Curling Up, Curling Down, Drooping, Yellowing. Out Of Ideas

Swim is running a 11 plant ebb and flow hydroponic system under a 400w HPS (18/6) with a water pump that waters for 15min every 30min during the 18hours the light is on. Up until a week ago swim had the plants in soil where swim had started them. While in the soil there were a few leaves that were curling upward but swim was not to worried about them seeing as it was not many.

After transfering them to the hydro garden they started yellowing then browning, drooping, and curling much more upward. At first swim believed it to be due to stress shock from the move but it has been getting worse and worse over this last week. swim looked around online and found the high amount of salts in his well water could be causing some of the problems (800tds on swims water out of the tap!) so swim bought drinking water with a tds of 32 and followed the directions on the Advanced Nutrients bottle and remixed the solution and it has a tds of 380 now. It has only been one day so Swim has not noticed any change yet but swim wanted any help from anyone because swim is very worried about immanent death.

The Hydro system is Rons 11 Plant System, made with pvc piping and inverted soda bottles.

Thank You
Metta
Jules

Whats up!!

Hey i think swim is over watering. Over watering with a correct ppm can still result in toxicity. The plants in the pics look over fed to me. Try to flood ur system until water reaches the over flow point. From that point the system should stop watering. Try only flooding 4x day for around 5 mins or so( what ever your timer alows you to do.) As you get further along youll need to flood more times. Just make sure once your flood level reaches the overflow point, the flooding stops or is close to stopping. You dont want to soak your plants. Just enough to reach the overflow point than stop. I use to use a flood tray with 36 ladies on it and i would flood 3-5 times a day for 5 mins. 800ppm tap water is very unsafe i wouldnt bathe in something like that. Are you sure its that high?

Something you didnt mention is the ph of the solution and base water. Very Important!!!!
If you ph is around5.6- 6.1 than the advise i gave you is sound. If your unsure of ph you need to get that straighten out aswell. Ph being off very well could be the source of you troubles.

I just want to second what the above poster wrote. You are overwatering, I water my plants for 12 minutes 3 times a day and thats it, and that is plenty.
Also, PH is super important, your plant can only take up nutrients within a certain range.
Here is a chart.

flipsidesw said:

Something you didnt mention is the ph of the solution and base water. Very Important!!!!
If you ph is around5.6- 6.1 than the advise i gave you is sound. If your unsure of ph you need to get that straighten out aswell. Ph being off very well could be the source of you troubles.

Click to expand...

That's what I was going to say too, especially when i saw that you'd switched to bottled drinking water instead of distilled water. My ex-girlfriend and I learned that lesson the hard way once when she decided to start using bottled drinking water instead of tap water in her aquarium. The pH either shot through the roof or dropped through the floor, I can't remember which. The pH of that water was just off the scale, threw the whole aquarium out of whack and terrorized the fish. I'd definitely check that water.

Thank You Very Much For All Your Good Advice! The "drinking water" swim bought is filtered four different ways and has a neutral pH. swim was not sure about whether or not distilled water was a good idea or not so thank you and swim will use it next time.

The switch swim has is a 15min switch so the shortest time swim can set it for is 15min on. Swim changed it to only water 4 times a day, will 15min be all right or should swim go out and find one that works on 5min intervals? Also the pH is about 6-6.5, swim uses litmus paper so he does not have a perfect measuring. Any recommendations on how to lower the pH?

Also, swim is using Advanced Nutrients 2-1-6 grow liquid nutrients. good or should swim go with something else?

Swim has read a lot on hydro theory but is still missing a lot of information on how to actually do it so any advice from you on anything would be wonderful.

Yeah, swim and his girl don't drink the well water any more, not since swim tested it with his tds meter and discovered it is off the chart.



Thank You Again
Metta
Jules