Newbie First Grow: SH Bubbleponic with CFL's; Need help

Hi everyone. I'm about 5 weeks into my first grow and it has been a rollercoaster ride trying to manage this thing. Things were looking great up until a few days ago, at which point things have tanked quickly.

My Setup:

SH Bubbleponics, set up in a cabinet in the basement.
CFL's ( 8 ) x 42 watts; (4) 6500k and (4) 2000k, mounted into a homemade reflector made from an 8" diameter piece of ducting.
Growing (1) Northern Lights and (2) Aurora Indica feminized; both from Nirvana

The first 2 weeks were relatively uneventful, with all 3 sprouting and growing. I was using the SH nutes and pH which came with my kit, adding a 1/4 of the nutes everyday, then changing the res weekly. The girls began to grow well and I thought I was good. In week 3, all 3 plants started drooping. I noticed that my water was very warm, and doing some research, it looks like I was experiencing some root rot. I flushed and bought some aquaSheild which seemed to fix things. I also cleaned the res and noticed there was a white powdery substance at the bottom of the res. I'm assuming it's undissolved nutes or just salts/minerals as a left over. As I was researching, I realized I had been making some critical newbie mistakes, mainly, not managing my pH daily. So, now armed with new knowledge, I've been checking pH 2-3 times a day, and unfortunately, I have to make constant adjustments. I quickly ran out of the pH down that came with my kit, so I purchased a 1 kilo bag from General Hydroponics. My tap water is about 7.2 with ppm's around 250. Once pH is corrected to 5.5, my ppm's are around 700 ppm. Withing 6-8 hours, my res would return to a pH of 7.2. I would correct, and it would be back within 12 hours. In a day, my ppm's would be over 2000! After a few days, I'd flush again since I didn't know what was going on.

A few days ago, I noticed brown spots on 2 of the plants and growth slowed. Looking at some pictures, it appears to be a Boron deficiency, which is related to pH of course. A few days after that, my plants were dropping again and I noticed that the water stream from the pump was a mere trickle. I didn't think too much about that since the roots were all deep into the res, although I decided that it probably wasn't a good thing to have a clog in the irrigation, so I flushed the res and took apart the system to clean everything. I found many of the ports clogged with a brownish goo. The hoses were filled too. I also found some plant material (roots?) on the bottom of the tank. I pH'd a new batch of water and added just a tiny bit of nutes to the water along with some aquaSheild, hoping it will flush out the plants and bring them back to their happy place. This morning, they still looked sick, but the pH of the water is much more stable. I'm guessing all that goo and plant matter wasn't helping pH management.

To make things a bit more complicated, I'm also struggling to keep res temps below 75. If the cabinet is closed, temps will raise to 80, even with a 65 cfm exhaust fan, foil on the lid and a fan flowing intake air on the res and lights. Given all the issues, I'm seriously thinking about abandoning DWC and going to something like coco coir. I'm hoping it eliminates the pH swings and daily management issues which I'm failing to conquer. Is it too late to transplant these plants to a coco coir system? Ideally, I'd like to have a SCRoG set-up, but I'm thinking that would be too complicated if I have to continue to do all this maintenance on the res to manage all the build up it seems to generate.

Thanks in advance.

Forget every thing until u get res temps and ph corrected. If ph is that whacked u will never be able to diagnose a true problem. Why are u not using a proper, liquid ph adjuster?

Thanks, superstoner1. Honestly, I didn't know there was a "proper" pH adjuster. The stuff that came with my kit from SH was powder, and I had seen the General Hydroponics mentioned quite a bit, so I figured it was ok. Is liquid better because it dissolves easier, or are there other benefits?

Also, was I correct in my thinking that my pH was messed up due to all the other material in my tank? Is it normal for it to swing and need to be adjusted daily?

