Weird coloring in late veg… help please?

Hey peeps.
STATS:
Zkittles x Tangie run going.
5 gallon pots
Mother Earth coco + 20-30% perlite.
Hand watering 18-25oz per (3-4x/day)
Gen-hydro trio @ feed chart recommendation
Temps 68(off), 77-79(on)
Humidity 60-65%
5.7-5.8 Ph
Ppm in=8-900; out=350-450

Been uneventful except a flush 2 weeks ago due to slight build up…. they got real pissy and showed deficiencies (cal mostly) and turned a bit light green; BUT as I worked PPM in back up from 300-800 they responded well.

I noticed weird coloring patterns on the leaves last week (but didn’t take them seriously as these have thrown random variegated leaves throughout the run). Also, I’m seeing some mild burn spots.
Two days ago I did up cal-mag to 3.5-4ml per gallon as I believed I saw a cal def on new growth and mag def on lower growth.

I do have a tendency to overwater when using a soil media FWIW; but not sure that’s the problem with coco being so forgiving.

My suspicion is I may be pushing em to hard and just need to go back to 5-600ppm with strong cal mag.

I attached some pics though, any thoughts?

I am in coco perlite in 3 gallon fabric containers and i need at least 1 gallon per pot to keep them happy. 60-75 ounces in 5 gallon pots doesn’t seem like enough to me. You cannot water too much with coco- you can feed too much but even saturated coco mix will be 20% air after draining.

Bud man 43 said:

I am in coco perlite in 3 gallon fabric containers and i need at least 1 gallon per pot to keep them happy. 60-75 ounces in 5 gallon pots doesn’t seem like enough to me. You cannot water too much with coco- you can feed too much but even saturated coco mix will be 20% air after draining.

Click to expand...

So would you increase frequency AND volume? Or just volume?

Just volume- 3x a day is fine, i do twice daily with the one gallon each pot each time, i am hand watering

Bud man 43 said:

Just volume- 3x a day is fine, i do twice daily with the one gallon each pot each time, i am hand watering

Click to expand...

can you tell me how much runoff you get? I’m getting good runoff with these volumes. Usually 15% minimum… typically 25-30%.
Several days a week (if I’m home) I do provide 4 fertigations. Might’ve been good to include that

10-20% - probably closer to 10 most times
You are getting runoff in a 5 gallon pot giving 18-25 ounces?
how much are the plants getting? 1/2 of that?
I don’t even see runoff until the last of the gallon is going in each pot

Bud man 43 said:

10-20% - probably closer to 10 most times
You are getting runoff in a 5 gallon pot giving 18-25 ounces?
how much are the plants getting? 1/2 of that?
I don’t even see runoff until the last of the gallon is going in each pot

Click to expand...

Yes, I’m usually closer or at 25oz but if I get a 30%+ runoff I’ll drop the next watering to 18-20 oz which generally provides little runoff.
I prob only have 4-4.25 gallons of coco in the pot. Could add more I guess.

Growin4fun77 said:

can you tell me how much runoff you get? I’m getting good runoff with these volumes. Usually 15% minimum… typically 25-30%.
Several days a week (if I’m home) I do provide 4 fertigations. Might’ve been good to include that

Click to expand...

Wait... are you alternating plain water with feed water? If so, you want to make sure you fertigate at least once per day and never give plain water in coco. Even if you need to flush salts out of the medium, don't use plain water.

ec121 said:

Wait... are you alternating plain water with feed water? If so, you want to make sure you fertigate at least once per day and never give plain water in coco. Even if you need to flush salts out of the medium, don't use plain water.

Click to expand...

No, sorry if I was confusing. I’m providing food with every water. My only flush was at 195ish PPM.

The main variables I see fluctuating in my notes are PH out increasing as I increased PPM in. Could ramping up the PPM too high following my flush have pushed the PPM range at the root zone so high they are having trouble up-taking certain nutes??

OR maybe the one 4gal bucket of nutes I mixed that came in at 5.4 is the culprit? I left it at 5.4 to see if I could pull the PH out down. Maybe this wasn’t necessary at all.

Growin4fun77 said:

No, sorry if I was confusing. I’m providing food with every water. My only flush was at 195ish PPM.

The main variables I see fluctuating in my notes are PH out increasing as I increased PPM in. Could ramping up the PPM too high following my flush have pushed the PPM range at the root zone so high they are having trouble up-taking certain nutes??

OR maybe the one 4gal bucket of nutes I mixed that came in at 5.4 is the culprit? I left it at 5.4 to see if I could pull the PH out down. Maybe this wasn’t necessary at all.

Click to expand...

5.4pH is too low. You're going to have problems if you continue that. Don't worry about runoff pH. Runoff pH always drifts up and it's normal. Don't ever lower your inflow pH in order to lower your outflow pH.

Here - listen to this guy. The whole episode is great, but he talks about pH at around 43:00.

Too wet and under fed. With the size of plants and pots. Watering should be every 3-4 days. Not 3 or 4 times a day at this point.

StoneDHedgE said:

Watering should be every 3-4 days

Click to expand...

coco is daily at a minimum

rkymtnman said:

coco is daily at a minimum

Click to expand...

Would you agree with his assertion that they are underfed though?

ec121 said:

5.4pH is too low. You're going to have problems if you continue that. Don't worry about runoff pH. Runoff pH always drifts up and it's normal. Don't ever lower your inflow pH in order to lower your outflow pH.

