buds wont cola

OK, I'll make it short for now cause at work but to the point..

i Have ebb n flow with 5 gallon buckets with lids rather than insert pots so roots submerge into water. Each bucket has 2" air stone with big aair pump. called poor mans under current i guess.

feedings are 2.5 hours filled. 1 hour drained. Plants get super growth but buds stop growing during week 5-7 then they just swell up and harden weeks 8-9. So the plants do not ever turn into colas.

the strain is not tthe issue cause i gave clones to friend and he greww monster colas in a normal ebb n flow with normal 30min feeding every 3.5hrs and air sttone In buckets.

i use lucas formula with cal-mag,sweet,bud swell... he uses B.c. brand... there is not a huge difference except i feed longer but get bigger faster growth. He uses different nutes But not sure thats my problem. I am trying to feed less now and get less nodes per plant and hoping it makes a difference.

pic of roots are from plants just finished, plant had ton of tops but only 6" colas... 2 plant pics are pic before switching 12/12 and then its now at week 7. You can see plenty growth but buds just not big. this is 10 week strain.

Water temp is 66* with chiller and ppm around 1200 or less. h202 added 1 time a week at 4ml per gal. They do not burn until week 4ish an its slight.. room has 8 1kw light.
that plant is 4ft wide and 4ft long. About 5ft tall. Easily 1lb capable

Really want to help but not sure I understand the nature of the problem... I see what you mean though the buds look kind of thin in between like they are stretched between nodes but with 1000w yeah you oughta be pulling pounds by week 10

Ok, sorry on my phone I can only type so much...

My room is 20x12 , 8 1kw lights with adjust a wings, 5 ton ac, sealed room with co2 , fan at every corner moving air and dehumidifier so my environment is very good and temps steady at 77-82.

My system is just like an ebb n flow. It will flood nute which is chilled at 66. It floods for 2.5 hours and then drains for 1 hour to be chilled and mixed with fresh nutes. Every bucket has a air stone so it can flood and plant growth has been 4 times larger since. BUT, the buds are just like above pictures and are not forming into a cola what so ever. Even when a cola does form it is maybe 6" and just does not add up at the end of the day.

My nutrients are 5ml of cal - mag, 8/16ml micro bloom... Then week 6 I add small amount of sweet and big swell until week 8. Then ill top off Rez with just ph correct water until end of 9 which I usually let my normal indicas run. I also add h202 once a week which does wonders.

Above are pics of my roots which are nice and white and they over took that bucket. Those are plants which just finished flowering and my entire room with 8 lights only did about 4 lb. this is my issue, healthy plants, growing plants, perfect roots, perfect environment, about 40 tops with thick stems each plant in a scrog. But when the buds start growing they are SOs small. I can grow a plant that is big enough to produce 1lb in 6 week veg. Once buds start to form in a well established plant it's disappointing... My issue is growth is awesome but my buds regardless of strain are smaller than normal.

My thinking is I don't use any additives during week 1-6 of flower and that's when bid growth is optimum. Also, I have always grown in scrogs, the entire size of my room was 1 big screen 18' x 10' so it's possible too much growth is making them not produce larger colas. ????

The cheese dawg plant above is 10 week rather than 8 and easily colas up in a friends system but yet I am in week 7 and they seem small again. Healthy plant just small buds. My new run I ditched my scrog and now running my plants as just stand up plants with a goal of 5 oz a plant min. That should be a walk in the park for my set up. Also, I know plants and can train them well. I plan to tie down my 8 nodes and use whatever tops come up. Should be about 15-20 tops as I switch to 12/12. So less tops and individual plants.

Suggestions needed here?

Shit pic of room

Additives shmadditives. Perhaps you need to adjust your nutrient balance according to your strains. Keep it simple until you achieve success, then tweak with additives if you so choose. And then again, perhaps it IS your strains. Some phenotypes do not cola up like you so desire.

I think that you and I must have a different meaning for the word cola. For me, a cola is the main bud at the top of a plant (this is the simple version, there are a number of ways to get multiple colas).

Your pics simply look like they are a little young and need some time to bulk up, but without better pics, it's hard to tell.

1. You trimming that larf under the net?
2. To my understanding more tops = slightly smaller overall bud size (although have seen some gnarly pics of some huge donkey dick scrog cola's)
3. Strain doesn't like scrog
4. Switch to dynagro


IMO could be any one of these 4 issues.


That's my advice. Hope this might help you diagnose your "problem" but from my point of view its a very nice problem to have haha. Very nice setup and plants man.

Perhaps you should not be comparing bud size but yield per watt (or yield per lumen to be more exact). It could turn out your friend gets more in size but less in number.

OK, pics are, my big scrog room I just cut down. You can see its plenty of tops and they seem like they cola but they are just small tops 6" or so. A room that size with plants that big should be doing better than 4lb... BUT we can forget about the big scrog room cause its cut down now.

