My seedlings are yellowing once again - Why am I cursed with this?

Hey guys,

It's been 7 days since my last post about this (probably) magnesium problem, so a little update for now - Nothing has changed. Generally, my plants are thriving. No nutrient burn, nothing. They are growing nicely. But sadly, this symptom is still appearing, now on all 4 plants. It spreads from the bottom to top, light leaf material between the veins of each leaf. It doesn't seem to be too dangerous, but it is an obvious sign that something is just off. The two which had this problem early on, are the most severe. The other two are showing mild signs here and there.

I contacted Canna & they recommended to cut my RO water with tapwater, as little as 25% is absolutely fine, just so I can get bicarbonates back into the RO water to stabilize PH, which calmag itself can't do. This will ensure a very stable PH in the long run, I think someone here even recommended doing that. So that's what I've been doing for a while now, but sadly it's all still happening. I also supplied epsom salts in the feeding water for a few days now, but it doesn't seem to help too. I think it was around 1 gram per 1L of water.

These plants are fed as follows AFTER I had this symptom appearing:

25% tap + 75% RO water. Tapwater adds 80PPM / 0.16EC of minerals, I then add my Calmag until I hit 225PPM / 0.45EC. Then epsom salts at around 1g/L. Afterwards the usual nutrient schedule of A+B until I'm at 800PPM / 1.6EC, which the plants seem to enjoy as there's absolutely no burns visible, it keeps being this magnesium-deficient symptom, and it doesn't seem to stop at all. It started happening with just RO water + calmag + a/b, it still happened with foliars, kept happening with tapwater + ro + calmag + a/b, and it's still happening with even epsom salts added into the feeding water.

I don't want to change too many things, I just wanna get to the core of this magnesium-problem I have, so I will stop experimenting for now and get back to you guys before I f something up again.

Take a look at the current state of my plants, these are the two most problematic ones:

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And these are the two less problematic ones:

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Acid said:
I contacted Canna
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They offer a great customer service, don't they? - That's why I love and trust them!

Do you use the Epson salt for your Mg problem? I used Canna MONO Mg since I talked to them and it feels like working better for me. Maybe you should give it a try
 
use a proper ph adjust to set ph. mixing RO with tap, using lemon juice etc is a short term solution best suited to an emergency if no ph adjust is available. it won't remain stable long without the ph adjust.

run a proper calmag or mag supplement alone to correct the mag issue.
 
I think you need to cycle the medium better running salts with your approach. Without any runoff and cycling of the medium the only way to balance it and not create salt buildup is to feed borderline low.

This approach is very hard to keep stable for any longer periods of time. By only wicking and feeding the medium from the bottom you will create an uneven root zone with higher nutrient concentrations and moisture in the bottom of the pots and stagnant water and low moisture and nutrient concentrations at the top.

For better performance runnings soilless and salts you should aim for a homogenous medium at all times meaning you have the same water and nutrient concentrations throughout the medium and pots. This makes the roots completely fill the root zone for maximum water and nutrient uptake. Bigger roots gives you the possibility for higher rates of growth and yield.

Maybe you should water through the pots a couple of times a week? I also see algae on the top of the pots that will affect growth and access to oxygen. I use regular bleach at recommendations in my signature to keep roots, pots and feed lines clean from algae growth.

What is the EC/ppm of your base water? I see very little reason to run RO in soilless if your base water stay below 0.4 EC.

Hope any of that helps!

Cheers!
 
Wastei said:
I think you need to cycle the medium better running salts with your approach. Without any runoff and cycling of the medium the only way to balance it and not create salt buildup is to feed borderline low.

This approach is very hard to keep stable for any longer periods of time. By only wicking and feeding the medium from the bottom you will create an uneven root zone with higher nutrient concentrations and moisture in the bottom of the pots and stagnant water and low moisture and nutrient concentrations at the top.

For better performance runnings soilless and salts you should aim for a homogenous medium at all times meaning you have the same water and nutrient concentrations throughout the medium and pots. This makes the roots completely fill the root zone for maximum water and nutrient uptake. Bigger roots gives you the possibility for higher rates of growth and yield.

Maybe you should water through the pots a couple of times a week? I also see algae on the top of the pots that will affect growth and access to oxygen. I use regular bleach at recommendations in my signature to keep roots, pots and feed lines clean from algae growth.

What is the EC/ppm of your base water? I see very little reason to run RO in soilless if your base water stay below 0.4 EC.

