leaf diagnosis

[ruddie]

I'm new to this but I have been reading as much as possible I think I have a nutrient deficiency as in I haven't started given them any yet and I think it might be time to start.
Pictures below

General info

If it helps the grow area isn't very complicated.
1.2m x 1.2m x 2m grow tent.
1x Mars Hydro 300 watt 2x 130watt CFL.
LED 75 cm away. CFLs 45 cm away.
Temps: Max 28 Low: 23.
Humidity 55%-65%.
They had one CO2 blast already where I used two 1.2 litre bottles and then keep adding in baking soda bombs till the vinegar was used up.
No nutrients are being used at the moment only water. (maybe that's the problem?)
The medium this specific plant is using is coir.
They are on a 18/6 cycle.
Watered once per day if the cup feels light, if not I wait till it is.
PH of water I don't know (yeah I've ordered a digital ph tester and have a RO unit arriving tomorrow).

It's a new plant and I'm upset with myself for having problems so soon, I have six and only one of them seem to be displaying symptoms of something wrong. I'm trying to use the specific terminology but some of the stuff I still don't know the name of yet.
The other five all look fine and healthy though everyone of them as of this afternoon show very bright yellow cotyledon leaves. I assume they are about to fall of and this is the sign my plants are in full veg phase?

Symptoms

The seed was planted 10 days ago.
It's a very small seedling only about an inch above the grow medium.
The embryonic cotyledon leaves are dark green and inspection shows nothing wrong.Though the rest of the leaves on the plant are much brighter.
Above the embryonic leaves are two leaves which do not look healthy. The left one is straight and no drooping. Where that leaf extends from the stem the closest edges to the steam of that left show a yellow discoloration. The middle edges to the same leaf are slightly brown. The tip looks fine.
The right side leaf in the same set is much worse. The tip is brown and bent down and the leaf is drooping and shows yellow discoloration across the whole leaf.
There is another set of leaves above those two. These are much smaller and have eight fingers leaves and they look ok maybe a little droopy but a very nice light green.
The steam is about one inch long. The bottom half is a light purple and the top is a solid bright green.

I tried my best to describe the problem I hope someone genius other there might be able to assist.

edit: fixed up spelling mistakes

 

[Antics]

If you're not feeding, the burning you see is most likely caused by a PH that is far too low, or far too high.

Coco seedlings, I just water with plain water for eh.. about a week. After that, they get water and diluted nutes, always PH'ed to 5.8.

Coco also needs to be watered every day, some growers are even watering 2-3x a day in Coco.

I would also STRONGLY suggest that when you transplant, you remove that pot that it's in. They don't break down fast enough to allow the roots to get through, and will end up with a rootbound plant.

 

[ruddie]

Thanks for the reply Antics.
You are right that pot wasn't the best choice the roots were stuck to the sides and the bottom it made it very difficult to transplant.
I decided overnight that there was two things wrong and those were lack off nutrients and and bad water.
My original idea was to go to a DWC drip system so I transpanted it as careful as I could but some of the very very small roots were stuck to the sides.
I have them under a 300 watt LED only I think I will wait a few days before I switch on all the lights. Is this a good idea? I figure lots of light will stress it even more.
I have the nutrients at 1/4 strength. My nutrients claim to be PH stable or something I think they automatically adjust the PH.
I'm still waiting on the delivery of the RO kit, PH kit and PPM wand.
Fingers crossed.

Would you recommend anything else? Should I keep the room cooler then normal right? Now it's 24c.
Should I attempt to keep my water at 20 degrees?

I just answered one question, google helps Water holds more oxygen when it's colder and also water with less salt also holds more oxygen. Cool! things you learn.

"Approximate dissolved oxygen saturation values
(At a salinity of 30ppt):

Temperature

(°C) Dissolved

Oxygen, (mg/l)
30, 6.4
25, 7.0
20, 7.6
15, 8.4
10, 9.3
5, 10.5

 

[Antics]

I've used those pots out in the garden in the past. I thought they were a good idea too, it seems like a good idea really, until you use them and find they can be a pain in some applications. But live and learn. As long as the taproot wasn't damaged, your transplant should be fine.

When you say 300 watt LED, do you mean this model: LED Grow Light 100x3w - Mars Hydro ?

If so, then I've noticed people are referring to LED the same way the talk about HID and CFL lighting, in terms of total draw power, not the potential output. The draw is 150-170w, I always take the lower number to be safe, so 150 watts. I'm also using the same model, I have 2 of them in my closet now

If anything, you could really just use a couple CFL bulbs right now with the plant being young. Are the CFL bulbs you have, 130 watts equivalent, or 130 watts actual power used?

Either light will work for seedlings, you just need the right distance. CFLs I use them at 2-3" for seedlings. And 4-6" for Vegging plants.
As for LED, you'll want to start out around 24" between the light and the plant. The LEDs are intense, and can actually burn a plant if too close.

Did you rinse the coco well before you used it? Some coco can contain a level of salts that could also cause damage to plants.

1/4 strength is a good start, but keep a close eye on it. If you see burning, back off the strength even more.

You said the nutes have a built in PH buffer, but what is it buffered at? If they're buffered for soil, the PH will end up being around 6.5 +/-. If buffered for coco, they should be buffered at 5.8 +/-. When your meter arrives you'll be able to verify this. Until then a little research on the nute manufacturer website might help give you some answers.

24C is perfect in my opinion. It's where I keep my grow at.

As for water, I just let my water sit in the grow room for 24 hours before use. Never changed the temp on it before using.

