Rockwool medium- too much water? (pics)

Hi all,

First grow, veg room is drip system.

First couple weeks all was well, growing thicker stems, greener leaves, etc. about 3 weeks in the leaves started curling and getting brown...all simultaneously. I think it's one of two things...

A - Too much water volume
B - Too much light (24 hours, flouro's cool white and warm)

I've been using drip system, 3 times a day, 1 hour per time, 2 gal per hour drip heads. Haha, that's 6 gallons per day per plant!!! now that i do the math that sounds crazy! I was basing it off a few youtube video's, "i water three times per day" said the green guy.

what combination is best?

Times per day?

1, 2, 3

Minutes per time?

1 min, 5 min, 15 min, 30 min

Volume per drip nozzle head? (gal per hour)

.5 gal, 1 gal, 2 gal

PIctures to show rockwool coloring, and plant coloring.

Thank you in advance for your assistance here.

They look waaay wet, bro..I'm a newbie, though...

That was definitely extreme over watering. With plants that size in those 4 inch cubes you should only need to water once every two to three days. Once they get bigger you have to water more often but I had a 5 foot plant in one of those 4 inch cubes once and only watered it twice a day.

Definitely don't have it going for an hour either. You should only be watering for like 5 minutes. With just a few plants like that you could easily hand water them with a turkey baster or something.

Way to wet. Rockwool gets over saturated real easy. What I would suggest is put the cubes in 1 or 2 gallon pots, then surounded them with clay pebbels. put at least 3 or 4 inches in the bottoms. Then take some 1/4" tubing and some tee's. and make yourself some drip rings that will go around the inside perimiter of the pots. That way the water is going to drip down around the cubes, into the pebbels makeing the roots happy without saturating the rockwool. Now you can water every couple of hours, several times a day.

Thank you for your tutelage guys. I'll make the appropriate adjustments.

Best Regards,

What were you feeding them? EC of run off? PH?

Unity,
Feeding sensi grow 2 part.
EC of runoff? What is that exactly?
PH was very low, meter was broken, bought a new manna since they died. Now at 5.8. I know the low PH contributed the the death also.
EC?
Thoughts?

Thanks!

Plants cannot get too wet. Just too wet without enough oxygen. My plants sit fully in water for 3 months and i've never had rot. You need more oxygen man for sure. see

noghosts said:

Unity,
Feeding sensi grow 2 part.
EC of runoff? What is that exactly?
PH was very low, meter was broken, bought a new manna since they died. Now at 5.8. I know the low PH contributed the the death also.
EC?
Thoughts?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

What is the ppm of the run off, and what scale to measure are you using i.e. Hanna .5 conversion, Eutech .64 conversion, or Trunchion .7 conversion? Check the pic
I would make sure that the medium is in balance with the res., in other words the runoff feed from the cubes should measure about the same as the solution in the res. If not you need to flush with quarter strength nutes until they are in balance again.
Let us now what those measurements are, the run-off I mean.
Almost all my past problems have been triggered by ph fluctuations, either cause I didn't calibrate my meter often enough or because my medium was out of balance with my res. and I didn't catch it in time.
I don't know how strong your feed is right now, but I would keep it low until I saw improvement i.e healthy new growth. EC of around 1.0 sounds safe or just do it like I do, measure the res, write down EC & PH, measure the next day again and compare the two. If the EC goes up and the PH goes down they want less nutes. If the EC goes down and the the ph goes up they want more nutes. If the EC stays the same and ph goes up they are liking it. God, I hope I'm not too stoned lol, correct me guys if I'm wrong here lol.
As to feeding times, I would take them off the drips for now and just hand feed them once a day (until you have at least 30% run-off), ideally right before the lights come on.
Be sure to be vigilant about the PH mate!

