Bad Room Syndrome?? What's Wrong With This Picture?

WHAT IS GOING ON WITH OUR ROOM?

We've recently moved our grow spot and found the same thing keeps
happening again and again. We've tried all kinds of things to remedy this
with no resolve. Any and all ideas (not related to nutes) are appreciated

After giving our O.G. Kush ladies proper time to root in their pots for a
few days under a 1,000w halide, we turned on all of the air cooled, 8,000w
HPS lights, and after about a week in veg onward, the leaves slowly
start to curl, then yellow and die. See photo below.

This continues until there is very little growth happening and some of
the worst phenotypes finish flower with very little root systems, and
pencil thin stalks.

We're using just the basics: Canna Coco with their A & B, along with
CalMag Plus and a little silica. The feed is @ 1.2 EC and pH'd to 5.8
religiously. We are positive it has nothing to do with nutes as we
haven't changed this protocol for years with our O.G.s. To reiterrate:

PLEASE DON'T GIVE US ADVICE ON THE NUTES IN THIS THREAD.

Room temps hover around 68-78 far. never going above 82 far. and
the lights are over 2 ft. away from the tops. There is no heat issue
or stress going on and the air circulation is plentiful with a 10 inch.
and a 6 inch fan/filter setup and all lights are air cooled properly.

The only thing we haven't explored fully is the environment in and
around the grow. It's in a downstairs basement with drywall closing
off 2 open sides to make a square room. It's a concrete floor and used
to be a workshop where god knows what kind of work was being done
in there!

We are suspecting that there could issues with air quality since our lung
room brings in fresh, cool air from it's outside windows, but it's also our
laundry room where the water heater and furnace reside.

We've also just located about 7, 5-gal. paint buckets in the grow room
which were holding up our tables including one bucket with all of it's paint
still in there and a few small holes in the lid. This was situated near some
ballasts which could of been warming up the paint for it to off-gas into
the room.

The other thing we've noticed today is that it shares a huge wall with
our 2-car garage. The garage has absolutely no ventilation, except for
the negative pressure in the grow, sucking all of the dirty garage air from
our cars into the room through the gaps in the walls. The negative pressure
is pretty strong so garage air is coming in very fast.

As you can see, we are going crazy trying to diagnose the issues with
this new place. We've already had 2 failed harvests netting a total of 4
lbs. in 2 8kw grows here so far, and are not able to afford anymore
heartache. Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks.


(note: I don't have my usb cable to upload my own photos but these plants demonstrate EXACTLY the same characteristics)

With OG kush I've had yellowing problems like that from light burn the room was nice and cool but the light was way way to intense. I have also had the same problem from cal/mag def plants. real OG is a plant that loves to be starved at least in my garden.

That's a helpful insight Creek, thanks. Yeah, these are SFV OG's and we didn't notice any probs using 600 watt bulbs on em, just noticing this happen w/ 1000k's. Do you use Calmag Plus? If so, what ratio? Also, what do you mean by "Starved?"

The lights are like 3 frigin feet away from the tops - it's crazy! Not sure what to do about it if that's the issue since the room was designed for 1000k's not to mention no extra $ to switch to 600k's. How did you solve your issue w/ this? Anyone else find this to be the case w/ OG?

Does the protocol you mention include RO water or tap? My first impression though was heat.

I am growing og kush myself and I would like to help you. I have a remedy but it's going to be alot of work...

Well to begin you need to relocate all the plants immediately to another area ( during lightup ) Now take a bucket and a mixture of bleach and water 25 ml/1gallon, warm water preferably. Now you and your partner get busy wiping every square inch down of this space, thoroughly, not missing a power cord, an underside of anything, or a corner of a reflector. Walls ceiling everything.

Next you must take a spritzing bottle or two and use your hand, starting at the base of the plant misting your way up getting the undersides of all foliage. Next you must work your way from the top down, same thing, spritzing all surfaces. The mixture you will use can be whatever you feel you may need to use at this particular time of your grow. Whether you decide to go with a skim milk or defender (pm treatment) or maybe a pesticide, even just water is fine. The idea is to just spray the plants really well and get rid of any debris/bacteria that has come in contact with the foliage/stems/buds etc. Now your plants are drenched and dripping, time to flush your pots, all of them. You will need at least the same amount of water that your pots are to get them to gush out the bottoms. People say use 3 times your pot size but for me that would mean a swimming pool for a reservoir. But I have to bubble my water for 24 hours and ph it also. Some people have filtration systems, etc. I just flushed all of them two different times with around a gallon of water each and they flushed out quite well.

Now your plants are dripping still and the medium is flushed out. Now comes the tricky part. Your going to have to seal the entire wall that the room shares with this said garage. I personally would use clear poly plastic and a caulking gun full of quick dry silicone. Your gonna want to do this on the inside of the garage, not your grow room. Tuck tape the poly onto your 4 corners, than go along and tightly tape all the seams that go to along the walls, floor, etc. Than if you want, you can rin a bead of silicone all along the edges anywhere you feel neccessary, I would do the perimeter myself.

Your going to want to take care of the other bad air problem now. You mentioned an air intake coming from your lung room that is also the furnace/laundry room, I'm assuming it is a duct of some sort. What you need to do is use a product called cheesecloth and cut several sheets of it placing them tightly onto the whole area where the air is being drawn from, example: an empty toilet paper tube with a bunch of single sheets of toilet paper, taped on firmly with masking tape, this is small scale but gives you a picture of how to do this. Basically you want any air coming into your room to be controlled and filtered and cheesecloth really does work.

