Please help!!!

I am in 4th week of Veg. I use RO water
100-150ppm of CAL MAG, then after flora nova nutes I am at about 700PPM. Ph- 5.8. I use Flood and drain 6x6 rockwoolcubes flood once a day for about 6 minutes.

http://www.marijuana-seeds.net/Thanks-ThankYou.htm

I have that exact problem on FIGURE 12. THE P DEFICIENCY

ANybody know why I am getting this? Right now its on 1-2 leaves on every plant.

PLEASE HELPPP

CALIGIRL said:

I am in 4th week of Veg. I use RO water
100-150ppm of CAL MAG, then after flora nova nutes I am at about 700PPM. Ph- 5.8. I use Flood and drain 6x6 rockwoolcubes flood once a day for about 6 minutes.

http://www.marijuana-seeds.net/Thanks-ThankYou.htm

I have that exact problem on FIGURE 12. THE P DEFICIENCY

ANybody know why I am getting this? Right now its on 1-2 leaves on every plant.

PLEASE HELPPP

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Though I read your pH is at 5.8 that's really the low end of the comfort zone for hydro. 5.8 to 6.8 is more the range you want to be in. I was wondering if that reading was taken with a meter or using drops or pH paper? The Phosphorus issue looks a lot like nute lock out which is often a direct problem of pH in your nute solution. So I also wonder how often are you checking your pH? Also how big is your reservoir and what is the temp of your solution?
I use a 5 gallon bucket for my mother and it has a usable volume of 4 gallons. The pH can shift a lot in just 2 days with such a small reservoir (usually goes toward acidic quickly). I check it's pH every other day to keep things balanced.
On the other hand, I use a 20 gallon Coleman cooler for my flower reservoir and it barely changes pH because it has such a greater volume, is insulated and has less nitrogen. Anyway just throwing a few possiblities out there, hope you figure it out.
One other thing I do is go back to basics with my feeding. I will just use my 'grow' with a titch of bloom (for better rooting)for veg and similarly, just use Bloom (with a titch of grow (for better photosynthesis) for flowering and leave off using other additives,micros or foliar feeds until things start to stabilize and new leaves look healthy. Anyway, Happy Gardening! GrowIT!

nvm different nutes I guess

the moment i see someone have issues and it s a pure rockwool grow it leads me to believe buildup in the rootzone causing havoc with ppm and PH, your best bet is on your next feeding or right now, pinch the RW and get a water sample from it, test it i can i almost gaurentee you thats the issue. now that you add you have been vegging for 4 weeks i am certain. for a trouble free grow flush your media with plain ph balanced water once every 4 weeks. RW especially holds onto salt build up the most out of all other media, you can do a few things here, one is at feeding test the water in the res before your cycle, as your feeding take a sample of water that drains from the RW. you should always have a slight difference but say water at PH 5.8 going and it comes out at 6.3 is fine, but if it comes out at 7.3 then you are due for a flush. same can be said with your PPM. do me a favor and disregard what the other guy said, changing your feeding is just bad dope. you have to first find the issue. and in hydroponics its failry easy by doing what i told you to do. all issues start at the roots and you should not be changiong feeding programs especially when you are in a solid range already. if you have a product like florakleen or clearex then use it, since you only feed once a day you might want to change that if you can do it 2-3 times a day for less time. any how to get a good thorough flushing you may want to use plain water for a few days since there are so little irrigation cycles

i just wanted to add that a slightly fluctuating PH allows for better uptake of different nutrients

you are getting BAD info about pH levels!!! For hydroponics you want between 5.3 and 5.8. No lower no higher for best results. I keep my girls around 5.3 to 5.5 at the highest and they THRIVE!! I've noticed that when my pH drifts above 6.0 the leaves start to yellow or get brown spots, and the growth slows down. Please trust me when I tell you 5.3 to 5.8. If you don't believe me, just do some googling on the subject. and make sure to google more than one source so that you can get a general idea of what people have to say on the issue and you will see that I am correct.

