Blue Cheese rust spots climbing, Leaves deing.

Hey Guys could really use some Help .

Soil grow Atami bio grow PH 5.5-6.5
600 hps 18 inchs above canopy
Temps 77-80fday 65f night
Feed Terra max bloom cycle 2.5ml per litre (did give small dose of Bloombastic as it had calcium,magnesium,manganese in)
PH is unknown i looked up my tap water and it said 8.3 but done a 2 BC grows same water/nutes etc with 1st grow cropping dry 30 oz from 9 plants very dank

Ok it seems this rust spotting started around the time they went onto 12/12 and i switched from Terra leaves to Terra Max, i actually thought i had nute burnt so gave them a flush and chilled out on the Nutes.

Then i notice its starting on Fan leaves but slowly climbing so i grab some epsom salts and give a half a teaspoon per 2 litres of water for 2 days and no nutes.

After 3-4 days its still climbing now getting near the top bud leaves.

The buds look fine its 4 weeks into flower and forming nicely with lots of crystals forming.

I will go and get a PH testing kit 2morro
The nutes i have available are http://http://www.atami.com/?pid=59&prid=89

Thanks in advance any help gratefully recieved.

OK my tap water PH is 7.2 and the run off is 6
any help gratefully recieved,

As I looked at the plants the thoughts that crossed my mind:
Well, there is definitely some burn damage on the leaf tips.
Then it looks like the grower flushed the plant, which further deprived other nutrients.
The spots are probably a pH thing, maybe a little cal-mag won't hurt.

So then I read your process, and your remedy, and I'm pretty sure what you have going on isn't all that big a deal. You just haven't been as attentive with some things that you will be very attentive about in the future.

Namely, your pH. You have GOT to get that on lock down. When growing in soil you always want your solution to be between 7.0 and 6.5pH, so if you are using plain tap water then you'll need to adjust it some before applying. You also ALWAYS want your runoff pH in soil to be between 7.0 and 6.5ph. And the closer they are the better. If you use a 6.7 solution, and you get back and 6.6 runoff, then your pH is golden. Where you are right now is not inside the healthy level.

When the pH is off elements will precipitate more rapidly. You're not over using your nutrients for the given time of life but you probably pushed them a little too hard earlier on. The flush removed some of that excess but it didn't fix your pH problem, and that is going to continue to cause buildup issues down the road even when not over feeding.

My suggestion to you is to make a very weak solution that is concentrated at about 1ml/L of your nutrients. Then pH balance the system to somewhere around 5.7 or 5.8pH. You will need A LOT of solution. Have at least 3 liters of solution for every liter of soil.

Now rinse that media! This is like a flush, only instead of removing the elements in the soil you are exchanging out the bad stuff and replacing it with good stuff so that your plant doesn't need to go hungry again.

Once you have rinsed out the soil, and the pH is balanced in and out, then we can start addressing nutritional deficiencies as they arrive. My guess is that a little cal-mag won't hurt but we don't know if your system really needs "extra" cal-mag or if we just need to make the cal-mag that is present more available for uptake. Resolving the pH issue will show us the next step.

Good luck.

A really big thank you for your help.

OK well i actually flushed them yesterday before reading this.
I went and got a PH test kit and like i mentioned the run off was 6 from 7.2 water , so i took this to mean that my soil was less than 6 maybe around 5+ so i checked the lock out chart and thought yep thats my problem.
I actually thought the plant is not taking the nutrients and there was some sort of build up pushing the ph way out.
So i flushed every plant as i had given them 3ml in 2 litre of water per all 9 the night before and that seemed to speed the burning up.

One thing i will say about the flush was at the start the run off was 6 and it took a good hour of constant flushing to get the run off upto 6.2-6.4 and it took a hell of a lot of water. this took a hell of a long time as i wanst prepared to put them back in the tent untill the run off was not 6 or less. (the test kit lowest colour was yellow at 6ph and the run off was very yellow and over the hour of flush very slowly started to go from yellow to yellowy/green which the chart showed 6.2-6.4)

Then my plan was to get my water (ive already prepared a baby bath that i use for hash making with water left it to sit 32 hours) and im going to ph that water to 6.2-6.4 then i was going to start them off on 1/4 nutes

Your saying 5.7 to 5.8 ph but the soil lock out chart says 6./6.5 is best ph to avoid lock out.

So seeing as i started the flushing process before i read this and what you have said has been of great help to me, what should my next move be? its going to take them a bit off time to dry from the flush so i need to avoid to much more water i think.
Also i wanted to ask you about run off i read that if you dont let 10% run off you may cause a build up, and im not sure if i have been doing this as scared of overwatering.

In general as this is my 1st grow on my own im very paranoid and im trying to give less than too much.
Although this is my 1st solo grow ive done 2 previous with a friend and the 1st was amazing 30 oz dry from 9 plants Blue cheese and the smoke was the best ive ever smoked, just like the silver haze i smoked in amsterdamn 15 years ago.
These 1st 2 grows no ph was ever checked but i want to take growing a bit more serious so as long as these dont die and i pray to god they dont i will be investing in a an EC/PH meter.

Thank you very much for taking the time to help, and is the a way or repping on this site

edit: is Epsom salts the same as calmag or is it just magnesium? as i have epsom salts.
edit1: I also have ata Atazyme would this be a good time to use it?

I have no idea why I said to pH to 5.7 or 5.8...

I'm working in coco all the time. It must have just slipped out and I didn't catch it.

You are totally right. I should have said 6.5 to 6.7ph. NOT 5.7 to 5.8.... I don't even run a 5.7... I must have been really fucking high. Sometimes I get midway though a post and get the munchies and by the time I come back to it I don't even know where I am anymore.

Sorry homie. Sounds like you have the right plan of action. I don't know about the reliability of those test drop things. Save up a couple bucks ($40-$50, the cost of a few grams) and get yourself a good pH wand. When it comes to producing maximum buddage the pH is CRUCIAL, and the $40 you spend on a good tester will come back to you 10 times over on the first harvest. The pH could be the difference maker between harvesting 1 ounce, and 4 ounces.