Hope any of that helps!

Cheers!
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I sadly can't topwater with autopots, because as you said - high EC. This concentrates at the top layer of the coco while bottom-feeding, and as soon as I'd topwater, the EC would shoot through the roof in the rootzone.

Luckily, problems are almost gone. I had to raise my base EC to 0.6 with calmag, rather than just to 0.4-0.45, it apparently fixed the Magnesium issues completely. I noticed this after lowering Calmag from 0.45 to 0.2EC as a test, which instantly showed up with calcium symptoms too then. Just wasn't enough Calmag.

Here are my 4 autoflowers today, at around 30 days of age since sprout in a 4x4 / 120x120 tent, pretty much maxing out the full tent pre-stretch:

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Current feeding:

25% tap, 75% RO, for a base EC of 0.12 and some bicarbonates to stabilize the water better. Just tapwater will shoot my fixed PH all the way up to 8.1 in less than 24 hours, repeatedly. Not good for coco. But this way apparently works perfectly fine.

Base 0.12EC gets raised to 0.6EC using Canna Calmag Agent, then Canna A+B until I'm at 1.9EC. PH usually floats at around 6.09PH after adding everything, I then lower it to 5.55-5.65 in the reservoir, and check PH twice in the next 24 hours, and then once a day maybe. I allow it to raise over 5.8 over time, at which point I lower it to 5.6 again.

They currently eat through ~22L / ~6gallons in 3-4 days by bottomfeeding, which is impressive I gotta say.

I still have my old autoflower inside there, mid flower, and it's absolutely in the way of the newer plants. I thought getting a 4x4 will be more than enough for 5 autos, but I was.. very wrong. 5x5 would've been the way.

We're back on track!
 
Acid said:
The seeds themselves are in coco jiffy plugs, if that's what you mean? I germinated them in coco plugs, and then removed the skin / net of those plugs afterwards so the roots have no obstacle to go through
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I use jiffy plugs as well and there is always a slight problem transitioning from the plugs to soil. (for me) In other words, in my case the young plants always look a little rough going from peat pellets to soil. Once the roots get down, and the plant adjusts to the soil, all is good. Those starter leaves don't matter much anyway.

I also tend to wait a while before feeding, intentionally letting the starter leaves yellow a bit. Once I see this happen, I start feeding lightly.

IMO your plants are looking just fine for this stage of growth. I wouldn't worry until a few nodes grow in and the roots are down. Consider it mild transplant shock at this point, and DO NOT OVERFEED. It will only make it worse.

Just my opinion, I think your plants are looking just fine.
 
One more thing about jiffy pellets. They have a tendency to hold too much water and when the plant is young, (tiny roots) it is very easy to over-water. The pete pellet holds water like a sponge and until the roots move deeper into the soil. I would bet money, that this is your problem. The roots are drowning a bit as they arent drinking the water held in the peat. I usually transplant the pete pellet quite dry and water the soil edges around the pellet...(lightly)
 
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From maxing out a 4x4 tent, to perfectly fitting into a 5x5 tent with 4 autoflowers. It's all running nicely, with some problems here and there, but I think I have fixed them. Autopots and PH issues are annoying, but it's working out again. Around 55 days since sprout now, slowly transitioning into full flower, no more growth, but slowly becoming fatter now.

Bottom right smells like straight up ass, mixed with roadkill & onions, bottom left one smells like.. lime and powdered sugar. The other two in the back smell like cough drops mixed with diesel. These plants wanted to be silly I guess.

Bottom left/right Speedrunseeds Granite Haze F5, top left/right Speedrunseeds Acid Snow

I'm glad all these shitty problems I had for over a year are finally fixed, I can now focus on the one thing I love the most - These plants. And it's working just as expected. Once again thanks to everyone who spent their time trying to help me.
 
(Almost) Last update for this thread, as the grow is slowly coming to an end, and I don't wanna stay off-topic for any longer. Pretty much my last message in this thread with tons of helpful people who tried their best to remove this curse I had for over 1 year. I will give one more update as a last final result with the full dry yield.

Spoiler alert for anyone who doesn't know why this thread existed - I was cursed with my plants dying over and over again, each and every seedling. They all yellowed up, substrate didn't matter, water didn't matter, nutrients, temps ,anything - Nothing helped. In the end, it was the room my tent was in. It was literally the room which caused all my plants to die over and over again, usually between day 5 and 20. It was absolutely unbelievable, and as soon as I changed the rooms, everything turned into an easy joke. Yes, I'm not kidding. It took me over one year to find out, and around $1000+ in nutrients, seeds, electricity, and and and.