Thanks

ok first of all it looks like you have a ppm meter and a ph meter..thats good!

growing 3 plants..thats fine.

i see no mention of the size rez/buckets...are you growing each plant in a seperate bucket?..doesn't sound like it..you can get away with it as long as your bucket is wide and deep enough,but if your growing 3 plants in say a 5 gal bucket..your just asking for a whole shit storm of problems.

i personally grow in RDWC with one plant per bucket..with 2 5 gal black buckets with a 120 gph water pump and a GH dual diaphram air pump and some air stones with 3/4" ID black hose..2 at the bottom as the return and one on top as the feed.

with that setup i check everything daily,and rarely need to adjust the ph.

Hi Dtischerd. I'm using the standard bubbleponics Res, which looks like it's an 8 gallon rubbermaid. It has (6)- 3.5" net cup holes already there in a 3x2 pattern. I'm using 3 of them, all at the corners. I initially planted only 2, but one of them broke away from the seed at germination and I thought it would be lost so I started the 3rd. I just took the broken one and stuck it in the rockwool, just in case it took root and it did. I planned on growing them through a screen and train them to grow wide to avoid over crowding at the res.

Thanks for responding.

hansenke,I been reading an tutorial on those,if you haven't already I think you'll like it.
Anything Superstoner tells you, you can take to the bank,he's saved me some headaches.
I forgot to tell ya the thread for the read,it's Roseman bubbleponics,I'm learning some usefull bucket knowledge there.
GL&HY

I guess "proper" was a little odd, its just the liquid adjusters are much better. The only non liquid i put in my res's is benificial bacteria. Oh, take that foil off the lid, it is actually is a terrible material to use, it will cause res to heat up.

hansenke said:

The first 2 weeks were relatively uneventful...

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going by that.. at which week, from germination, did you start adding nutes?

brown spots sounds like nute burn.. pretty sure you're going through the same thing i recently experienced..

no nutes till veg phase.. which is at least 4 weeks from germination

i was advised by superstoner1 that my plants were too stressed too early.. better to start over.. which i'm currently doing.. some ultra sour with NO NUTES till after a month..

Thanks Bluntologist,

I had followed the guide written on "growweedeasy.com". That guide had the seeds germinate right in the rockwool with pH'd water and no nutes and no lights. As soon as the seed germinated, I turned the lights on, but made sure it wasn't too hot on a 24 hours cycle. For the first week after germination, I stayed with the no nutes, pH'd water. At the end of week 1 (since germ), I flushed the res and added new pH'd water. At this point, I first added nutes. I was using the SH easy dose powder packets, but not at full strength. Following the directions from SH, which indicated it was written by Roseman, I split the 2 packets in half and made a 1/2 batch of nutes in a 1 quart jar. I added half of this on day #1 of this second week. On day #2 I added the second half. Day #3 I mixed up the remaining batch and added half of it, and on day #4 I added the last of it. On Day #7 I flushed the Res and made new pH'd water.

Starting week 3, I used the same formula, even though it indicated I could add the whole batch to the new water. I was trying to avoid nute burn, and had read the "less is better". I figured that as long as the girls were growing, I wasn't going to rush things. Up until this time, I had NOT checked pH at all. It never occurred to be that I needed to. Also around this time, the weather changed some and my res temp began to rise. Actually, I have no idea if it began to rise... I hadn't checked. At this point, I noticed the res was around 82 degs and I could start feeling a film forming on the tubing. So, basically, in week 3, I started uncovering all the mistakes I had made. I'm sure I could have caused nute burn, possibly because I started too early, also possibly due to the pH being jacked up.

hansenke said:

So, basically, in week 3, I started uncovering all the mistakes I had made..

