I’m growing Donny Burger and I am at week 9, I’m using DWC with circulation. Overall, the plants were growing well although the leaves early on began to droop, curl down and claw. The clawing was just with new growth and as the leaves matured they would straighten out. I read that you shouldn’t have the germination cubes touching the water so I raised them up. This improved the drooping and curling but not the clawing. During veg they were growing at a rate of 1-2 cm per day. Last week I flipped them to flower and when I introduced the nutrients at about 1200ppm they immediately drooped and curled down again. Seeing this I changed 1/2 the nutrients with fresh RO water and lowered the ppm to 820, this had very little effect on the plants. Pre bloom I was at 1100ppm with no distress. I’m using DynaGrow nutrients Grow/Bloom, Cal-Mag and Zyme. My water temp is at a steady 68 deg, ppm started at 500 and was up to 1100 before I flipped, PH at right around 6 with a low of 5.8. Skip to 1 week later and I changed the res water and flushed for a day. After 1 week at 800ppm nuts and flushing with 50ppm water for a day I’m seeing no change. I’m ready to add nuts but not sure how much to add. The chart says I should be at 1300ppm by now. I’m using a COB LED light supposedly putting out 1000w equivalent light and It’s 18" above the grow. I’m also using CO2 at about 900-1000ppm. My air temp is from 75 to 80 and rarely goes above 80 except for a malfunction about 2 weeks ago where it got up to 95 while burning propane for CO2 production. It was only for several hours then I fixed it and back to 80-.
Could this be something other than a nutrient problem?
Welcome to the forum. I don’t grow in hydro myself, but it sort of looks like a nutrient lockout and your plants are not eating but are drinking up the water. @Slym3r and others that actually grow in hydro would be better to help you. Just my 2 cents worth.
The DynaGrow Zyme is an enzymatic cleaner, from the website: " Dyna-Gro ZYME™ is designed to cleanse your plants roots, soil, media and hydroponic systems of plant exudates, bio-film, sludge, slime and algae." Is that what your talking about?
This is the best pic I could snap. The photo looks like they’re brown but it’s just the camera, they are white.
I noticed something I had not before posting the previous pictures, the first one from weeks ago, the leaves are dark green and look healthy and the picture from today they are very light green. It’s not the light, it’s the same in both photos. Does that give any hints? Also when the first picture was taken is around when I started feeding them CO2. I only have one burner so the best I get is 900-1000ppm, could this be related?
Yes I had an incident last week on my weekly res change. I switched them to bloom so the nutrient balance changed from grow to bloom, I was running them at about 1100ppm previously and after adding nutes I was at almost 1200ppm. They didn’t like that at all and started to droop. I noticed it about an hour after adding the nutrients and drained about a third of the res and refilled with ro water, the ph wasn’t affected since my water is about 6 - 6.1ph. They haven’t been the same since. This weekend I changed the water and haven’t added anything for about a day and a half. Would you recommend adding nutes at 1/2 strength or keeping them in plain water?
Ok first the water is a hair cold. The air gap between the roots and water is too close. You want the roots to grow to find water. You do not need co2 at all right now because you have no flowers yet. You cannot take the food away from the plants. When in hydro having the food ppm off is seriously bad and can ruin your grow real fast. Get the nutrients back into the system. Turn off the co2 until you have flowers actually growing. Hydro is not forgiving like other media. Hydro happens faster than any other type so bad effects happen fast so you also need to act fast. How big is your entire system capacity for liquid? Is your room sealed off for the co2. If so get some fresh air in there. But i think your air gap and water temps started this. Now you have a deficiency happening because theres no food. And the wrong food at the wrong time. When you first start to flower you cant flush and switch. You need to start to add bloom when the flowers appear and are tiny. I dont consider them in flower until there skittle size flowers. Then i add my bloom nutrients and grow nutrients together and on the next 2 waterings i stop using the grow/veg nutrients and only bloom from then on. Your going to need a par meter and a good system tester. And i hope im not coming off harsh just pointing out what im noticing.
@PreyBird1 i think your bang on i ran into a few problems with my DWC from neglect working to many hours and not checking them properly flushed roots with water then topped up food after just giving water for awhile thinking they would be ok been a week or so and they look like they are coming right leaves were curling like that aswell now they are starting to pray to light again
You’ve had some very good advice from preybird. I used Dyna grow for a year or so. It worked very good and was very easy. I would bring it up to about 900 to 1000 ppm. They’re gonna be hungry. I don’t use it anymore because there’s so many others out there that work just as well and are not as expensive. Not quite as easy but a lot cheaper.