Also, listen to morrisgreenberg and kaleoxxx. They know what they are talking about and have both given good advice. it's completely fine to fluctuate between the 5.3 and 5.8 range I mentioned. As kaleo said, different nutrients will be better absorbed at different pH levels, but all nutes are absorbed within this range.

ya know i like to PH down to 5.3 and let her ride all the way up to 6.2-6.3. i believe Phosphorous or magnesium is best available at 6.0, anyhows when i first started with water works i always tried my best on a daily basis to keep the PH perfect and from ignorance wondered why it just wont stay still dammit! but this is a fantastic indicator for root health, meaning if your plants roots are good and healthy and taking up nutrients, the mineral content of your solution is always changing, aside from PPMs going up and down, PH that slightly raises on a daily basis is letting you know the composition of your water is changing. like feeding and all other things, i prefer 5.5-60, i know guys on here like snuitter for instance take it down to 5.3 and for some that number is crazy, so if what i say makes any sense, a constantly moving PH is good

Thanks!! I think im going to try to flush.
When flushing with RO water should I still add the CAl MAG? And how long should I flush for?

Thanks!

CALIGIRL said:

Thanks!! I think im going to try to flush.
When flushing with RO water should I still add the CAl MAG? And how long should I flush for?

Thanks!

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this is tricky since your only flooding once a day. when your roots get big naturally you will feed like 2-3 times daily in RW, your plants are most likely happy with once a day so to get a good flush go 2 days of plain water and try to flood 3 times each day. i would suggest you use the cal-mag if you had a nitrogen deficiney but use plain for now. if you do increase floods make sure to monitor the plants for over watering, like if they get really droopy, but like i said before dont forget to take water samples from the runoff and test for PH and PPM. i wouldnt be suprised if your 700ppm water runs off at like 900ppm. if in the future you are still using RW blocks you may want to pick up clearex or florakleen because RW's water retention is so good i cant see you flooding more than 3 times a day at maturity so a little help will be needed to rind thr RW of salt build up because you cant flush for 2-3 days ya know what i mean?

whoa all. I have been a rockwool grower for a while. I read on grodans website to never flush with plain water. Just fix the nute soltuion and let her run until all better.

I have gotten lazy lately and I can attest plain water is bad for plants in rockwool. It has to do with shock.

I am not as experienced as kali or others tho.

morrisgreenberg said:

the moment i see someone have issues and it s a pure rockwool grow it leads me to believe buildup in the rootzone causing havoc with ppm and PH, your best bet is on your next feeding or right now, pinch the RW and get a water sample from it, test it i can i almost gaurentee you thats the issue...

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Gotta agree 10000% with morrisgreenberg on this one. It's for this very reason I am replacing my rockwool cubes with Sure To Grow cubes and blocks. I've measured the PH from my Rockwool cubes and was shocked at the differance between it and my res ph. Why fight the battle in the res and loose the war in the grow medium I say.

Just trasplanted a couple of plants for now but if the STG cubes work than I have one less thing to worry about.

tea tree said:

whoa all. I have been a rockwool grower for a while. I read on grodans website to never flush with plain water. Just fix the nute soltuion and let her run until all better.

I have gotten lazy lately and I can attest plain water is bad for plants in rockwool. It has to do with shock.

I am not as experienced as kali or others tho.

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thats one thing, people who run RW either got it or dont, what i mean is i seen the most perfect grows with the saltiest nutes and pure RW and wonder how you guys do it. i only use the stuff these days for cloning, i also prefer clay pellets and would rather feed more often because i would be constantly exchanging oxygen in the root zone. i run ebb n gro buckets but i keep mothers on a tray top feed no drippers and i run 15/15 on off and never over watered, its just so easy to over water in RW and choke out the roots. as for flushing i would think a leaching agent would be needed more than ever because you cant flood and drain 10times a day without killin the plant...again i am amzed at you RW growerss

I realize it's already been touched on, but figured I'd add my .02 anyhow. Did you flush your RW before starting? I fought my system for awhile, my PH would creep nearly a full point every day. Once I figured out my issue and flushed for a couple of days, the associated problems cleared up and things were good through harvest.

Good luck.