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i'm right there with you bro. it's quite the learning process.. but we'll get our buds in the end

i'm still pretty sure there's a general consensus about no nutes till veg phase, which at the minimum, does not begin till at least 4 weeks from germination. this applies to both soil and hydro mediums from what i've researched. the feed chart that came with my nutrients shows how much ppm for 4 weeks of vegging and 8 weeks of flowering.. however it fails to mention that the first 4 weeks from germ is still considered seedling phase. the plants don't need all those nutes till they start vegging.. that's when the real growth begins

i added nutes after week 2 and within a day or two noticed brown spots.. i cleaned and flushed.. but my little buddies already took the hit. the following days i witnessed more leaves browning, drooping, and the infamous "claws". these affected leaves will not grow anymore and will eventually just dry up. the plants will recover in time though. might be extra weeks or a month for them to get back on track, but currently the growth is stunted.

if your goal is to smoke your own supply asap, then germinating new seeds would be faster. i just started 2 new ultra sour seeds but will also be keeping my handicapped buddies to see how they turn out anyway, just b/c they are AK47..

as for lowering your reservoir temp.. since i'm only using a 5 gallon tub, i opted for an (aquarium) ice probe chiller (thermostat controller purchased separately) which despite many negative reviews, is f***ing awesome! the key is wrapping your reservoir up with INSULATION.. the water stays @ 63-66 all day long. or for cheaper you could DIY a water chiller with parts from an old water cooler.

also i've found that dutch master gold range zone (root conditioner) keeps the water ph level pretty stable, so you don't have to constantly check/adjust more than once daily

goodluck!!

Thanks Blunt,

I'll keep the "no nute until 4 weeks" rule in mind on my next grow. I've thought about starting another seedling off but realized that it would be difficult to start without having a separate system to grow her in since I'm using nutes in the current res. Also, 1 of my 3 plants seems to be turning things around and looks rather happy, growing a bunch of new pretty leaves. As for the others, I think I'll keep them to see how they do. I can only learn from them at this point. Luckily I'm not on a tight schedule for harvest. Actually, yesterday, I noticed that the really sick plant had nice new white roots growing out of the cup, but the long ones were rather weak and somewhat brown. If I touched them at all with any amount of pressure, they would break off. So, I went and cut off those old roots with hopes that the plant could survive with the new ones, and that removing the old ones would help manage my pH some. I guess I'll see when I get home if I killed her...

Thanks for that little tidbit of insight about when you burned your plants at 2 weeks. I've been wondering that myself if they can "heal" from spots or not. Your statement goes along with what I've been suspecting... that the leave stays brown, will slowly get worse, although it might darken like a mature leaf. Eventually, it become crispy and dies.

I plan on implementing a DIY cooler this weekend when I do my res change. I plan on using a larger rubbermade to act as the chiller for my DWC, which will be sitting inside it. Hopefully, this will fix the temp issue so I won't see problems with I have to close up my cabinet during 12/12. I think I have about 2 more weeks since I'm planning to do a SCRoG, and will let my plants fill out the canopy as they rebound from this most recent incident.

Thanks again.

came across this in another thread that contradicts the no nutes rule.. this seems like the route to go

BlackMesa said:

In the future I would add 25 PPM of nutes on day 1 from seed and increase at a rate of 20 - 25 PPM per week. My plants are literally 10X larger at the same age as your 22 days old pics and thats regardless of strain. I too used to wait 2 weeks before adding nutes but now on my simple schedule I am consistently starting flower at 14 days from seed, 17 days max. Makes a huge difference and shaves a considerable amount of veg time off.

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BlackMesa said:

I promise the next time you will literally hit your self in the head for not using nutes all along! Like I said I first started the same way and always waited but than cam across a good journal from someone who broke the whole "nutes aren't needed at first" myth. I have even grown plants to where they never tapped into the food reserve in the little round leaves so they just grew and grew all the way to flower becoming the size of fingernails! no joke =)

I start 12/12 at 50 to 75 PPM (GH Flora 3 part) and feed in veg amounts all the way till hairs show then transition to flower schedule. I have never used more then 300 PPM of nutes and usually never go above 250 PPM and can get over 1 gram per watt each and every time, My record so far is 1.55 GPW!

Correction: My record gram per watt is 1.45 not 1.55 GPW but maybe this time

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