Oxygen also has higher concentrations of O2 when colder. That's why drag racers like cool evenings for racing at the track

EDIT: Oh! And make sure you don't let the coco dry out! You should give her a little water 1-2 times every day. Feedings vary by grower. I've seen some say they wait 1-3 days between feeding nutes, but give water daily. I personally gave water+nutes every day.

 

[ruddie]

I'm just reading the side of the box, but I found the link here COMPACT FLUORO LAMP | GROWLUSH Australia
It's the 130w 6400k the first one on the right, I assume it means its a 130 output?

And yes I was under the impression that LED gave out 300 watts of light but you say 150? I wanted to put in around 550 into the tent so I might get another one shortly.

I really want to get all the spectrum covered I'd like to give the 25000k lamp a go because they say it complements the 6400k lamp and I'd see benefits in using a 14000k lamp with the veg 2700k lamp. I read on Ed rosenthals site that it's even recommended to fit in 5%-10% of total light with UVA and UVB. UVB the more important feature. I found an aquarium place that sells lights that have UVA and UVB but I haven't yet purchased it.

I started off with the CFL's and wanted to give the LED's a go. Did you buy two straight away or were you not happy with the single? I'm in a 1.2L x 1.2W x 2.0H tent and I assumed that one would be enough to cover the area but if it's a 150 I'd like to dump more light on them.

I transplanted all the seedlings into clayballs. I thought I measured the correct amount and cleaned them really well but during the transplant I ran out of clayballs so I had to quickly get some more. I put those under the tap for only about 5 minutes as the others had a couple hours. And yep wouldn't you know it two days later some of the balls I used in the last cup have all this white crap building up on them, I assumed it was salt or some other nasty. I'm still not sure what to do, should I remove the clay balls and replace the whole cup? I took away the ones on the top that were very white. The leason learnt was obvious.

The little plant I was worried about has accelerated dramatically since the transplant. There wasn't any signs of stress I would go as far as to say it's grown approx 20% in the last day. I think they like the hydro more then soil they were in. I'll post you some pics to compare. But the stem is now much longer. The other five also have gone well and none look like they are dying anytime soon.

My RO unit arrived yesterday. A fancy American top of the line one that can be used in schools and hospitals. It has super highflow and can do a whole house if you connect all the taps to it and no need to wait for the water to be cleaned it does it on the fly. It took about 20 minutes or so to fill up the 3x 20L buckets I'm using.

I didn't want to wait for the plumber to arrive and then flush out that nasty water in my pots so last night I did a bit of a Macgyver and jimmied up a way to get it to work, there wasn't much pressure and the unit says it needs a minimum 60 psi to produce awesome water, I suspect my pressures were way below and hence the water wasn't a perfect 7ph.

My PH digital tester and nutrients/EC wand arrived as well. Looks kinda cheap to be honest even though it cost around 30 bucks. It came with two bottles I was ment to use to calibrate the tool with. 6.86 and 4.01 were the two solutions but the tester if I calibrated it to the 6.86 and then tested the other solution it never read 4.01 the best I could get was around 4.2. I don't think I have it dialed in yet. Also the water from the RO unit measured with the PH tester said it was 7.6, I'll find out soon but I would assume it should be a perfect 7.
There might be a chance my rushed installation didn't help.

My LED is appox 50cm away from the plants and the CFL's are roughly on the same hight as it. I'll post some pics of the setup shortly.

The nutes I use are AN perfect pH micro/grow/bloom. I have a 45L setup so I put in 40ml of each into the tank. The bottle says for small plants to use 1ml of each per 1L.

I'd say I'm overdoing it with the O2 in the pots but I have 3x 20L pots, one used for pumping and other stuff and the other two for the plants. In each of the pots that have plants in them I have two pumps in each. Lots of bubbles and O2. I figure you can't ever have enough but there would be a limit to how much the water can hold but two should hit that limit all day every day.
The water line just sits below the pot and splashed the balls at the bottom, which I assume water then goes up to keep the others wet. I also have a drip system helping along.
Once I see some roots shooting down from the bottom I'll start reducing the levels in the tank to create a little airpocket between pot and water.

I have to say I am having lots of fun doing this. I even went and planted into some soil onions, peas, tomatos, strawberrys and cucummbers. It's quite funny how fast they have grown. In two days I can see about 15 plants starting to sick their heads above the ground. One thing I'm worried about those additional plants is bugs, do they attracting other insects and bugs that I normally shouldn't see? I'm indoors.

I've been sitting on a couple seeds one being a Shaman sativa from the 1980's. It's a plant that at the end of the flower cycle it starts to turn a dark purple. It got planted last night into some grow wool. I think I did a pretty clever thing (time will tell) but what I did was I placed the wool into a cup and let fresh water pour over the top for about 5 minutes.
I then cleaned up some clayballs very well and placed about 2 inches of balls into the bottom of the cup. I then placed the wool inside the cup and filled up more balls around it to lock the wool into place.
I then dropped the seed in, pointy edge up (apparently that helps?) and then pinched the wool to close the hole. I then placed the cup into a tray that had some RO water at the bottom.
I then placed a clear plastic container over the top of the cup in the tray. (greenhouse effect?)
I figure as the clayballs or wool dry out they will suck the water from the bottom and keep things moist but not waterlogged and also it means I don't have to monitor it.
It's been 12 hours and the balls on the very top look wet and I haven't had to water them or do anything else.

Once the shaman pops his head out of the wool I'll start a grow journal.