fallen into two basic camps. One approach is to top up the res with full strength nutes, the idea being that's what needed to replenish the strength and correct balance of the nutrient solution. The other approach is to top up with water. I took the "add nutes" approach, until a couple of months ago.

What brought about that change was the attached paper, which is yet more information provided by Dr. Bruce Bugbee. Though Bugbee is most known in the cannabis world for his work on lighting, this paper is on cannabis nutrients and dates back to the year 2004.

I've highlighted the sections in the paper that I feel are most important to me. Based on what's been highlighted, I changed my practice from topping up with full strength nutes to using a diluted mixture, that dilution being about three parts water to one part of nutrients. (My situation is unusual because my res holds 28 gallons of nutes so I suspect that the nutrient concentration is more stable than a grower using a lower capacity reservoir.)

Near the beginning of the paper, you will see that Bugbee breaks down nutrient uptake into three categories of nutrients. The nutrients that are taken up the most rapidly (within a few hours) are moved into the plant where they are put to use. The "intermediate uptake" nutes are taken up at about the same rate as water and the third group he labels "Passive uptake, slow removal". As Bugby argues, if you replenish the nutrient solution with full strength nutrients, you may end up with an excess of the fast uptake nutrients. The solution to this issue (pun intended) is to replenish with a diluted solution - the nutrient ratios remain constant but the nutrient mixture is dilute.

I found this document during my last grow when my plants were in flower so I have not had the opportunity to put this into practice for an entire grow. I intend to reread it and incorporate information and advice that he offers into my growing practices.

There are a lot of good information as well as little informational gems in this document, even though it's less than 20 pages long.
 

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