Cannot figure this out, is it my light?

I have been growing for some years now but I took a break and started again last year. Always grew in coco using salt nutes, just started using this method. I started off with a Cretivity 720w led and it worked great. I used Big Rootz soil and top dressed Mr Bs green trees bloom in flower.
It was the perfect run, not a single issue.
Ran it twice from start to finish and it was beautiful.
I moved, I bought an Hlg Rspec 600
I also have a 2x2 tent with a $50 Chinese led that I use to house clones and veg while the larger tent is in flower.
Alot of my plants in the large tent get deficiencies and just look sick overall. I thought that I wasn’t using a large enough container so I started putting them in 10 gallon pots and they don’t seem to be bouncing back yet.
I thought it was the water because my water out here is nasty but everything in the small tent uses the same water and they are fine. Sometimes they are in that small tent for 45 days and don’t run into a single issue.
I’ve messed with the pH
I’ve given them fresh soil.
They seem to do slightly better when I transplant after about a week or two, but then it’s almost like whatever is in that soil is not enough to sustain the plant under that light.
I’m about to switch out that light and put in my old one and see if that fixes this issue.
Do you think it’s the light?
They literally go from one place to the other and get sick
I had a watering timer go bad recently, and that made all of my plants really sick, while I was out of town. They got flooded . I water by hand I had to go to a funeral, so I tried a timer out and it went pretty hard. They haven’t bounced back from that yet and it’s been 2 1/2 weeks.
Maybe I got them to the point where they don’t want to bounce back?
I took cuts off of them and those clones are doing amazing in the small tent.
I cannot figure it out andthe last thing that I haven’t messed with is the light. I’ve had every problem in my growing career, not this one though. Has anyone had these problem before?
Also my environment:
Temps around 75-78
Humidity around 40-45
Light is set at 36in above the canopy at 40% power.
The first picture is what they looked like about a week ago
The second is last night
Do you think that might have gotten sick and they are taking forever to bounce back ?because some of them seem to be doing fine, and I could possibly have just not put them in a large enough container to begin with. But it’s like this light makes the root ball grow so fast that it doesn’t keep up with the rest of the plant. I know that sounds weird, but I’ve transplanted a plant into a 5 gallon container that looked like it would thrive in a one gallon and the roots were exploding inside.
anyone’s experience would be helpful

HLG lighting tends to put out more than the average led fixture. The plants could possibly be needing a higher feed, or the light turned down.
Most would rather up the feed than give less light. Wait for some more opinions though.
Is the humidity always that low with lights on? That could be part of the issue.
Low humidity can have a significant impact on plants. When the air is dry, plants lose moisture through their leaves at a faster rate than they can absorb it from the soil. This can lead to a range of symptoms, including wilting, leaf drop, and stunted growth.

Thank you for all of the information!

I would vote that the higher power HLG light is pulling more nutrients than the previous light, it looks like magnesium deficiency to me and possibly a little light stress, are you dimming the light and keeping it a good distance? Your humidity could be a little higher 50-55 ideally but 45 isn't too bad.

I think you are correct, the plant is not established enough in the soil to feed what is already grown above, definitely dimming lights and to fix the magnesium deficiency you can add 1 gram of pure epsom salts per gal of water and water that in once a week until they show recovery, you can do it weekly in the future as a preventative measure.

I would suggest a slurry test of your soil, soak 1 part soil to 1 part water for 20 mins then pH the water that soaked in the soil, that will tell you what the rootzone pH is. Ideally you want it to read 6.2-6.5 range for soil. Cannabis plants like slightly acidic rootzone and 7 is neutral.

I hear excellent things about the Big Rootz soil I am very tempted to try it myself..

My prognosis
Mixture of possible light stress and Magnesium Deficiency

I think they are underfed as stated above. I would water more frequently and not raise my ec much.

ProPheT 216 said:

I think they are underfed as stated above. I would water more frequently and not raise my ec much.

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So, with big roots, you have to do absolutely nothing with feeding in veg. The soil is pretty hot. I’ll try throwing in some epsom salt, I foliar fed with Epsom salt the other day, and it definitely made them greener, but they did not bounce back all the way. Everything under that light get sick. I can’t stand it. I have my humidifier cranked all the way up.
I can start misting water in there, periodically throughout the day to see if that helps
It just doesn’t make sense to me.
This plant that I’m gonna show you I put in there a couple days ago. It was beautiful no issues whatsoever. Now the leaves are starting to wrinkle and get weird after I transplanted her. The other picture is just a couple of the babies I have in my small tent. Perfectly happy.
I am starting to see improvement on the purple stems. They were stiff as a board, and now they’re becoming more flexible and less purple.
I was supposed to put these things in the flour this week, and I’ve already started top dressing so I might be burnt.

Cookiezealous said:

So, with big roots, you have to do absolutely nothing with feeding in veg. The soil is pretty hot. I’ll try throwing in some epsom salt, I foliar fed with Epsom salt the other day, and it definitely made them greener, but they did not bounce back all the way. Everything under that light get sick. I can’t stand it. I have my humidifier cranked all the way up.
I can start misting water in there, periodically throughout the day to see if that helps
It just doesn’t make sense to me.
This plant that I’m gonna show you I put in there a couple days ago. It was beautiful no issues whatsoever. Now the leaves are starting to wrinkle and get weird after I transplanted her. The other picture is just a couple of the babies I have in my small tent. Perfectly happy.
I am starting to see improvement on the purple stems. They were stiff as a board, and now they’re becoming more flexible and less purple.
I was supposed to put these things in the flour this week, and I’ve already started top dressing so I might be burnt.

