First Hydro Grow. I screwed it up

My first hydro grow. Two plants, 3 gallon buckets. Started with two nice female clones from a friend. No problems so far as they grew real nice. Used the GH flora 3 part nutes. Went to flower at 4 weeks .. Looking VERY nice! Just like pictures indicate they should. Nice buds forming, strong white hairs all over. The 5-6 flower week they started to change at the tops. Turning a lighter green with thick leaves growing up. Something wasn’t right.

Long story short,, I didn’t realize I should be checking the PPM…. (first timer).. The PH is good.. Anyway I got a PPM tester and the reservoir is at 1400 and the buckets were at 3000!!!! I flushed the heck out of the plants and got the PPM down to a 450.. That’s without nutrients. So I put new water in at 1000 ppm with mild nutrients.. The buds have lots of red hairs,, trichromes aren’t changing white or amber yet. 6.5 weeks now.

I cut a couple buds off (the funkiest lime green ones) to check them out and they have some seeds!!! I’m sure I have ruined my plants. My question is, are the seeds any good from a plant like this?? I’m gonna plant them as I have no others..

so you are running DWC which is good for a first time setup not sure about the seeds but only thing i dont understand is why go for a 3 part nute mix on the first attempt this can get complicated for someone just starting why not go for some gh flora nova single part very easy to use and sounds like your water is very high in ppm's from the tap. if you are only running 2 3 gal buckets just get some RO or distilled put in recommended nute dose ph and be done with it for the week and do the same next week. i never used a ppm meter until recent grow because i use tap water now but mine is still at only 150 ppm out the tap. if your tap water is 450 ppm's out the tap basically thats 450 ppm's of nutes your girls cant have and that is quite a bit. sounds like you have a very sensitive strain as well but 3000 ppm is WOW lol i have got mine up to 2300 before but dam thats high.

I went with the 3 part cause I started them with flora grow (grow / flower) and I thought it was kind of thick for the hydro set-up. I used it in dirt before. Anyway I was trying to use the best system nutrients.. Do you think at this time I should just put RO in and let them go?? They're at 6.5 weeks.. Don't know the strain. I don't know if I can get any good buds with any potency from them now.I attached a pic before they went south and 4 as of today 6.5 wweks.

man they did get pretty seedy i can see them in the pics they must have got very stressed to make seeds like that. they looked very nice though!! ya man if it where me i would run some fresh water only no nutes for a week or so and then harvest them. dry and cure same as always and then break apart and get those seeds out and start again. i still use the flora nova grow/bloom for my hydro setup and it works great it is a very thick nutrient mix and can get kinda messy but i just clean res's every time i do a water change. when i used buckets i would just have a spare bucket(clean) and do my mix in it then just pull the lid of the old one and into new one then take old one clean and use for the next plant in line. the only thing about it is when the plants drink water from the res the level goes down and the nute mix then becomes more concentrated so i would always keep an eye on the water level.

I'd be very careful with those seeds. If you had no males in your garden your probably had a hermie. I've never heard of stressing a plant and it growing seeds with out pollination but I have heard of stressed plants turning hermie. If those seeds are an off spring of a hermie pretty sure it will grow hermie, Especially if a plant pollinated it's self. You wouldn't keep a kid you had with your sister, know what I'm saying?

if they have seeds i would assume without saying they where hermie and growing pollen sacks so sorry if i have to ask did your plants have pollen sacks lol. pretty sure i mean im no expert but pretty sure a cannabis plant cant grow seeds without pollen.

I had no males at all anywhere.. Only these two clones from a good female.. they flowered perfectly,, no male signs,, just ALOT of white hairs and buds. These are female. No pollen sacks or "footballs" when first identified as females. They've been in the same buckets since the beginning and have not touched any other plantsView attachment 1369323... I asked a local "expert" and he said you can stress them enough to turn em herme during the flowering stage. In the pics i posted theres one before they turned bad. I posted it again, It's no male ... I'm afraid of what StonerSmurf said.....

Hippie55 said:

I had no males at all anywhere.. Only these two clones from a good female.. they flowered perfectly,, no male signs,, just ALOT of white hairs and buds. These are female. No pollen sacks or "footballs" when first identified as females. They've been in the same buckets since the beginning and have not touched any other plantsView attachment 1369323... I asked a local "expert" and he said you can stress them enough to turn em herme during the flowering stage. In the pics i posted theres one before they turned bad. I posted it again, It's no male ... I'm afraid of what StonerSmurf said.....

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Why not take a clone? and see if you cant retry

I have only read how to clone. I don't do it. But I'd try. Can you clone from a flowering plant?

The seeds will all be female plants. They may or may not hermie on you. Fem seeds that you purchase online come from a plant that has been forced to hermie with colodial (sic?) silver. The only way you'll know is to try. At 3k ppm, you have burnt your roots. Have you looked at the roots lately? Can you see damage or discoloration?

Here's a pic of one plant's roots. They aren't as white as they used to be.

That's OK, they don't look dead either. They look to be able to support life for a few more weeks. I guess whether to continue or not is up to you. I'm surprised your PH was stable.... usually, it drops when you have to many nutrients in the water. Were you adjusting the PH up at all? Are you using GH parts on that bucket?

I’m going to continue it for two weeks. I’m going to switch today to a real low PPM as it rose by 300 since I flushed them two days ago. The parts are hydrofarm.

My mistake was putting nutrient water in my res and also running a drip system after they were already well established. I’ve since learned that the buckets will hold much higher PPM than the res and the res was already mixed at 1400 =/- 100.. I was PH testing only when I changed out the water which was weekly. And I tested only the water I put in. By adding already mixed nutrients from the res, I was going off the chart slowly !! I should have used straight good water/no nutes in the res. This would have slowed the rise in PPM.

I say go ahead an try to finish her out. Dry and cure her like normal, try out a few of the seeds and make hash out of the whole thing. I've made some killer brownies with hermies and even some males in the past.