And as soon as I noticed that the problem went away, I went all in with the experience I had from 10+ years ago, and all the other grows I followed live, all the education I ate up over years and years, and 10+ years of general experience with gardening and exotic plants.

So yeah, as seen in the posts above, I've been growing 4 Speedrunseeds autoflowers in a 5x5 tent, autopots, coco, canna coco nutrient line, for 80+ days now. I'm at day 83 as of today, nearing the harvest window for 3 plants. I sadly had budrot on the 4th plant, with 3 main buds having the earliest signs of budrot. I luckily found out real quick, removed infected + healthy surrounding material, and did an early harvest at around day 72 for that specific plant. Final dry yield was 7.2oz / 205g of dry bud for the second smallest autoflower, which my estimate was at 220 (1140g wet weight + stems), so it was almost spot on.

I still have 3 plants left as of now, lots of high temp issues (No AC where I live), often riding 85F temps in late flower. Yes, it hurts reading this, but it is what it is. Some leaf issues here and there because of these temps, and also some heavy yellowing issues I had in early to mid flower, traced back to root rot because of high reservoir temps and Canna Boost (organic). Fixed with Athena Cleanse.

As silly as it sounds, there is pretty much no space for a fourth plant right now in this 5x5 tent, with only 3 autoflowers. I will soon join the pound club with one single auto, maybe even more than a pound.

Here are a few images:

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Speedrunseeds Acid Snow on the left and top right, and the runt of the bunch: My last Speedrunseeds Granite Haze F5. She'll probably be in the 4oz range, very small bud growth, but insanely dense and frosty.

The fourth Granite Haze F5 was the beauty of these beasts, with unbelievably tight nugs, tighter than some photoperiods I've grown and seen / touched in the past. Sadly lost around 10-15% of top shelf material to rot, and lost around 2-3 weeks of ripening / weight gain, otherwise it would've been in the 8-10oz range. But still a good result!

Both the Acid Snows are rather big, with the one in the back right probably being in the 12-13oz range. No huge buds, but way bigger than the small one, insanely dense too, frosty, and lots of top nugs.

The main player is the big one on the left, measuring around ~4ft+ from one end to another in width. Yes, that's an autoflower. She isn't as dense on some buds, on some she is, she isn't insanely frosty, but still has some good frost. I lost lots of trichomes on the sugar leaves in the past week, as temps are just crazy high & I can't do anything about it. I am literally watching live how the frost slowly disappears & trich heads popping off, as the temps sometimes crawl all the way up to 90°F, it's hell on earth for late flower. She will be in the ballpark of 17-21oz for sure. Autoflower pound club here I come!

The next and LAST update will be in around 20 days, at the end of September I imagine. They don't have lots of time left, maybe 1-2 weeks for the big ones for some more weight and solidifying, small one is ready to harvest, but temps are still a bit too high for drying correctly. Gonna wait 3-4 days for colder weather.

I'm excited to update you guys one last time in this thread soon!
 
Acid said:
I was cursed with my plants dying over and over again, each and every seedling. They all yellowed up, substrate didn't matter, water didn't matter, nutrients, temps ,anything - Nothing helped. In the end, it was the room my tent was in. It was literally the room which caused all my plants to die over and over again, usually between day 5 and 20.
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What was it about the room that caused the plants to die over and over?

Knowing that might help someone the next time a similar problem keeps happening to them
 
SmokingWings said:
What was it about the room that caused the plants to die over and over?

Knowing that might help someone the next time a similar problem keeps happening to them
Click to expand...

Nobody knows, I don't know, it's just a normal room. The only difference was the fact that it's an elongated room with one window on one side, and no window on the other. I know this room rather well, and there's an insane lack of fresh air back there, even with the open window and an open door. There's just 100% no circulation back there. That's the only suspicion I have.

Otherwise, I just don't know. I started growing in that room over 1 year ago and out of probably 100 dead plants, 1 survived, and 1 got revived and survived with heavy damage. As soon as I changed the location, none of these problems ever existed anymore. They were just gone. Nothing had changed, besides the room.

I wish I could find the exact cause, but sadly I can only guess, just like everyone else. lack of CO2, lack of Oxygen, I don't know.
 
Acid said:
Hey guys!

