Doug-Wilson
New Member
I'm pretty new in growing and and have gone for my first ebb and flow setup.
Here's a picture after one day without flooding:
Still waiting for a bigger filter for the drain, so I'm using two dish towels.
And some close-ups:
The wilting leaves on the bottom are still left over from cloning, so that's ok.
This one has a strange shape:
Not sure what to think, but they seem to look a bit unhealthy. Nothing serious and no alarming symptoms but there are a few things that are worrying me a bit. Most notably, the leaves are drooping a bit, the color seems to be a bit too yellow, some are cupping (mostly the very new and small ones one top, so this may be ok) and some are twisted in strange ways that I haven't seen before (you can see it in the last photo, but the other plants aren't as bad as this one).
I looked up the symptoms on growweedeasy.com and came to the conclusion that it might be root problems caused by overwatering.
The girls were made from clones that I put into coco cubes in a growbox, later I put the coco cubes into rockwool cubes. A few days later I put them on the soil into the tent and started flooding about once a day. The water contains a fertilizer mix that should be suitable for coco soil, at the moment 20 ml/10l Coco A and B, 40ml/10l Rhizotonic and 25ml/10l Cannazym. Not sure however, if you need a different mix for ebb and flow.
As a substrate I used coco mats which were not exactly how I imagined, as I thought they would be less dense and give the roots more room to breathe. They can store a lot of water, about 70 litres, so if I flood regularly, they always stay very wet and dense. It takes about 15 minutes until all the standing water is drained. Of course, I could flood less often, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having an ebb and flow setup.
Now I'm thinking, maybe I should remove most of the coco mat substrate and replace it with something that drains more quickly, like lava rocks or clay pebbles, so the moisture doesn't stay as long and I can flood more often. The roots are still pretty small, so this should work.
So, what do you think? Do they look like they're being overwatered? Was it a bad idea to go for coco mats as a substrate? What should I do next?
Here's a picture after one day without flooding:
Still waiting for a bigger filter for the drain, so I'm using two dish towels.
And some close-ups:
The wilting leaves on the bottom are still left over from cloning, so that's ok.
This one has a strange shape:
Not sure what to think, but they seem to look a bit unhealthy. Nothing serious and no alarming symptoms but there are a few things that are worrying me a bit. Most notably, the leaves are drooping a bit, the color seems to be a bit too yellow, some are cupping (mostly the very new and small ones one top, so this may be ok) and some are twisted in strange ways that I haven't seen before (you can see it in the last photo, but the other plants aren't as bad as this one).
I looked up the symptoms on growweedeasy.com and came to the conclusion that it might be root problems caused by overwatering.
The girls were made from clones that I put into coco cubes in a growbox, later I put the coco cubes into rockwool cubes. A few days later I put them on the soil into the tent and started flooding about once a day. The water contains a fertilizer mix that should be suitable for coco soil, at the moment 20 ml/10l Coco A and B, 40ml/10l Rhizotonic and 25ml/10l Cannazym. Not sure however, if you need a different mix for ebb and flow.
As a substrate I used coco mats which were not exactly how I imagined, as I thought they would be less dense and give the roots more room to breathe. They can store a lot of water, about 70 litres, so if I flood regularly, they always stay very wet and dense. It takes about 15 minutes until all the standing water is drained. Of course, I could flood less often, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having an ebb and flow setup.
Now I'm thinking, maybe I should remove most of the coco mat substrate and replace it with something that drains more quickly, like lava rocks or clay pebbles, so the moisture doesn't stay as long and I can flood more often. The roots are still pretty small, so this should work.
So, what do you think? Do they look like they're being overwatered? Was it a bad idea to go for coco mats as a substrate? What should I do next?