Drooping Only at the End of the Day. Seems to Stump a Lot of People

I am running a DWC set up in a 5gal. bucket with 2 airstones running. Temps are constant at 76 during the day and 68 at night. Plant is alone under a 600w 18/6 light sched. When I check her in the morning she looks perfect and every way perked up ready to go, but when the end of the day rolls around she is droopy and sad looking. I have been doing a lot of research on this topic and get a lot about over watering or temps, but I'm running DWC so there is no such thing as over watering and my temps are fine. I thought lack of O2 but I have grown with this exact airstone and pump before and had no issues at all. This topic seems to have stumped a lot of people just wanted to see if anyone has had this issue in DWC or can make sense of why they look SOOO healthy when the light come on and by the end of the day are not looking happy at all. One thing is plant recently moved from friends where it was under 6 t8's on a 24hr veg cycle to my 600watter. I'll have pics tomorrow (i need to snap some healthy morning ones cause I know she will look good in the morning). Shoot me some ideas please.

I have experienced the same thing, it's like they can only handle X hours of light - before they start drooping. For me, it only lasted about two weeks and the problem slowly went away (during veg stage, 18/6). I have no idea why, maybe it's something with the environment? It looks like they can't handle all the light because something else is missing. Weird.

EXACTLY. That is promising news because this did just start. I just don't want it to be effecting things in the long run (quality/yeild ect..) because I feel I have everything in order. Thanks for your info man.

OK here are the morning and afternoon pictures: look at the drastic difference from an hour after light came on to an hour before it went out.

1 hr before lights out.


1 hr after lights on in the morn.


Any ideas shoot em at me.

Water temps are get warm at the end of the day. The plant is limiting how much thermal energy it is taking in, it is shading it self from the heat (light). Insulate your bucket or make one from an insulated ice chest. Adding frozen water bottles or ice-packs help if you can keep changing them when they melt.

That sounds like it could be it. Also maybe look at your feeding schedule and make sure your ppm isn't rising throughout the day.

For starts, plants have to be slowly acclimated to higher light levels or they will show stress. Naturally the cell pressure turgor is normal when lights have been off for a while - RH is higher at that point, temps are cooler. As the day proceeds and the plant loses moisture via transpiration the leaves/petioles will show moisture stress. See my sig.

Good that you're learning to read your plants.

UB

Warmer water absorbs less Oxygen, they're getting more and more "overwatered" as the day goes on because the warming water takes on less oxygen.

Right on, Yea that makes a lot of sense to me now. I just couldn't make sense of how I'm getting these overwatered symptoms at the end of the day in DWC. Really good info, much appreciated guys. Another thing that helped I had my air pump right by the little exhaust fan on my ballast so I moved that and seemed to help for later in the day. Thanks again.

Nice. If you can, keep your air pump outside of your tent so your not pumping warm or hot air into your DWC bucket. Assuming the air outside your tent is cooler than the air inside the tent.

in my experience this is simply a normal occurrence. Fast growing plants especially will begin to recognize the light cycle and start to deactivate about an hour or half hour before lights off. Don't let it scare you. However if your plant looks like this all through the light cycle you likely have dead/dying roots or over watering going on. Looks like im a few months late on this reply anyways so hope it turned out well.

cheers to the guy who waters at night...lol