Deficiency or something else?

Yesterday I noticed that a couple of my fan leaves on the bigger plant were showing some brownish / gold spots all over, and the other plant is showing the claw symptoms on some of its fan leaves. I need some help here guys, cause I am kind of stumped. Please see my journal for any additional info. I also posted this in there in hopes of getting some helpful recommendations on what to do here.

• I flushed the system for 1.5 hours yesterday using sledgehammer and this is the first real flush I have ever done on them since they germinated the first of February.
• After flushing I added 2 gallons of new water to each system 3tsp/gal of FF grow big and 3tsp/gal of FF big bloom which equates to 6 tsps of each for the 2 gallons of water.
• Also added 4 drops of sledge hammer to each DWC bucket per the instructions.
• Also added 2 tsp 3% H2O2 (Store bought) which I have been doing for about the past week or so.
• PH for each is 5.8
• PPM for each is 1360

The plants are basically 1 month old at this point and I was planning to move them over to flower sometime in April. I would greatly appreciate any advice I can get on this. From what I have read the curling is a sign of to much Nitrogen, but I am confused how that is possible, beings they have been on this regime for awhile now. As far as the brownish / gold on the other plants fan leaves I assume this is a cal/mag deficiency, but again I am confused on that one also.

Thanks in advance for any help!!!

you are getting root rot look at them are they turning brown
i suggests using this ez to follow feed chart also http://www.skunklabshc.com/shop.html
http://www.skunklabshc.com/microbe-tea-info.html
use RO water
cheap works http://www.ebay.com/itm/Portable-4-stage-100-GPD-Reverse-Osmosis-RO-drinking-Pure-Water-System-/271468578147?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f34c9c563

Terry385 said:

you are getting root rot look at them are they turning brown
i suggests using this ez to follow feed chart also http://www.skunklabshc.com/shop.html
http://www.skunklabshc.com/microbe-tea-info.html
use RO water
cheap works http://www.ebay.com/itm/Portable-4-stage-100-GPD-Reverse-Osmosis-RO-drinking-Pure-Water-System-/271468578147?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f34c9c563

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Thanks for the response Terry. I have been trying to fight this for about a week now using 3% store bought H2O2 with no luck. I have been researching for hours on how to get rid of this and basically narrowed it down to either using small doses of bleach ( 5 drops / Gal ) or using something like aquashield.

I chose to go with aquashield so after going up to my local hydro store I found that its no longer called aquashield and is now called hydroguard. I just put the recommended dosage into each DWC bucket which was 2ml/Gal. Do you think this will do the trick? I can see how the bleach would work and be cheaper, I am just scared to use it on my babies lol.

Below is the best pics I could provide of the roots on each plant, and they do have a brownish color to them. I am not smelling anything foul, but they definitely don't look right.

you need to change to the tea in my post ^^^^
hydroguard did not work for me tried all ready pic of plant O Ding on hydroguard
2 weeks after using tea

start of hydroguard looked good after a while start up with tea4 weeks on tea pic today

I'v had root rot and mine didn't look like those. Looks to me like your water/feed is staining your roots. Hydroguard has saved many of my plants so it can work. Looks to me like a cal def at least for me when my girls get looking like that. Try backing off the nutes for a week and bump up your cal/mg, they should recover nicely. Also try letting your PH swing up and down a bit this helps as well. Also by using bleach or H2o2 with Hydroguard you are wasting the Hydroguard. Your killing the goodies in the Hguard

Not sure how to take the above post...I don't see any improvement in the health of the plant posted only bigger. Plus was the "after tea" 1 day 1 week 1 month??? Not sure I would want to run out and spend more money on that tea from what I see in that pic.

Looks to me like a phosphorus or boron deficiency? Maybe look up into those i don't want to give you any wrong info. I remember getting a boron deficiency because of my pH and it looked similar to that, it was in a soil grow and my plants leaf started browning up in the middle followed up with deformed growth. I fixed my pH to a 5.8-6.2 and everything went smooth from there. maybe it wasnt anything to do with a boron deficiency who knows, but i fixed it lol.

Hygrozyme?

The pictures were taken with my Iphone, so apologies for them not being very good. That being said I am almost positive I have root rot, or at least the beginning stages of it. They both have roots that are brownish in color and some of them look like they are hanging by a thread. A couple weeks ago they were healthy and white, and the plants were thriving. Now its like they are frozen in time, and I have not seen any type of growth in days. The only thing I am seeing is the discoloration in the fan leaves, and the curling leaf tip on the other plant.

Thank you everyone for giving me advice on this, and Terry thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction on what to look for, because being a novice grower I had no idea.

• Last night I added a pretty heavy dose of clorox bleach to the res and let them soak for about 2 hours. After that I dumped the res and washed the roots and rockwool by running the net pot under straight water.
• I made up 2 fresh reservoirs with 2 gallons of fresh water each.
• Added a slightly lower dose of my nutrients to read around 860 PPM down from 1300 PPM
• PH'd both reservoirs to 5.8
• Added 5 drops of bleach per gallon to each reservoir. 10 drops total beings there are 2 gallons of water in each res.
• I removed the dying fan leaves off the bigger plant.