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Even tho your pots r still wet the nutrient charge isn't enough to sustain a plant that is going thru preflower stretch. This is when they eat the absolute most. Feed more often.

ProPheT 216 said:

Even tho your pots r still wet the nutrient charge isn't enough to sustain a plant that is going thru preflower stretch. This is when they eat the absolute most. Feed more often.

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I’m sure you are absolutely correct because everything is pointing to a nutrient deficiency. I went with this growing method because it was easier than having to measure out my ppps every time I feed.
Real pain
So I transplanted into 10 gallon pots
That should be big enough to carry them through
Top dressed with slightly more than the recommended amount for that size of container.
Giving it another week to see if there’s improvement and if there is then I will flip them if there isn’t I’m starting over with these clones and changing out the light

I'd gee them a foliar feed again.
Either Epsom salts on its own or a multi purpose nutrient.

Cookiezealous said:

So, with big roots, you have to do absolutely nothing with feeding in veg. The soil is pretty hot. I’ll try throwing in some epsom salt, I foliar fed with Epsom salt the other day, and it definitely made them greener, but they did not bounce back all the way. Everything under that light get sick. I can’t stand it. I have my humidifier cranked all the way up.
I can start misting water in there, periodically throughout the day to see if that helps
It just doesn’t make sense to me.
This plant that I’m gonna show you I put in there a couple days ago. It was beautiful no issues whatsoever. Now the leaves are starting to wrinkle and get weird after I transplanted her. The other picture is just a couple of the babies I have in my small tent. Perfectly happy.
I am starting to see improvement on the purple stems. They were stiff as a board, and now they’re becoming more flexible and less purple.
I was supposed to put these things in the flour this week, and I’ve already started top dressing so I might be burnt.

Click to expand...

The R-Spec light your using is going to cause the cannabis plants to eat a LOT of magnesium because of the extra red spectrum from the light. That is a flowering light more than it is a veg light.

Are you dimming the light? Their specs show it can be dimmed to 160 watts. I would suggest doing that. Make sure the light is far away from the plants. They do not need a lot of light in veg contrary to popular belief.


Note they are saying in VEG the footprint is 6 ft x 6 ft at 40 inches away from the top of the plants. Also, soils aren't always consistent, 1 bag is usually different than another in some way/shape/form so expecting controlled results using dirt is very wishful thinking.

Question 1: How many inches are the lights from the top of your plants?
Question 2: Are you dimming your lights?

I would chill on spraying the plants with stuff and changing things until you get the light intensity and distance dialed in. This is literally light stress causing magnesium deficiency from everything I see.

The light isn't the problem. My guess is it needs more magnesium/nutes.

calvin.m16 said:

Note they are saying in VEG the footprint is 6 ft x 6 ft at 40 inches away

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Is that on full power for veg?
OP says he's 36" away at 40% power ~ 240 watts.
I don't think it's the light

Moflow said:

Is that on full power for veg?
OP says he's 36" away at 40% power ~ 240 watts.
I don't think it's the light

Click to expand...

The manual says 40" for veg, no mention of dimming.

The light right now is at 50% power
It’s about 38 inches away
It is either the light or the soil
I’m just cautious about adding anything into this type of soil because it’s already loaded and I’ve already started top dressing, flowering nutrients
It’s all organic and it takes time to break down but when this happened, I was not expecting them to take a dump so o was going with the schedule I had set.
I added a small amount of Cal mag+
I’m going to see if that helps because I’ve tried almost everything else
My theory:
I leave them in a small container too long
And when I bring them into the big tent under that light up, they start to eat faster than the soil can provide. My other light never had this happen. It was a different water source, but the water out here is insane. I don’t believe that’s the problem though because the small tent uses the same water and everything is fine.
I was going to start a brand new plant in the finishing container and see if that works
I’ve never had this problem before and it has been killing me for two weeks.
The clones I took from these plants are doing great in the other tent. If this doesn’t correct the issue or start to improve it within the next week I’m just gonna start with the clones I have with a new light and cry a little. My last run had the AC go out in the middle of summer and fried everything.
Not the best of luck recently

To me , it looks like your vpd is too high, crank up the humidity to 55% or reduce temp to 70-72f. it really look like a calcium antagonism locking your nutrients.

When plants are feed low EC at the sametime you have high vpd it cause salt imbalance because plants can absorb way more calcium at low ec and even more when their transpiration is pushed to the limit like in your case.

Definitely the light. Classic light stress symptoms. It can be confusing because it looks like a nutrient problem but watch after a few days with lower light intensity you’ll start to get greener growth.

light stress with light @ 40% intensity and hanging 36inch above plants? Nah. Cannabis can handle easily 750umols no co2 and way more than that with supplemental co2.

Definitely the light.

I would turn that light down low to about 25%. Get things green again and very slowly start to turn it up 1% a day.

he said, his temps is 75-78f , 40-45% humidity , whats his vpd? oh he's above 1.5.... its not light stress at all... his plant are just drying under his light because plants stomata are close. bad gas exchange. you can hit the like button if you want . enought free alpha for today