They are both quite droopy since getting the new light on Saturday (4 days) and seem to be very hungry (1.4 in & 0.5 out - this is only day 2 of that strength though).
There have been lots of changes for them recently as I just got new lights which affect temperature, humidity and obviously light.
Humidity dropped from about 70ish to 50ish.
Temperature from maybe 17 up to 23.
Light is obviously significantly more than my seedling light.
While I think it’s probably due to all the change, it also troubles me that they appear to be eating a lot even as I increase the EC (if I understand what I’m doing/seeing with the EC meter).
I also bumped up the light yesterday to the higher option of the recommended settings when they were drooping as I figured it could be not strong enough at the lower setting.
I could be wrong, but I think the lower leaves looking pale/damaged is due to them being so close to the seedling light when they were the main leaves back then.
Any help much appreciated!
1 plant 240ml in and 50ml out
1 plant 240ml in and 60ml out
@fital, I will let a coco grower respond to your EC question, but in the spirit if helping, let me offer this: I think you may have 2 problems. Lower leaves turning yellow are often a sign of N deficiency. However, it can also be a sign of too much N. Lastly, that does seem to be a rather large decrease in RH, which many plants struggle with unless it is a slow change. If that happened in 24 hours or less, then I am bettering that is the cause of the drooping.
Hope that helps. I am sure someone else will chime-in here shortly.
@im_sparky thanks for that. Whilst I had the yellow leaves down to the lights being too close when they were younger, I’m open to anything! Maybe the EC numbers will shed some light on what’s happening.
When you say that it could well be the RH shock for it - is that kind of thing just ‘give it a week and it will sort itself out’ or a permanent damage thing?
@fital Plants have pores called stomata through which they transpire. They open and close, but usually only need to do so slowly in the natural environment. Artificial environments (grow-tents) can make changes rapidly, and if too big, the stomata cannot react fast enough (e.g., close quickly enough) so the plant wilts from drying out. When young, wilting can cause permanent damage, but this is species dependent. In cannabis there is a lot of variability in strains. This does NOT appear to me to be severe to me, but moderate. I would not stress too much about it, just get the humidity up. Generally, if you get seedlings up to around 75% RH, you will be fine.
As for light levels, cannabis (even seedlings) can take a lot, up to a point. Light burn would affect the tops of the plants.
Hello and good luck with these gals. Plants this little dont require much light tbh.. to me this seems like an overfeeding/overwatering issue. Can't speak much about coco but if this was soil I would poke some holes near the edges of the pot so the roots get more oxygen. Also make sure the pot has big enough holes at the bottom and they are not blocked, maybe make some more holes on the side. As for RH I would go for something around 80% for a plant in this stage, try to maintain that. Lastly maybe get a small fan blowing to help with oxygen circulation. It can blow directly into the plants if its small and placed far enough. Hope this helps.
@menche Due to the properties of coco, you cannot over-water it. It is very different from soil.
@Monkeydo any chance you could offer some insight regarding the EC mentioned in the OP?
Mate i see you struggling from the start of this grow. Wash off as much of the coco you can from the rootball and transplant them in quality potting soil, organic or not.
Go water only for the rest of the grow.
Nice and easy.
Wash off as much of the coco you can from the rootball and transplant them in quality potting soil, organic or not.
Definitely would not recommend this. I understand that people don’t like coco because they don’t understand how to run it but doing this would surely be a MASSIVE shock to this plant.
First, very gently slip your plant out of the pot to examine the rootball. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s overgrown as your plants have that root bound look to them, droopy and lack of vigor with lower leaves going pale. If they are root bound, then relocate them to larger pots. To get a handle on your EC it would be good to have a decent baseline to work with. If this were my grow, I’d make up a batch of nutrients and use this nutrient mix to completely flush out your pots. To do this you need to use 3x the volume of the pot poured into each one. There’s going to be lots of runoff but that’s what you want. By the time it’s over your runoff should be the same as your input within a small margin of error. This will give you a good starting point to figure out this EC problem. Tomorrow when you water with nutrients, allow 20% runoff minimum, and collect all the runoff from each plant to check the EC. Learning to control the EC in coco takes a little getting used to. Always make small adjustments when needed and try to avoid sudden changes. As far as the light issues, if you don’t have a proper PAR meter you’ll have to use the information on the manufacturers website for light height. At this stage of growth and considering you just swapped from a veg light, I’d set PAR level around 300-350 till these plants get cozy with the new light.