Now you have got your plants drying from their soaking, your garage wall sealed, your room fully cleaned and airing out the bleach fumes and your intake is filtering the cool air from your lung room in. This is a clean, protected environmeant for the plants now and the plants themselves have been washed and the medium all rinsed. You must wait maybe 3-4 more hours with the exhaust on high to get the bleach fumes out. Then you put everything back in resume your grow. I advise, I know you said not too, using a 1/2 strength nute mix, every second watering, with a straight watering in between for awhile, just until you see improvement in growth and vigour.

I understand that this is alot of work but this is a really good step in the right direction for achieving the yields you would like and putting an end to this sickness of the plant, that has plagued you and has semmed to even follow you. I would estimate a total of 4-6 hours of work involved depending on how diligently and how many persons are involved in this re-design, so to speak. This is nothing for a trade off of having a healthy room. May I also suggest that from now on any visits be done in a very cleanly fashion, in fact, having a very clean closet with a labcoat, kept very clean, and barefoot (no dirty shoes) or very clean socks will keep your conscience free of any worry regarding disease or pests being introduced on your behalf. One other thing I should mention, as I am attempting to cover all areas of this fix, is that the medium you are using each grow should be new and fresh, with very clean pots. I suggest a root enzyme to aid in structuring a healthy supportive root system. The health of the root system is what supports the plant throught it's cycle of life and should be carefully taken into consideration. I myself use a product called hygrozyme (grozyme) and a b-1 additive called superthrive.

One more thing, I keep my 1000 watt HPS within 12 inches or even less of the very tips of the plants throughout my grow with no burning whatsover. I have two oscillating fans covering the spread of my canopy, blowing a nice breeze. Not for one single secong have I seen the tiniest amount of burning or heat stress. BTW your temps are fine, you know this already, move your lights closer and get a flow going over the tops, this will be good for growth as you will be utilizing so many more lumens.

I hope that this step may bring your room closer to what in your mind is your optimal conditions and your desired harvest weight. In other words I hope I have helped you out with this information.

Take care, work hard and good luck,

~ BCbuddy

View attachment 957492View attachment 957493


the pics above are from my first attempt at og kush.
i notice in my room, they like the nutes to be extra strong.
all the other plants on my table dont mind it at about 1200ppm but this wasnt enough for my ogs.
i'm currently pushing 1500ppm, if i would have known they could handle this much i woulda been feeding them higher concentrations weeks ago.

but i do notice the buds are really airy and loose.

good luck with your grow.

all i can think of is bad genetics maybe...

Thanks for your replies so far, everyone. BC, that def. sounds like a lot of work, but at this point, were taking action on anything that sounds remotely to be the cause. Not sure exactly what you suspect the cause to be tho...bacteria/fungus?

We're definitely working to seal up all spaces that vigorously pull in that garage air into the grow. Also, gonna try to find a way to get outside air to have a more direct route into the grow without having to pass (literally) through our furnace and water heater in our lung room to get there.

Temporarily, we just have a 1000w hanging in the middle of the room until they can root more (ending 1st week of veg. today) and get a little stronger before we get more wattage on them.

It really does seem to speed up the process of the leaves yellowing once we turn all 8K on. Actually, it's the ONLY time we notice this happening with the plants, which lead us to believe that the mysterious negative environmental factors affecting them are sped up once we push all 8K on em?

As far as bad genetics, we did notice that it was happening with certain numbers (we've got dozens of pheno's we're isolating), but that may be because those pheno's are more vulnerable to what's happening in that space. It's def. a possible cause tho.

Any other ideas? Btw, yes, we're using R/O water.

joeking said:

Thanks for your replies so far, everyone. BC, that def. sounds like a lot of work, but at this point, were taking action on anything that sounds remotely to be the cause. Not sure exactly what you suspect the cause to be tho...bacteria/fungus?

We're definitely working to seal up all spaces that vigorously pull in that garage air into the grow. Also, gonna try to find a way to get outside air to have a more direct route into the grow without having to pass (literally) through our furnace and water heater in our lung room to get there.

Temporarily, we just have a 1000w hanging in the middle of the room until they can root more (ending 1st week of veg. today) and get a little stronger before we get more wattage on them.

It really does seem to speed up the process of the leaves yellowing once we turn all 8K on. Actually, it's the ONLY time we notice this happening with the plants, which lead us to believe that the mysterious negative environmental factors affecting them are sped up once we push all 8K on em?

As far as bad genetics, we did notice that it was happening with certain numbers (we've got dozens of pheno's we're isolating), but that may be because those pheno's are more vulnerable to what's happening in that space. It's def. a possible cause tho.

Any other ideas? Btw, yes, we're using R/O water.

Click to expand...

Yeah to be honest, sometimes there is no way to pinpoint the problem in some cases. You just have to have the mindset of going back to ground zero. Wipe your whole entire show out and begin again. Cant not help for you to do all that work I suggested and go back to zero. I personally, would already have done it, no offense. If that doesnt work you have bad medium and/or bad genetics somehow. Or something else is wrong beyond your control. You could always just get a new strain, a hearty one and begin again. At least you'll get your 10-12 pounds in 3 to 3 1/2 months rather than play these little games with what you got going. You have to look at the BIG PICTURE my friend. Think about it. Just trying to help man. You can struggle and get your 2 pounds or a lil more again, or you can get your $ 25,000 dollars approx. off a real crop, your choice Go big or go HOME peace dawg