Unity

I am no scientist but my tapwater is 6.3 ph. So i don't tend to ever check it. My nutes are added as recommended. The rockwool is said to change ph but i think thats in tiny systems. Try adding a nice aquarium pump with an airstone that spreads the bubbles out. Pump that water over your plants and maybe put a fan on the wool also. Oxygen can absorb this way also. I think lack of oxygen is your prob but not positive

1982grower said:

I am no scientist but my tapwater is 6.3 ph. So i don't tend to ever check it. My nutes are added as recommended. The rockwool is said to change ph but i think thats in tiny systems. Try adding a nice aquarium pump with an airstone that spreads the bubbles out. Pump that water over your plants and maybe put a fan on the wool also. Oxygen can absorb this way also. I think lack of oxygen is your prob but not positive

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Cheers mate, do you think I take the time to type this shit because it is not important to his problem, wtf?

Unity,
you're stressing a huge importance, it seems, on the water levels/quality after it's flown through the rockwool before it makes its way back to the res. Am i hearing this right?

Based on the levels of the "run-off" (water after passed thru the wool), i'm adjusting the nutrients accordingly...right?

For EC, i have a meter that measures TDS/PPM. That number typically runs shy of 150...it's never as low as 1.0. Am i using the wrong type of meter?

Thanks.

Take all the time you want to type. You might solve the problem. I was just suggesting a simple solution that if hasn't already been tried might just solve the problem. Don't actually know what the prob is. never seen the plants. Your suggestion might be right. Whats wrong with 2 answers?

Unity,
you're stressing a huge importance, it seems, on the water levels/quality after it's flown through the rockwool before it makes its way back to the res. Am i hearing this right?
Yeah, think about it, ideally the measurement is taken directly in the root zone, but that is a bit unpractical. Measuring the run off is the next best thing. Take my last grow, run to waste with a rockwool medium. It was my first run to waste grow and I did not realize how much the nutes could build up in the medium if you do not make sure you have enough run off with each watering. Within one week my ec in the root zone had gone to 3.5+ while my res was obviously at its groovy EC of 1.5. So, my point here is that the roots really don't care how groovy the res is if the media they are in is toxic from salt build up.

Based on the levels of the "run-off" (water after passed thru the wool), i'm adjusting the nutrients accordingly...right?
Yeah, but not until they are back on the drips

For EC, i have a meter that measures TDS/PPM. That number typically runs shy of 150...it's never as low as 1.0. Am i using the wrong type of meter?
Nah, you are cool, just keep in mind that AN uses a .7 conversion factor for its ppm instruction. So Advanced Nutrients 600ppm recomendation for seedlings would read 425ppm on a Hanna (.5conv.) meter and 540ppm on a Eutech (.7Conv.) meter. This sucks balls to me, I rather use EC, reads the same on all meters, which in my example would be about EC 0.85. You can always use the chart above to convert between different standards.

Unity

1982grower states
"Plants cannot get too wet. Just too wet without enough oxygen. My plants sit fully in water for 3 months and i've never had rot. You need more oxygen man for sure."
Your absolutely correct, but your growing with a DWC setup that provides oxygen to the roots via an air stone.
When your only using rock wool as a median, it can easily become over saturated and starve the plants of oxygen. Exspecelly with the watering cycles he was originally using.
I think unity is absolutely correct as well, and has offered some really good information about staying on top of the nutes. But personally I don't believe the problem here was with the PH or EC.
I really believe it was, or is an over watering issue.
I would still suggest putting the rock wool cubes in pots with clay pebbles. Then add drip rings around the rock wool cubes, and feed the roots with oxygenated nutes. Keeping the cubes dry.

Good answer. Obviously my opinion is just a theory. But I do know that having an over abundance of oxygen will allow all the other nutes to be the most efficiently used. Good luck man!!! I don't really use this method of hydro but figure he must have a res and maybe just putting some extra oxygen in there might help when it goes through the drip system. But hope it works out.

pretty good guess i am growing dwc. damn!! LR2 8 days old

1982grower said:

pretty good guess i am growing dwc. damn!! LR2 8 days old

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8 days...........NIIIICE

over watered and ur ph was probably not right dont spray ur plant either if u have been

To all,

Again, thank you for your knowledge. Since my first post here I've got 20 new fems on order and fully intend to use all your recommendations with the new beautiful babies!!

Thank you all. Best Regards.