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@monkeydo thank you!
Funnily enough I did the flush a couple of hours ago - it took quite a lot to get the output to match the input, but yes, will be good to get a baseline.
I’m out and about at the moment, but this is the plant 2 days ago…
@fital that root zone looks like what I would expect to see, all good there. What is your nutrient mix look like? What are you using and how much of each?
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Into 2L I put:
1ml Ionic Cal Mag Pro (which also seems to have extra Nitrogen in it on the label). Had been putting in 1ml per 5L in the lead up to it going droopy and adjusted it back up for the flush feed.
1ml Rhizotonic
Canna A&B to hit the desired EC (was maybe 3ml of each? Don’t know exactly as was adding small amounts, shaking, measuring, etc.)
pH is 5.8/5.9
Maybe partly with original cold and high humidity plants hadn’t been drinking much so was feeding with a syringe - common would have been something like 150ml in and 40ml out. So always working to at least 20% runoff, but small quantities.
From almost the start, when things were going well, the tops of my coco have a bit of algae on it suggesting it just sits wet(?) Better recently with heat and humidity.
Also just throwing this out there but keep an eye out for bugs, specifically spider mites. They are so damn small, you'll usually first only notice them by the leaves drooping (from being "sapped)
Not saying that's the case here, but definitely keep an eye out. Good luck w/ the rest of the grow!
Might not look like much, but I am DELIGHTED that for the first time in about a week things are going in the right direction!! 🥳
The plants are slightly, but definitely, fighting back against gravity.
Don’t know if it was @im_sparky ‘s increase in humidity (only got it up to about 60% so far with a large water tray) or the @monkeydo flush and decrease in light, but something or everything is starting to help. THANK YOU!!
Gave them 720ml each which gave a lot more than 20% runoff. The first part of the runoff and then the full runoff were all 1.1 for both plants (flushed with 1.4 yesterday until the runoff was 1.4 and 1.4 in today).
@fital continue at your current feed level for a few days and get at least 20% runoff each time. Compare input and output and you’ll get an indication of what level of feed they are going to need. Don’t make daily adjustments, let the plants get used to all this new stuff and then you can dial in everything in a day or two. Everything sounds promising 🤞
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Plants looking healthier again today 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
With 1.4EC in, the runoff yesterday was 1.1 and today was 0.7/0.8.
So it’s obviously in need of stronger input, but kept it at 1.4 for consistency but basically flushed it again so it wasn’t sitting with lower roots in very low EC. Hope that’s ok(?).
That’s 3 days at 1.4, would you increase it tomorrow & if so, by how much?
My ‘just enough to be dangerous’ amount of knowledge would say ‘yes, up it to 1.6 for 3 days’(?).
@fital what is your background EC for your water and are these numbers including that background?
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@fital that makes me feel a bit more comfortable. If this were my grow I’d go one more day at the current feed level and if she still reads low bump it by 0.1. In my opinion it’s better safe than sorry so a slow and steady approach is probably best till you find your groove
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This is helpful to me too, Monkey, and it helps explain why my kratke grow attempt is crashing and burning. Soil is so much easier for me.
I do appreciate this could be a case of running before I can walk… but…
I’m guessing that under normal circumstances I’d be topping now, but as the plant has been through a bit of stress I shouldn’t be quick to add more.
Will I just miss the topping window completely for the sake of overall plant health, top later or top anyway?
@fital i wouldn't top after that much stress in the beginning. Maybe do some low stress training. But i am more of an auto guy. The other guys here have way more experience than me though😅
This is them today - looking very smart.
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