So in my newest attempt, I got some Advanced Nutrients PH Perfect (Grow/Bloom/Micro), with voodoo juice and b52 as additive. I got it for dirt cheap, so I didn't think twice. I wanted to use this in combination with a soilless substrate, which is Plagron Pro Mix (Peat Moss, small amounts of wormcastings for WHATEVER reason, and that's it pretty much). I added 30% perlite to that mixture.

I use 7gal fabric pots, and 420fastbuds autoflowers. Germinating was as easy as it can be. Transplanted into final pot already. I watered with ~50ml of plain water at first. This was enough until the first set of leaves came out.

Next watering I did use 1L of dechlorinated tapwater with an EC of 0.3, and added 0.25ml of each grow, bloom, and micro, and 1ml of Voodoo Juice and B52. AN recommends 1ML in the first week of each (and 2ML of Voodoo / B52), but I heard this will pretty much kill most autos, so I lowered the dose to 1/4th of what it has to be. I PHed the solution to 6.3 at the end.

I then watered each seedling with 60ml of a very low nutrient solution, in a circle, around the width of the first set of leaves. And now the second set of leaves are trying to come out, but they're starting to yellow again. As always. I am absolutely CURSED with this problem, and I feel like I'm the only person on this planet who had the exact same symptoms in DWC, Peatmoss, Coco, and literal soil. It's ALWAYS the same freaking problem, and I'm so sick of it. New growth just yellows, plants die or are severely stunted, goodbye plant.

I just don't understand what's wrong here. I followed every rule of my last grow which yielded me 7oz with one auto, just that I'm using a different nutrient line this time. My environment is absolutely perfect and stable, I can literally control the 0.X numbers of humidity and temperatures. I'm currently at 78°F / 25°C, and 70% humidity, 24/7 stable. Air exchange is top notch, PPFD is at 350, but that stuff literally never mattered at all with this kind of problem, as I tried every environment in the past 12 months, and had ~15 dead plants with exactly this problem (only 2 survived til the end).

Why? Just why. I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong here. I have 2 PH pens, an expensive one and an average one to always have 2 opinions, I got an EC pen, I got everything. I'm not taking lots of care, I pretty much do everything as chill as possible, I just really always check my PH with this kind of stuff, as it isn't organic. That's it already. I'm just insanely traumatized by this yellowing new growth.



Please help me!

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Feeding too early. Seedlings gain all their nutrients from the cotyledons.
 
Last update, so this thread is coming to an end, as this problem is long gone (luckily).

I had 4 autoflowers in my 5x5 tent, two Speedrunseeds Acid Snow, and two Speedrunseeds Granite Haze F5.

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Smallest Granite Haze F5 yielded 160g / 5.6oz dry. Really dense but smaller nugs, straight up hash plant strains. Trichomes everywhere, not oily, but insanely dusty and ridden with trichomes everywhere.

Scent profile: Very lemony / lime, hints of paint thinner & gas.

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Second smallest Granite Haze F5 yielded 205g / 7.2oz dry. 3 weeks early, budrot, and lost around 10-15% of top node material to rot. Was the first one I harvested, sadly way too early. Went through the bulking stage, but lost the ripening stages. INSANELY dense nugs, which was the cause for budrot. Not as frosty as the smallest one, but still a straight up hash plant.

Scent profile: Herbs, darker, more of a floral scent, spices, not as much of a fresh / weed-ish smell

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Second largest Acid Snow yielded 390g / 13.7oz dry. As dense as the smallest GHF5, as frosty, but way more oily / sticky, not as dusty.

Scent profile: Medicinal, fresh, cherries, a hint of buttcrack.

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Largest Acid Snow yielded 625g / 22oz dry, by far the biggest yielder, but bud quality is also just mediocre to good. Lots of rather loose material, not larfy buds, but close to it. For over 3 weeks I had 33c / 90F+ temps in my tent, late flower, which caused lots of foxtailing and the largest Acid Snow to not really dense up. The other two plants didn't mind as much.

Scent profile: Straight up skunky mess of buttcrack, mixed with floral notes & a hint of spices.

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Final yield: 48.5oz / 1375g of dry bud from 4 autoflowers in a 5x5, with a 730W bar light. I think this is an alright result!

And that's it. This thread is done for me, it's a cursed dark land which I don't wanna think about anymore. I thank each and every one once again for all the help, suggestions, time, everything. Thanks a lot.


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