Its easier to concentrate on my plants still going cause i can get pics for you guys. So you can see pic of the stand up plants before 12/12. They are nice size for sure. Healthy. Then there is a pic of during the stretch faze when i lollipoped inside and lower nodes. Then the next pic is from last week of week 6 .

so you can see bud sizes are just not adding up. This specific strain is blz bud. Clones came from another cardholder and this strain has no issue growing a nice cola. The cheese dawg plant in my first pic is 4x4 plant so its deffinetly an old established plant which my last run i grew same plant and had 1 cola aboAt a 1ft length. So the nodes can form a cola.

uncleben i felt the same way tthat's why i only run big swell during 2 weeks at the end. I oonly started this issue since I added air stone and flooding longer, but the growth has been insane in comparison. I guess bigger plants do not mean bigger yield.

the pic of my room with 24 buckets i ran 12 in last run cause plants covered entire space.

edit - new pics are under my last 12 plant screen and the cola picture is from my last run of cheese dawg in week 9. That last run iI did not concentrate on cheesedawg at all. It was in my hydro setup with another strain so I added notes from other strain not cheese dawg and it burnt a bit but had to feed my other 11 Plants rather than 1 Cheese

How many watts of light did those plant get and how much weight did you get?

8000 Watts , 4lbs total. My bills are running a setup for 8-10 lb each run. Literally a smidge of 5 oz each plant gets me 8 lb. This is why im doing individual buckets to concentrate on plants individually rather than one big canopy.

The only thing I can think of is more colas=smaller colas..also, seems kinda dumb but are they getting enough p/k?

Still think he may need to adjust the *balance* of nutrients according to strain. Many of the stems looked puny to me in one of the first pics. Could be other things causing it..

i have cut down on nutrients from my last flower room to my current one and has deffiently made a difference.

also, i was thinking too many puny stems cause so much growth in scrog and this time i let them get alittle tall before switching 12/12 so thick stems on a bunch which do have bigger buds than rest. this is why im mainly doing smaller individual buckets this time so i can grow a controlled amount of tops under 20 per plant and hope they get nice an thick.

although as for the p/k i have myself wondering same thing now. i do micro and bloom 8/16 ml a gallon but i find myself topping off my rez with just tap water most of flower to keep ppms regular at 1100. so my ppms reading normal but maybe thats the micro not the bloom.

ricky6991 said:

i have cut down on nutrients from my last flower room to my current one and has deffiently made a difference.

also, i was thinking too many puny stems cause so much growth in scrog and this time i let them get alittle tall before switching 12/12 so thick stems on a bunch which do have bigger buds than rest. this is why im mainly doing smaller individual buckets this time so i can grow a controlled amount of tops under 20 per plant and hope they get nice an thick.

although as for the p/k i have myself wondering same thing now. i do micro and bloom 8/16 ml a gallon but i find myself topping off my rez with just tap water most of flower to keep ppms regular at 1100. so my ppms reading normal but maybe thats the micro not the bloom.

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Im in the same boat as u man, im running a 4 site 5 gallon bucket rdwc system with about 30 gallons total in the system and my buds wont fatten up. I also use the gh 3 part flora series. I was running the same ppm as u dude and my plants didnt like it at all so i cut it down to around 550 ppm 4 days ago and havent seen any improvement. I think over nuting them is causing the slow/stunted growth

Could it be air quality/humidity? When you say you have a sealed room are you recycling the air inside or are you pulling in fresh air? Also have you considered the dehumidifier and A/C unit working together might be making the air too dry? Not sure if those could be your problem but just throwing it out there in case you hadn't considered it.

use some h202, works so good. but yeah im really thinking of switching nutrients. dont want to but whatever works is where i gotta go.

as for humidity it is usually kinda dry, 30% normally. ac nocks out entire room humidity. the co2 burner always shuts on off and meter reads good so i never vent my rooms at all. should co2 be exhausted? never heard of it.

ricky6991 said:

use some h202, works so good. but yeah im really thinking of switching nutrients. dont want to but whatever works is where i gotta go.

as for humidity it is usually kinda dry, 30% normally. ac nocks out entire room humidity. the co2 burner always shuts on off and meter reads good so i never vent my rooms at all. should co2 be exhausted? never heard of it.

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What nutes u plan on goin with? I was thinkin about givin maxibloom and some liquid koolbloom a shot

UncleReemis said:

Still think he may need to adjust the *balance* of nutrients according to strain. Many of the stems looked puny to me in one of the first pics.

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That was my second thought as well, first was this:

*SeeDLinG* said:

The only thing I can think of is more colas=smaller colas..

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The results you are getting are similar to what I try to achieve on purpose: many smaller buds instead of a few huge colas. The reason for me is simply because the climate I'm in sucks and it's hard to battle high humidity levels on rainy days. Besides that it gives me a little more yield per m2.

In the scrog in the first pic you scrogged too long, need to let them gain some height during transitioning. The cola is largely formed around the top not 'on' top if you know what I mean.