My Waterfarm Setup, needing help with continuing nutrient problem

Hi fellow growers !

Hydroponics are a wonderful thing, i like the idea of controlling all aspects of the life-cycle of a plant and sure like the tidiness of such a system. In fact, i also like the product

I am experimenting with DWC/NFT-like system for about one and a half years now, but still can't get all parameters right, i must be missing something...

Things i take seriously are cleanness, low rez-temperature (18-19 Celsius => 65-68 Fahrenheit), keeping the PH in the range of 5.5 to 6.4 and starting with a very low nutrient level and increasing the nutrient slightly if the ppm falls over a day or something. Having read alot of reports and, i don't find a reason for my continuing problems with yellowing leaves. This problems persists since 4 or 5 grow-cycles now.

My setup consists of modified gh waterfarms, which are connected to a recirculating system with an additional reservoir. Water is sucked out of the containers, pumped through a chiller and spreads through sprayers into the 2 waterfarms again. Waterlevel is about 60%, PH is 5.7, ppm about 450-550 ppm (depending on the conversion-formula, i am in euro where we measure in milliSiemens). The strain is ak47 flowering now on day 21. Changed from grow-mixture to bloom mixture about day 18 of flowering. The clones where 14 days old when i switched light. I am using 3-part Advanced hydroponics dutch formula for nutrients and gh Mineral Magic around the stems. Room temp is about 70 degress fahrenheit, humidity is low, there should be a good ventilation. I also circulate the air within the grow space, and i am pumping air into the waterfarms to ensure really good conditions.

I had the same yellowing the last 4 grows... I found some reports stating the same problem, but none of the threads found a solution... Any suggestions from you guys ?

As an additional curiosity: I have a second spot where i also did some growing with the same nutrients, and it turned out fantastic. The only differences are: tapWater has a much higher starting ppm at the spot where the grows are fine. There is fresh air because its on the country-side and i gave the clones longer time to grow before starting 12/12. My nutrient philosophy was the same at the two spots.

Any comments are really welcome, i have lost so many watts, time and money suffering from this problem...

cheers,
david

yo man, its not spider mites is it? some of those whiteish spots might indicate mites, get your magnifying glass and have a look to see if you can see their black dots (poop) or small red dots on the underside which is the mites themselves. I had problems for a few grow cycles due to those buggers, they cause all sorts of deficiency's as they suck all the goodness from the leaves.

Thanks for your reply Dr. Kriz ! I double checked, these spots don't come from spider mites. I had also some problems with spider mites during another grow. Turned out that the spider mites where imported from the shop i bought the clones from !!

I think my problem was that i had the lights to close to the young plants. The don't react to kindly to 50k Lumen in the third week I realised that this only causes stress to the plants. But i intend to intensify the lights during last three weeks of flowering when buds get denser.

Since i am running flowering nutes right now, i added some Grow and Micro parts to the rez to have a more evenly distributed ratio of nutrients. The plants liked it and started eating, the ppm value dropped slightly, indicating a happy plant

Also just to be sure, i switched to Canna Aqua nutes, just in case... Heard good things about this product. I hope there is no problem in switching nutes during the lifecycle, but i can't see a reason why..

I think it will work out ! Thats the current state:




cheers david

this is a grow from Scottyballs in a waterfarm with a single plant that was scrogged and yields 11oz's! -----> https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/344359-pineapple-express-g13-labs-seed.html