I am not an expert on this by any stretch of the imagination, and honestly I expected to wake up this morning to dead plants, but to my surprise they are alive lol. I checked the roots and they look better, but nothing drastic so I suspect this may take a few days or a week? Anyways I will keep everyone posted on this and provide some pictures in a day or 2 and hopefully show some drastic improvement or let you know if my decisions were an epic failure. Crossing my fingers at this point, but this is definitely a valuable lesson I will not relive on my next grow I can tell you that. I am kicking myself in the ass right now for not using some sort of beneficial bacteria or utilizing the small doses of bleach from the very beginning, ugh

StChristopher said:

I'v had root rot and mine didn't look like those. Looks to me like your water/feed is staining your roots. Hydroguard has saved many of my plants so it can work. Looks to me like a cal def at least for me when my girls get looking like that. Try backing off the nutes for a week and bump up your cal/mg, they should recover nicely. Also try letting your PH swing up and down a bit this helps as well. Also by using bleach or H2o2 with Hydroguard you are wasting the Hydroguard. Your killing the goodies in the Hguard

Not sure how to take the above post...I don't see any improvement in the health of the plant posted only bigger. Plus was the "after tea" 1 day 1 week 1 month??? Not sure I would want to run out and spend more money on that tea from what I see in that pic.

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Chris,

I actually thought this was the problem in the beginning and I cut my nutes down and actually bought a bottle of calimagic and added that in, and I think it was a day or 2 after that when I made this post reaching out to you guys cause nothing was getting better and it actually seemed to get worse lol.

Once Terry said I was getting root rot, I immediately looked closely at the roots on both plants and they do not look good. I dont thinks its advanced root rot because I dont smell anything foul, but they are brown, slimy in some spots, and some look like they were chewed on and hanging by a thread, so something ate away at them.

As far as the hydroguard goes, I bought that with the intentions of using the bleach to kill off the root rot first and once I am sure its completely gone, I was going to switch over to hydroguard in both reservoirs and continue to use that throughout the rest of the grow. That is if I am not to late and the plants survive this.

I too recommend Hydroguard. Also Subculture B from General Hydroponics. If you think theres root rot. They work

DirtyMcCurdy said:

I too recommend Hydroguard. Also Subculture B from General Hydroponics. If you think theres root rot. They work

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Thanks for the response Dirty!! I was going to purchase Sub B but my local hydro store did not have it, and I did not want to wait any longer for an online order to start fighting this. Definitely hoping to come out on top in this fight, but only time will tell lol.

Ya slime is a pretty good indicator Terry has a good point with the "tea" hands down best way to bring the root zone back on track. I'm like Terry lazy, and like the premade teas. One could use earthworm casting, kelp and a few other goodies, bubble for 24-48 and get a much cheaper tea.

Me I would stay away from the bleach, I see no good reason to put that type of chemical on my girls. Bleach kills all the little micro. But thats me, I have seen others with great results after a bleach bath. My understanding is only the new growth uptakes calcium. With little to no new root growth, cal is not being consumed.

Good luck, think your on the right track.

Hydrogaurd and pondezyme although if your water temps reach 78 or abouve those products don't really work

StChristopher said:

Ya slime is a pretty good indicator Terry has a good point with the "tea" hands down best way to bring the root zone back on track. I'm like Terry lazy, and like the premade teas. One could use earthworm casting, kelp and a few other goodies, bubble for 24-48 and get a much cheaper tea.

Me I would stay away from the bleach, I see no good reason to put that type of chemical on my girls. Bleach kills all the little micro. But thats me, I have seen others with great results after a bleach bath. My understanding is only the new growth uptakes calcium. With little to no new root growth, cal is not being consumed.

Good luck, think your on the right track.

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Thanks again for the responses Chris, much appreciated!! I assure you I did not want to use bleach either, I had to fight myself to put it in there, and honestly I expected to wake up to dead plants, but so far they are alive lol. I do not want to continue using bleach throughout any of my grows thought so something has to change, i'm just hoping that change is not me scraping this grow and starting over from seed

Tone5500 said:

Hydrogaurd and pondezyme although if your water temps reach 78 or abouve those products don't really work

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Thanks Tone!! I am not sure what my res temps are, I know the highest it usually get under the light is 79, but majority of the time its around 75 degrees so I would say its a lot cooler in the black res with a black lid. I definitely made sure no light was getting in there.

Here is where I am at guys.. Woke up this morning to the ladies still looking pretty sick. They have been in a mild (5 drop/gal) clorox / nute solution for 2 days now, and also being hand fed with a large syringe so I could kill anything in the 4" rockwool cube. At this point I would say any bad bacteria should be dead right? I have taken the following measures.

• Ordered everything required to make Heisenberg's tea recipe which should be here in a day or 2

My questions / thought process is should I dump the reservoirs today, clean them down with bleach, clean the grow cabinet / spray lysol everywhere, rinse the plants under the faucet really well, and sanitize all tools / utensils?

After doing all that should I mix up some new nutes and start just using the hydroguard for the time being?

Another questions I had is I am using the fox farm trio ( grow big, big bloom, tiger bloom ) so when I start using this tea or even the hydro guard for that matter is it going to eat up any of these nutrients also? I read somewhere big bloom was organic which would not be good I assume when using a tea, am I wrong in my thought process here?

I really want to get these things out of this bleach solution and on to greener pastures so any advice / experience is greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance everyone!!

Gutcheck said:

Thanks Tone!! I am not sure what my res temps are, I know the highest it usually get under the light is 79, but majority of the time its around 75 degrees so I would say its a lot cooler in the black res with a black lid. I definitely made sure no light was getting in there.

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What type of light are you using ?

Ordered everything required to make Heisenberg's tea recipe real good choice, I've made it before

change your nutrient line up

Terry385 said:

Ordered everything required to make Heisenberg's tea recipe real good choice, I've made it before

change your nutrient line up

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Can I not use the FF line of nutrients with any tea's?

Tone5500 said:

What type of light are you using ?

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Its a 12 lamp T5 HO grow light for veg room. The bulbs never get hot, ive sat there with my finger on them for minutes at a time and never felt anything but warmth. That being said I never keep the light inches from my plants, but I would say its around 12" away from them at all times and they loved it. They were doing spectacular up until the root rot attacked me lol.