Fungi, Mites, Extreme Nute Burn?

Hi guys. I have some plants that are 3 weeks into flower.. they are dropping leaves like crazy because something is sucking their nutrients away. For a while I was leaning towards russet mites because of how the damage looks. But for the past couple weeks I've been closely monitoring these and still haven't found physical evidence of mites. No bodies, webs, etc. Unless they're way too small to see even with a microscope. But I'm pretty sure I'm dealing with a form of fungus. Every leaf that dies have these white dots all over them. It doesn't look like powdery mildew which I am used to dealing with. Just the dead leaves get really hard to where they will crumble into powder and they have millions of white bumps on them. Under the microscope they actually kinda look like sperm cells lol.. Please see attached pictures for damage and to see the dead leaves, and zoom in. It doesn't really seem like I can find any of the fungus on the good leaves, unless that is just how this strain of fungi operates. It is only the dead leaves (or dead area on leaves) that show signs of those white bump things. I have 4 plants in my grow room right now.. 2 Gorilla Glue #4, 1 Deathstar, and 1 Triangle Kush. It is really only the GG#4's that are getting hit with this issue. The other strains are only dropping a few leaves. So that takes us to our 3rd option.. possibly extreme nute burn? I have this nasty brown/white build up all over the 7 gallon smart pots that i also thought was a form of fungi, but I did a test last night and scraped a bunch of the powder off, threw it in some RO water, and it raised the PPMs to 300 so I can tell this is just nutrient salts. But maybe all this thick salt build up is fucking my plants up more and giving them nute burn on top of a fungus infection? It is only the GG#4s that have the salt on the outside of the air pot, the other strains are in 20 gallon pots. Please let me know what you guys think! I actually sprayed these plants a few weeks ago with Eagle-20 due to fungus suspicion so that's why I feel a little weird and think it could be bugs instead. Because Eagle 20 is some hardcore shit and has always worked as a 1 time treatment for me in the past.

Also, what do you guys think of the hairs turning orange prematurely. Is this due to stress I'm assuming? They shouldn't turn orange until the last couple weeks right? Please ignore the cheap lights on the ceiling. That is only supplement lighting. I have some powerful LED's on the other side of the wall hung up. So technically I guess this is kind of a vertical grow.

If you have been feeding heavy without much run off, salt build up in the soil is a good guess at your problem.

White dots in the last pic are thc glands before they become globular. Plants look healthy other than ones drooping. Maybe pots are too small? those plants look pretty big for a 5gal. If they are drying out every day or every two days and you are feeding them everyt ime you might be over fert/over water.

I've been giving them roughly 1,000-1,500 ppm per watering. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I water them every other day. I've been feeding them AN SensiBloom and various supplements such as silica, cal/mag, organic teas, humic acid, folic acid, sweet raw, molasses, vitamino, and Photosynthesis Plus (bennies). I don't mix them all together, I try not to mix more than 3 different things at a time so I don't get any lockouts. Plus I try to balance the pH out at about 6.0-6.2. Even if I was giving way too many nutes I feel like I couldn't get lockout because I'm giving these girls like 2-3 gallons per feeding. Tons of runoff water. I think the GG#4s in the 7 gallon pots could be lockout or nute burn though with all that salt buildup on the outside. It's thick. I'm sure the roots are touching it. These plants are like 7-8 feet tall though and they were topped before flower. My friends think I'm not feeding them enough. But the main reason I think it's some type of fungi is because I was being lazy and not changing the water in the runoff trays and some mold started growing on the dead leaves that fell in there. That's around the time I sprayed with Eage 20. Because I knew they had a some type of mildew weeks ago because it started on the GG#4s then the branches of the Deathstar that were touching them also got infected. I cut off the infection and sprayed. They seemed healthy for a while now I'm having symptoms again but this is nothing like powdery mildew I've seen. I found something called downy mildew online. I wanted to point out that there's some type of powdery mildew outbreak in my neighborhood too which I noticed is killing my lilac bush and growing on a lot of weeds in the yard too. My grow room is located near these. Maybe spores got in but it looks nothing like the mildew outdoors.

Do you really think those are THC glands? I really wish they were but they are on every dead portion of the leaves. And I don't think fan leaves produce THC do they? I have a few grows under my belt with different strains and never seen these bumps before. They are raised and I could actually scrape them off. Also, when leaves normally die they are soft and slowly dry and get hard. These leaves are like rock hard. Even when they're not all the way dead and still attached.

I can't see the mold in your pics so you would know best from personal observation. I can observe in your pics that your upper fan leaf tips are both clawed and fried, indicative of an over fed plant. I'd go water only and wish very best luck on resolving other mold type issue.

Are you able to zoom in on these? Sorry my phone is crap. Can't take more pics til tonight. Thanks for your reply. I'm going to give pure RO for a while. I just need to find out if I need to treat for mildew

It seems like it doesn't let you zoom in very far on the webpage. On my phone it let's me zoom in twice as far

jsisko01 said:

Are you able to zoom in on these? Sorry my phone is crap. Can't take more pics til tonight. Thanks for your reply. I'm going to give pure RO for a while. I just need to find out if I need to treat for mildew

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I can zoom in enough to see trichome heads but no mold.

looks alot like russet mites

boyd crowder said:

looks alot like russet mites

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i don't see any thing that shows russet mites damage...none of the leaves edges are curling inwards nor are the leaves super shiny. that and all the buds on the plant would have stopped growing if the infestation was that bad, also if he cant see anything under a microscope then I doubt its mites. Granted russets are so small they can be hard to see under microscope and they don't leave webbing. I don't think that's whats causing this