2nd grow ...minor? Problems

Here is what I have done
5x5 8 foot tall tent
2 - 600w HPS with hoods 14-20 inches from plants
Lots of fans
5 individual 5 gallon bucket DWC
4 -5 gal air pots with ghia green soil
All citrus skunk from Canuck seeds (
Except one blue berry in DWC
Trying a little side by side comparison keeping everything the same the best I can.
Once established from seed and 21-28 days veg
Into tent for flowering
Beneficial bacteria for all. Hydroguard and orca
Ph for DWC 5.5-6.2
Ph for soil 6.1-6.8
Holland secret nutes
Ph tap water 175
ppm DWC 700-900. Never any burn
Ppm soil 500-600 never any burn

All showed good signs of healthy plants except the blue berry (BB). Struggled with it thru the whole grow
The DWC stretched like crazy grew huge stalks and vigorous leaves, it was a jungle in there
The soil plants grew very good also just not as tall

Now at week 9 flowering 3 of the 4 soil plants showing nice dense buds the fourth nice but not very dense buds

The DWC 3 of 4 nice looking buds but VERY loose only one looks promising. Two of them (DWC) started showing nanners (bananas). One of these two I had to super crop ie crush almost all of the top cola branches and bend them over to keep it out of the lights. That was about week 6. I plucked for about 10 days.

Pistols were 90/10 red/white. checked the tricomes on these two and it was 85/14/1 cloudy/clear/amber. I don't want any amber as I don't like the couch lock. So I harvested both of them, I also wanted to get them out of there so as to not pollinate the rest of the plants. They were both about 80% larf. ALL of the lower buds were loose and airy. Very few dense colas. 2 1/2 ounces dry bud, total off both plants. (Poor looking buds) 4 ounces of dry larf.

So did I harvest to early irrelevant or the tricomes? Is it possible to have amber tricomes and the plant not be ready for harvest?

Most of the other plants showing about 80% red pistols and 75-90% cloudy tricomes. 1-5% amber on some. 3 plants still have "airy" loose buds. (2-DWC,1-soil). Will they ever dense up. Pistols are receding, they look great just not dense

In comparison the soil did considerably better. I was planning on going full hog hydro with my next grow. But not so sure anymore. Very frustrated with the hydro results. Lots of work and a poorer return. Don't get me wrong. These things grew like crazy, huge healthy root balls, very tall, beautiful foliage, nice looking buds as long as you didn't look close. just no AAA bud.

On hind sight (I'm grasping here). These grew like crazy, is it possible to have too much growth. The tent got very crowded and I wonder if there just wasn't any light penetration due to very thick canopy. Thoughts??

Any ideas as to what went wrong or anything I could do differently?
The

I'm surprised a DWC expert hasn't chimed in on this.

You seem to have plenty of light, good airflow, soil etc. no mention of temps and humidity. Sounds to me like its genetic but could he high temps? What are your limiting factors? Good place to start. I have very little control of temps and humidity (maxed out electricity) running 2 small tents. 260w cob led per. Those are my biggest limiting factors. Because of this, i focus on optimizing all other parameters, genetics included. Even with lights out temps hitting 46°f, i am still getting decent performance out of my girls.

Temp lights on 81 off 67. DWC water stayed 66-70. humidity here is terrible, around 20% for whole grow.

Smokey57 said:

Temp lights on 81 off 67. DWC water stayed 66-70. humidity here is terrible, around 20% for whole grow.

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Maybe lower your temps a bit? If 81 is the ambient, the canopy is much higher. Even at canopy level that could be a little high? If humidity was higher would be less of an issue. I still dont think it would make that much of an impact. Im going to stick with genetics. Assuming you are giving a plant somewhat reasonable conditions, genetics are the ultimate limiting factor. You cant grow a plant better than its genetically capable of. Poor gentics=poor outcome on the flip side.

that temp of 81 is canopy temp. lots of the time it was 78-79

all of the plants grew differently. i am assuming not very stable genetics. have a couple other people growing out clones from some of these. will see what happens. i do have one of each (soil,hydro) that are pretty good with dense buds. but 2 out of 8 is not very good odds