Tons of rust, dried out, no bugs, lots of pics: Please help

Not sure what is going on here, but it is localized to just this plant. I have about 10 plants total, 3 in flower and the rest in veg. All are grown in Fox Farms Ocean Forest mixed with perilite. Temps are sometimes a bit too hot, sometimes 85-90. More often 80-85.

The bottom leaves of this plant have been 'rusting' and drying out. I clipped the bottom two and took pics, as well as some pics of the rest of the plant. It is 1 week into flower and yet to show sex. It was grown from bag seed along with another that turned out to be male. It had similar issues and I chopped it.

I have not seen this in an of the other 10 plants, all in the same soil mix. PH is 7 or so. I have had mites before but there are none to be found on this one. Is it maybe a magnesium deficiency? If so, why hasn't this happened to my other plants in the same setup?

Any help at all is appreciated. This has me stumped, even after a thorough search of the forums. Hopefully the pics will help others, too.

I couldn't give you a definite answer to the problem since i'm a noob.. but i was thinking last night about having the same problem your showing. I water with tap, as most of us do. I'm also in a highly industrialized area. My water ph reads as high as 8 maybe more, i've used Ph down to correct the levels but i was wondering....... Is it possible for the tap water to be so high in calcium that it locks out the Mg??? I should post this as a question but if there's a reply maybe it would shed some light on the situation. Hope your plant bounces back. good luck

If this helps I had same thing with MG soil because it was to wet and I didnt open bags and let soil dry out b-4 transplantin. I think young plants, roots find wet spots that r too rich in nutes and it act as though plants r fert burned. Over waterin a prob too. Good thing is, watch ur watering and plants new growth should b ok LOL. MG is soil with slow realease ferts

looks like hard core calcum deficiencies to me.

That's a pretty big container for that plant and that can add to ph problems. When you have a plant whos root system doesn't pack the container you either end up over watering it(which can cause nute lock out and some tap waters have a high sodium content)....then on the flip side, if you're watering less, there's spots in the dirt not getting wet and I think that can cause problems for the roots too and translates into fan leaf spotting as well.

From seed(or clone for that matter), you should actually use at least 3 sizes of conatainers before you start flowering, you're gradually potting up...when you do it this way, you're forcing the plant to focus on upward growth and restrict the roots from growing wild , but, give them too much soil, and you'll have a slow grower....when I see pics of seedlings in a 5 gallon bucket, I just shake my head.

You don't have to worry about the problems associated with rootbound plants when they only have a 4-5 month life cycle. Rootbound is, imo, only an issue when you're keeping a mother plant for several years. When the container size no longer holds enough water for a full 18hr day, that's when its time to pot up. Doing that will give you a lot more control of the ph environment of your soil and thus stopping the spots and curling.

add one tsp garden lime per gal of soil. or get some cal/mag. I use lime and epsons salts.in my soil.

take a look at calcum dif. keep looking at the mag dif also.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=11688

stumps said:

take a look at calcum dif. keep looking at the mag dif also.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=11688

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What do you think caused the deficiency. FF soils have oyster shell and dolomite lime. Both of which have plenty of Cal and Mag. I've had issues with Cal/Mag deficiencies with FF soils as well. I use R/O water because I have really hard water. I use Cal-mag plus at the rate of 1 tsp/gal and still get some rust spots and chlorosis from time to time. I would like to figure out what is causing this as well.

Thanks stumps!

Looks like an advanced calcium deficiency to me. I never saw a detailed guide as good as the one you posted. +rep if it lets me.

I will start with some garden lime and do a foliar/soil feeding and go from there.

Many thanks to everyone for the help!

I don't have a cule. Mybe ff is slacking on what they put in there soils? I also was thinkng ph lock out. I would ask Dr Dank myself. That man can explain the why's and how's very well.
Good luck hope the guide helped. I've had good luck with that lnk so far.

you need to flood the soil wash it out and start all over again it looks like the soil id not correct...

you need to flood the soil wash it out and start all over again it looks like the soil id not correct...

stumps said:

I don't have a cule. Mybe ff is slacking on what they put in there soils? I also was thinkng ph lock out. I would ask Dr Dank myself. That man can explain the why's and how's very well.
Good luck hope the guide helped. I've had good luck with that lnk so far.

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I think they may be slacking a bit. This last bag of Happy Frog I bought seemed way different to me. I've also noticed quite a few other growers having the same issue. Their soils are supposed to be pH balanced between 6.3-6.8 and I check my pH religiously. Every thing I put in is between 6.3-6.5. I never used to have issues with their soils. I always get it sorted out but I wonder if I'm losing yield or something. Oh well, I think it's about time to try some different soils anyway. Sorry FF.

your issue is not pH related. do not worry about the pH, ever.

what food are you using? most likely your soil+food has too much Calcium, and is causing nutrient antagonism. Too much Calcium will cause a Magnesium deficiency.

Imaulle said:

what food are you using? it could be that your soil+food has too much Calcium, and is causing nutrient antagonism. Too much Calcium will cause a Magnesium deficiency

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I use FF Grow Big and Tiger Bloom. Grow Big has no calcium and tiger bloom has a little. I had major issues with my water which prompted a switch to r/o water. I quickly began getting cal/mag deficiencies so I started using cal-mag plus. I only use a teaspoon/gallon. It keeps it at bay but occasionally I have to bump it up in order to clear it up again. MJ uses a lot of both of these elements, I know, but with the stuff they are putting into their soils there is no good reason to be getting these deficiencies (unless they are skimping or something).

the cal mag is just treating the sympton really. you need to fix the main issue. those FF foods suck tbh. with the fox farm soil its best to use a 30-10-10 for veg, and 10-30-20 for flower. follow the links in my sig, switch to those 2 foods as soon as possible.

$4.99 each

Imaulle said:

the cal mag is just treating the sympton really. you need to fix the main issue. those FF foods suck tbh. with the fox farm soil its best to use a 30-10-10 for veg, and 10-30-20 for flower. follow the links in my sig, switch to those 2 foods as soon as possible.

$4.99 each

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Lemme guess............Jack's Classic. I can't get those until spring and I actually intend to try them on UB's reccomendation.

yep get them! they are amazing

I never used ff anything. I'm anti hype even if it works. When I went to the coco blend I had a new set of things to figure out. but it works alot like hydro. when my water gets bad high ppm's. I went to half ro and half tap. the tds would go from 300ish to around 170. my water runs 200-220 most of the time.

Imaulle said:

yep get them! they are amazing

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I noticed the Orchid food doesn't have Magnesium listed in the breakdown. The bloom booster does but not the orchid food. Neither have calcium listed but neither does tiger bloom. It has it though because it uses calcium nitrate. I'm going to give them a go when the garden shops open back up in the spring.

stumps said:

I never used ff anything. I'm anti hype even if it works. When I went to the coco blend I had a new set of things to figure out. but it works alot like hydro. when my water gets bad high ppm's. I went to half ro and half tap. the tds would go from 300ish to around 170. my water runs 200-220 most of the time.

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I'm the exact oppisite. I love to try different shit. And I've gotten really nice results from FF. It's overpriced though. My tapwater is around 600 ppm most of the year. I've checked it quite a few different times with different tds meters.