Sick momma

**g1ithc** · 06-17-2009, 08:09 PM

Hydro Growers:
1. Are you growing from seed or clones? clone, grapefruit kush
2. How old are your plants? 6 months
3. How tall are your plants? 2.5'-3' roughly
4. What type of hydro system are you using? 1/3 vermiculite, 2/3 perlite
5. What brand/type of nutrients are you using? GH 3-part, calmag
6. What is the Ph of your nutrient solution? 5.8 going in
7. What is the PPM/EC of your tap water? 150ish, but use RO water diluted with 15% tap water
8. What is the PPM/EC of your nutrient solution? Last watering (today) was 850ppm (8ml of each bottle plus calmag), but the last week or two she was spitting up and not eating, so the waterings were about 350ppm during that time, and the pH would drop crazily and come out around 5.0, even when she was eating. Two days ago she was been flushed a shit load and then fed the 850ppm previously mentioned/
9. What is the temperature of your nutrient solution? high 60s probably
10. Does your PPM/EC show a rise or fall when you do your daily PPM check? just started to drop
11. Does your pH show a rise or fall when you do your daily check? slight fall
12. Do you foliar feed or spray your plants with anything? it has 5 "hotshot no pest" strips hanging around it, and has been sprayed with numerous miticides numerous times.
13. What kind of lights do you use and how many watts combined? (HPS, MH, fluorescent, halogen, incandescent "plant lights") 150w flourescent bulb
14. How close are your lights to the plants? 4" from the tops
15. What size is your grow space in square feet?
16. What is the temperature and humidity in your grow space? 70ish degrees with 60-70% humidity
17. Have you noticed any insect activity in your grow space? oh god.

Besides what wasn't in the list, I sprayed with epsom salts a few days ago, 1/2tsp/quart, and have been dealing with mites since i realized their presense 3 months ago. Shes looked this bad once before but snapped out of it. I'm not sure if the excessive amount of pest strips are causing whackiness in her.

so i figured she was nutrient deprived from having 350ppm for weeks-- so she was flushed and given 850ppm hoping that the runoff will be lower than that next watering.

I'm not sure if i should add more calmag, been using 1tsp per gal every other watering.

I'll take better pictures shortly and post them
thank you so much for looking

((shes getting pressure washed in that picture (to try to knock any mitage off))

CRAZYTRAIN · 06-17-2009, 10:07 PM

Are you using Hardwater Micro or the regular Micro? I think you don't need that CalMag. If you had defs it was because your food wasn't strong enough. When you increase her feeding strengty she'll get the mag she needs. Soon the excess mag could lock out other nutes and you'll see a P or a K def (can't remember which). Numerous Mitacides and then raising the feeding by 500 ppm could acting together to really stress her out. That's weird about the ph dropping, have you checked the roots out? When I read that "rootrot" came in my mind.

Or I could be totally wrong. Another grower might tell you to raise the PPM to 1100

**g1ithc** · 06-17-2009, 11:21 PM

thank you for the reply and incite

i'm using the regular micro, and my tap comes out 150ppm, but i figured that the 150 isn't entirely 75ppm ca and 75 mg, so i was adding the calmag as a precaution. i should get a water analysis

I'll definitely quit the cal-mag out of the feedings now. after watering her with the 850ppm last watering, the overflow water that came out once it had halted to a trickle was 550ppm which is a good sign, but she was just flushed a lot right before then so maybe it means nothing

and crap, i just sprayed with epsom salts. now i really wish i hadn't. should i flush again?

do you think the full 8ml of each (1-1-1=850ppm) is too strong right now?

also for whatever reason i think if i could have her under HPS instead of flourescent lighting that it would help her health, even though i've had good experiences with the fluorescent bulb being used..

again thank you

*edit* i hope to god its not root rot. this is the only mother left of this strain available to me, so i really am freaking out about getting her healthy again. i haven't noticed any funky smells at all, but haven't really looked at the roots. She's 6 months old and was transplanted about a month and a half ago from a 1.5gallon to a 3 gallon container. after that she took off again, maybe she could stand a transplant? ill poke around at the top of the bucket and try to expose some roots to see if they look healthy.

also.. should i add any peroxide to the next watering?

sorry for all the questions

CRAZYTRAIN · 06-18-2009, 02:09 AM

I think with her being stressed out already adding peroxide might not be a good idea right now. I'd carefully remove the bucket and inspect those roots before I did that. If they're brown and fucked up looking I think I'd bonzai her and trim the roots before I added the peroxide but I'm a little afraid of peroxide. I also add a lot of beneficial bacterias and peroxide kills those. I'm sure SkwirlGirl would be down for the peroxide treatment though.

I think you should drop the cal/mag. Remember that the cal/mag has lots of Calcium in it as well, hence the name CAL/mag

AlleyCat and BlueCheese had a big discussion a while back about Cal mag or stronger food. I believe the consensus was that GH has plenty of Mag in it, but you have to feed it strong enough. My friend that grew hempy with GH went by the directions on the bottle and had great results. I believe that RipCord also did the same thing. You might want to check out the begging of his Hempy journal as it might be in there what he did.

