Sick Plant - Could Use Some Insight

Hello all. I'm going into my 5th week of flower and have a sickly plant. For the life of me I can't figure out what in the world is going on. A little help from some experienced growers is greatly appreciated.

Setup
DWC in a 6 gallon, light proof bucket
Nutes: Floranova Bloom
Water: Tap water with a base .2-.3 EC and 7-7.4 pH
Lights: 3x 300w (140w actual) LED panels
PH up as needed

Issue
So about two weeks ago I noticed my pH was dropping drastically. To the point after a couple of days it would go down to around 4.5-5. From reading online it seems this is either root rot or over feeding. The roots look great. Nice and big, they fill up most of the bottom half of the bucket, and white. The res had no signs of algae, slime, no smell, no froth. I decided to change out the res and this time went with 1/2 strength nutes (4ml per gallong) and pH'd the water to around 6. The EC reading a few days ago was sitting at .55 and is now sitting at .5. pH was at 6 a few days ago and continues to drop as it was at 5.7 after topping it off today. The plant consumes about 1.5-2 liters of water a day.

The pH dropping and the EC not moving much makes me almost think it's still over nuted. However, the leaves are starting to show signs of what looks like nute deficiency to me. Possible lockout from nutes still being too high, even though it's at what seems to be a lower EC?

Ignore some of the broken/missing leaf tips. My cat decided to try to be an herbivore.

.3 + 1.2 = give it some...

987anon said:

Hello all. I'm going into my 5th week of flower and have a sickly plant. For the life of me I can't figure out what in the world is going on. A little help from some experienced growers is greatly appreciated.

Setup
DWC in a 6 gallon, light proof bucket
Nutes: Floranova Bloom
Water: Tap water with a base .2-.3 EC and 7-7.4 pH
Lights: 3x 300w (140w actual) LED panels
PH up as needed

Issue
So about two weeks ago I noticed my pH was dropping drastically. To the point after a couple of days it would go down to around 4.5-5. From reading online it seems this is either root rot or over feeding. The roots look great. Nice and big, they fill up most of the bottom half of the bucket, and white. The res had no signs of algae, slime, no smell, no froth. I decided to change out the res and this time went with 1/2 strength nutes (4ml per gallong) and pH'd the water to around 6. The EC reading a few days ago was sitting at .55 and is now sitting at .5. pH was at 6 a few days ago and continues to drop as it was at 5.7 after topping it off today. The plant consumes about 1.5-2 liters of water a day.

The pH dropping and the EC not moving much makes me almost think it's still over nuted. However, the leaves are starting to show signs of what looks like nute deficiency to me. Possible lockout from nutes still being too high, even though it's at what seems to be a lower EC?

Ignore some of the broken/missing leaf tips. My cat decided to try to be an herbivore.

Click to expand...

Looks like a mix of CA; MG ; P; deficiencys, overwatered

987anon said:

Hello all. I'm going into my 5th week of flower and have a sickly plant. For the life of me I can't figure out what in the world is going on. A little help from some experienced growers is greatly appreciated.

Setup
DWC in a 6 gallon, light proof bucket
Nutes: Floranova Bloom
Water: Tap water with a base .2-.3 EC and 7-7.4 pH
Lights: 3x 300w (140w actual) LED panels
PH up as needed

Issue
So about two weeks ago I noticed my pH was dropping drastically. To the point after a couple of days it would go down to around 4.5-5. From reading online it seems this is either root rot or over feeding. The roots look great. Nice and big, they fill up most of the bottom half of the bucket, and white. The res had no signs of algae, slime, no smell, no froth. I decided to change out the res and this time went with 1/2 strength nutes (4ml per gallong) and pH'd the water to around 6. The EC reading a few days ago was sitting at .55 and is now sitting at .5. pH was at 6 a few days ago and continues to drop as it was at 5.7 after topping it off today. The plant consumes about 1.5-2 liters of water a day.

The pH dropping and the EC not moving much makes me almost think it's still over nuted. However, the leaves are starting to show signs of what looks like nute deficiency to me. Possible lockout from nutes still being too high, even though it's at what seems to be a lower EC?

Ignore some of the broken/missing leaf tips. My cat decided to try to be an herbivore.

Click to expand...

Your profile pic is an uncanny resemblance to this plant in so many ways!!

Are you bubbling your tap water for 24 hours before you feed it your plant with I assume , your base nutes?
Chloramine can react with yor feed and and bind itself as a sodium (sodium chloride) causing a lock out.

PH always fluxes in hydro at the start of flower

Bud development looks good, the EC is a little low. If you're not supplementing CaMg I'd suggest it. Botanicare makes a good product and I suggest it above any others as I have had best experience with it, even over Advanced Nutrients CaMg. I ran DWC for years and always started with 150 to 200ppm calmag to start and then added base nutes, Advanced pH perfect Grow Micro Bloom.

In bloom especially, you want your nutes up in at least the 600ppm range or around 0.9 EC (I think, I'm using a converter online, ppm count is solid which is what I always use). Your leaves act as batteries as well as solar panels. They store nutrients, so when your plant needs more nutrients than is supplied from the roots, it strips from the leaves, thus yellowing them. Remember some water comes out the tap in some places at a few hundred ppm (0.2 EC) so being at that strength nutrient is nothing.

As far as pH change, that is normal. Even with pH perfect technology, my solution, a 35 gallon recirculating system, would shift down to those levels you spoke of by week's end. It happens when aggressive plant development happens and is not something to be worried about. Keep an eye out for pH spikes the other direction, spiking up. From my experience, that is a cause of infections. If you don't see any signs and happy roots, you are probably free of infection. Pythium and Brown slime Algae (cyanobacteria) tends to show pretty apparently and obviously.

Your pH is also directly related to what your plants can take in. If it's too high, some nutrients will not be readily taken up. Same goes for too low. Check more often and keep it at 5.8 or so and your plants will take up those nutrients you're feeding more easily. This can fix suspected deficiencies.

I didn't know about chloramine recombining but i've always run RO water, which might be a thought for you. The way I see it is like eating off of a dirty plate vs clean plate. Clean water vs dirty (even if it's clean enough to drink it may have things in it which could interfere with your nutrients). If you do have chloramine in your water, get the upgraded carbon filter, the KDF. It's special carbon to get the chloramine out which regular carbon filters will not from my understanding.

Last but not least, some plants self consume their leaves and drop them no matter the feed. This can start as soon as mid flower, it's kinda strain specific. I ran heavy nutes last time around and started getting leaves dropping out at week 4. For overall health, get those nute levels back up. You can still run an hour or two flush every week if you like with tap water, that's what I used to do.

too bushy too short cut some leaf off and give them potassium sulphate