O.K., so this kinda bent my noodle. I did like snutter said and googled it. This was the first article that came up:http://www.simplyhydro.com/ph.htm The article explains that not only are certain minerals available at certain PH but that the minerals actually percipitate right out of the water! The article however did not go on to say that if the res PH has spiked out of range that it needs to be changed or not. Obviously it should so you know for sure that it's proper. The article was otherwise very informative and recommend reading it.

cannatari said:

O.K., so this kinda bent my noodle. I did like snutter said and googled it. This was the first article that came up:http://www.simplyhydro.com/ph.htm The article explains that not only are certain minerals available at certain PH but that the minerals actually percipitate right out of the water! The article however did not go on to say that if the res PH has spiked out of range that it needs to be changed or not. Obviously it should so you know for sure that it's proper. The article was otherwise very informative and recommend reading it.

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yes this is why i recommend starting at a range you comfortable with whether it be 5.3 or 5.5 and let her drift up to no more than 6.5. the issues here is with salt build up in the media ph can go from 5.5 to 7.5 in 24hours. if your rootzone or res spends more time above 6.0 then thats no good. if anyone of you guys want to get real indept about water chemistry and such a real good reliable source is member FatMan, i am sure you seen his posts on the hydro section

Thank you guys so much for the help!

But i found out today that my pump has been broken for about 4-5 days. But the rockwools hold so much water that the cubes are still wet so i dident notice that the pump was not working. Could this be the reason for my deficiencys ?

nah, but you see what i been getting at right? pump went out on you and its still soaking wet. whats going to end up happening is your roots are going to fill up that cube and you will see the RW get dry faster. did the plants have a big root system before you put them into the 6x6 blocks?

pH at 5.6 to 5.8 Period.
Flora Nova grow has relatively low levels of phosphorus for a recirculating hydro sytem. If your plants are taking up a lot of nitrate then the roots are dumping out a lot of carbonates. Not only does this raise your pH but the raising of ph also ties up a lot of phosphorus. Other than keeping your EC level constant with additions of nutrients to replacee the phosphorus being used up you can try using Flora Nova bloom to top of your nurtrient EC. The bllom formula has twice the phs osphorus as the nitrate plus the ratiof of nitrate to phsphorus goes from approx 2:1 to 1:2. you should be able to tell very soon if the issue is more of a pH problem from lock out or if it is a loss f available phsphorous due to it being used up as a buffer.

Rock wool is a PITA and I do not recomend its use to any mj even experienced/graduated growers. It water logs easily. It has pH issues. It holds nutrients. It seems to love carbonate ions hense the pH issue. The easiest hydro growing method is a totally inert and non absorbant growing media. Rock wools only advantage is that it allows for less frequent pump cycling, but as that small savings is pretty negligible considering the value of mj it makes no sense to take on all the bad qualities of rock wool just to save a few cents a day in electricity. It is rinsible and therefore reausable but it is stilla PITA. Rock wool is a medium best used by commercial green house vegetable producers growing cheap vegetables where the savings in pumping wattage can mean the difference between profit and loss. Rock wool is not a newbies medaia. It is not even a good medium for experienced growers really as it is not cheap and its bad qualities out weigh its few good qualities.

It is sorta like those many other things growers buy or build and continue to use before finally admitting they are not worth the cost and are far from being all others said they were. IE aerogardens, small tube aero systems, NTF systems, low pressure high volume pumps. Air pumps and airstones. Low pressure sprayers that are not low pressure as they require 15 psi to work properly and most growers use pumps that deliver 2 to 5 psi. Or even Hydroton which alledges to have a low CEC but has high absorption even with a low CEC. It adsorbs so much fertilizer salts that it takes almost as much time to soak the nutrients out as it takes for a full grow. That's sad and obviously shows that Hydrotons advertisements are very deceptive. Mj growers are sold alot of bad equipment, supplements and generally bad products.

Hard to expect the consumer protection people to evaluate mj growing products though. To many stupid myths continually circulating through the threads that are considered almost gospel.

sounds like overwater to me then. Water when your cubes are 60 percent dry. More than that and it will take a week or so to show but they develop probs. They will dry out and be fine. Back off the watering is all I am betting