Dry, drooping leaves on 3 of 4 plants. Having a real hard time diagnosing.

Hello RIU! I was a member years ago but have lost my login info so I'm starting fresh! I have a problem that has been keeping me up at night and I need your help...

I have 3- 3x3 flood tables each with a 315 CMH above each and 25 gal reservoirs. I am running Afgooey clones that came from good dispensary seeds. I have been growing these Afgooey's for about a year now with no problems at all, they are a really great plant so far. I flood the trays every 4 hours for 15 minutes. I use GH 3 part with the silica and floralicious supps and I have been flowering at 1200-1400ppm with no issues on my earlier harvests and i always keep my ph between 5.3-5.8, I keep track of both with a Bluelab combo meter. My humidity and temps are decent enough at 66% and 71deg. I run a perpetual harvest with 2 of my trays in different stages of flower and one in veg. I use city water that is lightly chlorinated and comes out pretty hard (I do use the GH hardwater formula) at 370ppm.

None of those factors have shown negative results in my 4 harvests of the afgooey so far, but now I have 4 ladies about 4 weeks into flower and they look awful... It started with what looked like overwatering, except it was only on the upper water leaves. They were drooping hard and cupping under while feeling very limp. I had let that particular res get a little funky (3 weeks old) and it had a definite bacteria thing going on in the form of floaties. So I emptied, cleaned, disinfected with H2O2 the res, pump, and lines and wiped out the tray as best I could. I then filled my res with clean PHed water and went to bed. The next night after work they looked even worse and the leaves were starting to get crunchy. It was then I noticed that one of the 4 girls in the effected tray was doing just fine. I mean no problems like her tray-mates at all. I put nutrients in the res to the tune of 900ppm and went to bed.

So here it is day 3 and my girls look even worse. I have a shot of one of my good trays about 4 weeks from harvest just looking great, a shot of my temps and such, side bud shot, top bud shot, a shot of the just fine plant in the funky tray, and a shot of the whole tray.

The fourth plant doing well is really what is baffling me...

It's hard to tell from the pictures, and I don't want to alarm you. But have you by chance ruled out a pest infestation, such as mites?

I havent gone over them with a fine toothed comb or anything but that fourth plant is very cozy with the 3 effected plants and shows no damage at all. I feel like that rules out mites but I will go thought them with my scope tomorrow on my day off.

What medium?

rockwool

I cant find any mites or infestation of any kind. Anyone else care to offer any insight? These ladies are dying, at the rate they're going they will be dead in a week.

what do your roots look like? and smell like?

I"ll check that in a couple hours when the lights turn on.

So my roots smell a bit like earthworms to me. Not funky at all. There is a bit of a 2-tone thing happening at my water line... I thought it wasnt possible with my flood schedule considering I havent had any trouble so far and nothing has changed, but does that look like overwatering? I've backed my flooding to 3 times instead of 6 per day. But I'm still not convinced that's the problem. I still have that fourth plant in the same tray, with the same conditions doing just fine.

Pics are as follows: a shot of all three of my trays and reservoirs all with the same conditions, a shot of my third tray looking frigging great in the same conditions as the troubled tray, a shitty hid photo showing the fourth plant still looking great, root close-up, tray roots, full root shot showing my water line.

@HydroRed is the flood and drain guy, maybe he'll have an educated opinion. i'm just guessing

I think @Roger A. Shrubber hit it right on the head. Those roots are looking kinda rough.

JustCantSleep said:

I had let that particular res get a little funky (3 weeks old) and it had a definite bacteria thing going on in the form of floaties. So I emptied, cleaned, disinfected with H2O2 the res, pump, and lines and wiped out the tray as best I could. I then filled my res with clean PHed water and went to bed.

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Thats where I believe your problem is. A h2o2 rinse after a skunked res wont sterilize a complete hydro system like pumps,lines etc. You have to use bleach for disinfection and sterilization of your equipment when you get hit with skunky res. H2o2 really only maintains a sterile res. Theres likely stuff inside of your pumps and lines that you dont see like sludge and film. Exactly how bad was the res that got skunky? Whats your res temps? Things move quick in hydro (but can be fixed quickly too), but 3 days to go from good to what they currently are is pretty bad. Everything else you listed regarding flood times etc seem well enough that you shouldnt be experiencing that kind of damage so quickly.

It was pretty funky... i had slimy floating stuff covering about 50% of the surface. My reservoirs sit on my concrete basement floor and rarely get above 62f. When I cleaned I used 29% h2o2 and that included throwing my pump and tubes in a bucket full of the stuff and ran it for half an hour. I also top watered my blocks with h2o2 solution real well before I freshened the res.

How do you think I should proceed? I'm still 6 weeks to harvest easy.

A thousand thankies to everyone offering help.

JustCantSleep said:

It was pretty funky... i had slimy floating stuff covering about 50% of the surface. My reservoirs sit on my concrete basement floor and rarely get above 62f. When I cleaned I used 29% h2o2 and that included throwing my pump and tubes in a bucket full of the stuff and ran it for half an hour. I also top watered my blocks with h2o2 solution real well before I freshened the res.

How do you think I should proceed? I'm still 6 weeks to harvest easy.

A thousand thankies to everyone offering help.

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When you get hit like that, you gotta introduce some bleach. I'd throw away all the fill and pump tubing and just get new. Once you clean everything really good, run a 10% bleach solution through the system (no plants in tray) for an hr or so then dump the res and start a new batch of nutes and add H2o2 in the res as instructed per gallon for the 29%. I dont use 29% but wanna say its like 5ml per gal of water- but check to make sure in case Im wrong.

Sounds like solid advise. Thanks again, sir.

3 ml for 29%, its what i use in my hempy buckets, 4 for really tough cases, 5 will start to do damage

Then that's what I did... When I first tried to knock out that bacterial infection I mixed the h2o2 too strong. I bet thats the reason we're seeing a high water line on my roots. I burnt them. I guess I wont do that again.

I feel like the damage has stopped progressing and the flowers in the effected areas seem to still be growing. Hopefully my final results aren't totally screwed.

I've got a progress report for all you fine folks that have offered me assistance... I'm going to lose most of my leaves that got all droopy, they are dry and brittle. But everything else is definitely perking up. I have obvious new growth on my flowers and although I'm pretty sure I'm not going to hit my goal with that tray, it will be lightyears away from a total loss. Thank you again to all who helped

Glad to hear they are on the comeback. Theres still plenty of time for bulking up.

JustCantSleep said:

I've got a progress report for all you fine folks that have offered me assistance... I'm going to lose most of my leaves that got all droopy, they are dry and brittle. But everything else is definitely perking up. I have obvious new growth on my flowers and although I'm pretty sure I'm not going to hit my goal with that tray, it will be lightyears away from a total loss. Thank you again to all who helped

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I would only water twice a day at a ph of 6.0 in rockwool (it holds a LOT of water). Some people say 5.8 in hydro, but I found that 6.0 is a better number (more mineral uptake). 5.3 ph is way too low
Good luck