Trichy Bastard
Well-Known Member
My first instinct is that you may be going to heavy on the nutes. But perhaps you know best by knowing what you've tried. Make sure your ph/tds meter is calibrated and giving true results. Your chamber temps are borderline too high, best results are probably 65-70 degrees, although your temps are not completely unacceptable- just not optimal. Perhaps your nute blend is off- are you using r.o water, and blending the 3 parts according to the bottle recommendations if not using Atomizer/ tree farmers advice? Also, remember that the silica is probably bound with something like potassium, so the combo might be overdoing a certain element.I feel your pain. Mine aren't looking great either. This past week I was at 1000 ppm at 3/4 strength GH. I upped it today to full strength 1200 ppm. I abandoned the formula from Atomizer and am using the formula printed on the lable, at the bottom of the lable for flowering. The roots look great, but the plants are not growing very much. Very little change. Maybe two inches in two weeks. My times are at 1sec/6min. The roots stay a little moist before the next cycle hits. I changed my mister nozzles out today for fresh ones of the same .016 bio, I found a couple not spraying correctly. I have ordered some of the Cloudtop Red nozzles, if they don't get to doing better I may put those in when they arive. I haven't noticed any tip burn, but some of the leaves turned yellow early on and still haven't fully recovered from that. So that in itself is telling me to keep increasing the ppm level. Ph is set to around 5.8 - 6.0, temps like yours are around 80 to 85 during lights on. Running all three parts GH plus silica and 6 drops of bleach/gal. The only thing I know to do past this is to start adding additives.
Everybody's system and strain is a little different, so we all have to use guidelines and common sense. But I think tree farmer says he has never gone over 900 ppm (not sure which scale however). The thing is though, that he has true aero roots, which are more efficient. If your mist cycle is longer, wetter roots, then you'll need to use more traditional nute strengths. Even so, I have never used the full bottle strength of any product, they all seem too hot. Based on Atomizer's advice, I started using about 250 ppm (.7 scale) and went up from there as I rooted clones. They never turned yellow or looked deficient. The cool thing about aero is plants respond fast- so you can adjust the solution, and in a few hours have a visual confirmation if you are going in the right direction or not.