Here - listen to this guy. The whole episode is great, but he talks about pH at around 43:00.

Click to expand...

Ive since gone back to 5.8.

Something seems off about the feeding volume.
I currently have plants of similar size growing in 100% coco
They're in "2 gal" fabric pots (A bit under 1.5 gal in reality)
For now, they get fed 32oz 2-3x daily and I get about 7-8oz of runoff each time
I don't understand how a 5 gal container could use less, the added perlite would explain it partially, but still seems quite low.

Also, there's something odd if the runoff EC is 1/2 of the input EC
Normally the runoff EC will be ~ 0.1-0.3 higher than the input EC when things are humming along nicely.
If those numbers are accurate, it would indicate the input EC is far too low; i.e. the plants are up-taking nutrients faster than water: not typical.

Billy the Mountain said:

Something seems off about the feeding volume.
I currently have plants of similar size growing in 100% coco
They're in "2 gal" fabric pots (A bit under 1.5 gal in reality)
For now, they get fed 32oz 2-3x daily and I get about 7-8oz of runoff each time
I don't understand how a 5 gal container could use less, the added perlite would explain it partially, but still seems quite low.

Also, there's something odd if the runoff EC is 1/2 of the input EC
Normally the runoff EC will be ~ 0.1-0.3 higher than the input EC when things are humming along nicely.
If those numbers are accurate, it would indicate the input EC is far too low; i.e. the plants are up-taking nutrients faster than water: not typical.

Click to expand...

Could the low runoff EC be due to the flush I did? Ie input for flush was a bit under 200 and it just taking time for the next 4-500oz of water to pull the ppm up?

yesterday and today all my runoff has been from about 75 ppm below inflow to about 20 ppm above.

I did a pot volume calculation yesterday to ensure they are in fact 5 gallon.
They are and contain a little more than 4 gal of coco based on my estimations.

Billy the Mountain said:

Something seems off about the feeding volume.
I currently have plants of similar size growing in 100% coco
They're in "2 gal" fabric pots (A bit under 1.5 gal in reality)
For now, they get fed 32oz 2-3x daily and I get about 7-8oz of runoff each time
I don't understand how a 5 gal container could use less, the added perlite would explain it partially, but still seems quite low.

Also, there's something odd if the runoff EC is 1/2 of the input EC
Normally the runoff EC will be ~ 0.1-0.3 higher than the input EC when things are humming along nicely.
If those numbers are accurate, it would indicate the input EC is far too low; i.e. the plants are up-taking nutrients faster than water: not typical.

Click to expand...

Additional note… at last feeding an hour or so ago, the PPM out has finally surpassed PPM in on two of the three. I feel the plants look a bit perkier too.

Growin4fun77 said:

Could the low runoff EC be due to the flush I did? Ie input for flush was a bit under 200 and it just taking time for the next 4-500oz of water to pull the ppm up?

Click to expand...

Yes

Billy the Mountain said:

Yes

Click to expand...

Cool, on top of that I don’t vividly remember ph’ing all the water for my flush. I probably forgot. So all that woulda come in at 7.4 were my tap is. I’m thinking I had a few things occurring….

- Ph issues leading to stress/ph swings
- Low fans led to irritation/blisters on the leaves at the top of canopy.
- All the apparent tip burn is not visible below the canopy so is more likely might stress.
- USER ERROR - I was pushing them to hard with food through all this stress


My plan of action is to:
1. Continue with reduced nutrients (500ppm); with increases only of the plants ask
2. Maintain consistent ph inflow if 5.8-6.0
3. Raised lights 6 inches
4. Raised fans 10 inches
5. Increase mag minimally via Epsom salt

Hope this eliminates all potential causes then I can adjust gradually from there.

Growin4fun77 said:

Cool, on top of that I don’t vividly remember ph’ing all the water for my flush. I probably forgot. So all that woulda come in at 7.4 were my tap is. I’m thinking I had a few things occurring….

- Ph issues leading to stress/ph swings
- Low fans led to irritation/blisters on the leaves at the top of canopy.
- All the apparent tip burn is not visible below the canopy so is more likely might stress.
- USER ERROR - I was pushing them to hard with food through all this stress


My plan of action is to:
1. Continue with reduced nutrients (500ppm); with increases only of the plants ask
2. Maintain consistent ph inflow if 5.8-6.0
3. Raised lights 6 inches
4. Raised fans 10 inches
5. Increase mag minimally via Epsom salt

Hope this eliminates all potential causes then I can adjust gradually from there.

Click to expand...

How are you watering? If you're not watering slowly and evenly, that could cause the runoff EC to be far lower than the inflow EC. For example, I had a plant once in the corner of a scrog that I basically had to jam the water in from one side and the water would rise evenly 2" above the pot and lower evenly, but it wasn't actually going in evenly and my outflow EC was consistently 1/2 of the inflow EC for weeks and slight deficiencies developed.

I then bought a wand and was able to distribute water slowly and evenly and the EC outflow corrected after a couple of days without changing the inflow EC. This can also happen with auto water systems and a slow hand watering here and there can fix any valleys that may have formed. This could also explain why you're getting runoff with not so much volume coming in.

Also, what is your PPFD?

What is the EC of your starting water? How many ml's per gallon of water are you using of Micro, Gro, Bloom?