Spots on leaves, some sort of deficiency. Anybody know what it is? PICS

Hey guys, so I'm about 4-5 weeks into flowering and these spots just popped up over the past day. I'm assuming it's a deficiency but seeing as this is my first grow I really have no idea. I did some research and the best i could come up with is potassium deficiency. Lemme know what you guys think. Also just some details, I'm growing with a 250w hps, in a soilless mix, I'm using flowertabs also (I know, slow release nutes are a no no but they were good up till now at least). If I'm missing anything please let me know and i'll be sure to update it. Thanks!


The third pic is just a pic of the main cola

The good news is I've seen it before. The bad news is that I never really got to the bottom of the problem.

Things to check: Thrips, Mites, calcium def, pot def, pH problems.

I did wonder, since I couldn't control my problems and they just got gradually worse and spread among the plants (reducing yield and potency significantly, but not totally), whether this might be a virus, similar to the mosaic tobacco virus. Do you smoke around your plants? (I do)

I checked really closely for mites because that was my first thought when i saw the spots. Again, not an expert here, but I didn't see any signs of them. I don't smoke anywhere near my plants. When you say to check for calcium and K deficiencies what do you mean? add them and see if it gets better? or test the soil in some way?

Those are some things that, from memory, can give you spots as symptoms. When I said check I mean you should have a look and see if any of the symptoms match those other deficiencies. pH is a tricky one to fix sometimes. I'm guessing you're in soil?

Yeah I'm in a soilless mix, so the only nutes in there are from the flowertabs. PH is my first guess but i have been pretty careful about it. I found something that said spots are an Mn deficiency and that happens when the PH is too alkaline. Thanks for your input

You're growing in soiless yet you use slow desolving ferts, not a good idea, you have no knowledge as to how strong your nutes are, you could be burning them or starving them, no bugs you see? I've had white spots on some of my leaves and eventually decided to ignore it, never saw any problems due to them.

The slow release nutes are something I'm going to stay away from in the future. Hopefully this is a similar situation to yours, deetee, and there aren't any negative effects.

Yeah at first glance I'd say it looks kind of like spider mite damage from above. Are you using a PH around 6? soilless=hydro in my world. It would be hard to gauge what those tabs do to the PH as well since they're apparently in the medium and you add plain water? When nutes are added to water they drop the PH so its possible you could be getting some lockouts there. Thats all I got!

It looks to me like a micro deficiency. You may have all of the necessary nutes in the soil but if the ph is too high or too low they are useless. As far as Tobacco Mosaic Virus I doubt it. I thought I had it and I had posted pics. I had many comments from highly experienced members on here saying that it wasn't and in theyre lifetime they have never heard of anyone getting that. Yes its a possibility but I would say the last possibility. TMV symptoms mimics many deficiencies almost exactly. Good Luck

Yeah you put the tabs in at the beginning of flowering (theres another one for veg) and then use plain water. There wasn't any info on how it effects the PH but you could be right,supchaka, about the tabs screwing with it. I've been looking almost obsessively for mites and still haven't seen any so I think it is the PH.

Thanks for your help everyone

Tabs.. for sure. My first guess was mites but if you sear you see none.. Tabs.

-Grish

Did you have any leaves curl down or get very green? If so nitrogen toxicity which can effect calcium potassium especially if its ammonium based nitrogen, it likely to happen not always tho.urea nitrogen it can happen not always. Calcium phosphate is good to use in flowering ,but thats just if it is a calcium deficiency..

I also think it may be a nitrogen excess because i assume you ph the water. So no insects. Then its an excess of nitrogen or potassium. Thats my guess . I may be wrong its a possibly tho.