I don't know if your plant is a light feeder or a heavy feeder which makes a big difference but I don't see whey it wouldn't handle that feeding.

What kind of Floro light are you using? When plants get big they like more light and more food.

If this were my plant I would bonzai it and trim the roots and let it grow back nice and healthy. I hate to tell you to do that. I'd feel bad if you bonzaid it and it died or something. But I've screwed up some plants before and bonzaing them fixed them.

Watch the new growth. The old leaves are going to remain jacked up, so watch the new growth for signs of over feeding.

Perhaps you should think about going 100ppm stronger every feeding until you see it growing again, just a thought, maybe an experienced hempy grower will chime in on that.

I've got a thread in the nursery as well about some dirt plants.. you should check it out.

**g1ithc** · 06-18-2009, 10:41 AM

I had trimming the shit out of her, all the low spindly branches that weren't reaching the light. It's one of those huge ass 150w flourobulbs that weighs about 10 pounds and looks like some kinda plasma ray gun from the future. I think im going to buy a replacement 250w HPS bulb and hook that up for her

I'm about to poke around the roots and take more pictures

**g1ithc** · 06-18-2009, 08:18 PM

alright, just poked around the roots and figured while she was out of her bucket, might as well upgrade to a 5 gallon bucket (she was in a 3).
The roots all looked healthy, literally zero smell to the rootball and medium, so thank god I don't think its root rot.

However I don't think she WAS rootbound in the 3 gallon container, it didn't seem like the roots even went down to the water table at all, or if they did- they just broke off when taking her out of the container.

Before transplanting, I tipped the bucket to collect some water. She was just watered yesterday and i had to tip really far to get anything out, thats why I was thinking she could be rootbound. The ppm was 525, and pH was 5.0. The last watering before that was 850ppm, so besides the pH dropping, everythings good and shes eating. I don't know whats going on with the pH.

After transplanting I watered her with medium strength nutrients, 5ml of each bottle to a gallon and pH corrected to about 6.3 (to try to counteract the low PH)

The first three pictures are before transplanting
the last three pictures are *after* transplanting

----------------------------------------------

thanks for looking
I hope the transplant makes her thrive, and not die

**g1ithc** · 06-19-2009, 12:01 PM

Okay, so I watered her today since i transplanted yesterday, and didn't get any overflow yesterday when i watered

I put 1 gallon of 3ml of each nutrient pH'd to 6.2 today

The runoff was 1100ppm and 6.8pH.

I think its all the perlite dust causing the ppm to raise, and maybe the vermiculite causing the pH to rise? The runoff water was dusty white like perlite dust was in it

After seeing the runoff over 1000ppm, *another* gallon of nutrients went in, this time 1ml of each nutrient to a gallon and pH 6.0

After that gallon was dumped in, the runoff is 750ppm and pH about 6.3-6.5

Next time I'll be sure to rinse the perlite very well before putting a plant in it.

The mom plant today doesn't look any better or worse than it did yesterday, and I'm still at a loss of what to do

**g1ithc** · 06-22-2009, 11:51 AM

Still no signs of improvement.

I'm starting to think that maybe its simply the room the the mother is in, too much stagnant air in combination with the excessive hot shot strips. I think the mites are finally gone, so i'm going to remove the strips.

I'm also going to relocate her to another room in hopes that she perks up from having constant FRESH air.

I'm very scared.

CRAZYTRAIN · 06-22-2009, 04:07 PM

In those last photos I saw a bunch of tops that look like you could make cuttings out of them.. I think you should do that. Then if I were you I'd bonzai her way down in hopes that she grows back good and strong.

**g1ithc** · 06-30-2009, 05:41 PM

I think shes finally snapping out of it.
She was moved under HPS lighting about 3 days ago.

Been watering with only 1ml each G-M-B, and pH a little higher than comfortable. Everything's started to stabilize.

The new growth nodes are all healthy, and there are a few small healthy leaves that have grown back.

On the down side, I saw a mite moving around on her today. It's been weeks since i spotted one on her. I guess i'm foolish to think I could have one plant with mites, and one plant without mites, even if they ARE in completely separate rooms.

I guess that means that i'm forced to buy avid.

Does anyone know if avid gets in the way of cloning?

Do i have to wait till the avid runs its course (45 days right?) before i can clone successfully? Or is it okay to take clones while avid is in a plants system.

Is there any point to spraying a mother plant with avid while there's a still flowering plant that is about to finish (infested with mites), or should i just wait to spray the mom with avid after the flowering plant is harvested?

does avid stress/hurt plants? Is it advisable to spray a plant with avid if it's not healthy? Or must you only spray 100% healthy plants?

I'm so angry. Sorry for the bombardment of questions everyone.

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