Discouraged from the foam... advice please!

So this is the plants 5th day in the buckets. It started with just my Snow White plant, but now my other two Bubblelicious plants have it in their buckets as well. I'm doing a DWC with individual buckets and an air pump. There's enough air, res temps are 19.8-21.0c, temps in tent are 75-82. Got a 190 CFM fan with scrubber running. Conditions are awesome imo.

They are definitely stunted. It's their 10th day above ground and they're barely halfway through their second true leaves... and the cotyledons are starting to yellow bad, and the main plants were too so I upped from 150ppm to 250ppm and it seems to have slowed it/stopped it, but they still look bad. I think it's the foam?

About two days in the first plant had this foam starting on the edges of the bucket but now it's REALLY building, and the other two buckets on each side are now growing whatever it is as well. The first bucket also has what look like little black specs in the thick of the foam. It started white but it's for sure brown tinted when I took the lid off, I could see it/smell it.

I can get a picture if someone wants one, but someone has to know what this is. It smells pretty bad now. Didn't at first, but does for sure.

I've used Technaflora Sugar Daddy, Root 66 and Thrive Alive B1 thus far. Buckets get new water on Sunday, but since it's in the hydroton and what not am I stuck with this the whole grow?

I'm tempted to just kill the plants, bleach everything and start over. I don't want to spend my first grow miserable and get shitty gross weed from nasty buckets.

Advice?

did you wash anything with dish soap?

lol yes (fiance even said, 'can you use dish soap'), everything with nice smelling dawn and rinsed the buckets for about 10 minutes each

EDIT: I'm going to get pictures of the plants, be about 10 minutes. I'll get one of the bad bucket too.

Pictures

Snow White (First to show it)
Leaves were SUPER dark, cotyledons are yellowing as you can see. Her bucket is pretty gross.



Bubblelicious 1
Second set of leaves is stunted and silly looking. Also looking a little lighter each day? Not as bad as the other two. Only one that's perking UP towards the light.


Bubblelicious 2
Was the fastest grower and is the biggest plant so far, but for some reason the leaves are curling down and twisting as you can see. Was more yellow yesterday before I upped nutes.



All of them have the foam now, but Snow White is the only one to that point and the other two are just starting. She however, looks the best out of the group somehow.


EDIT: I FORGOT TO MENTION THE BIGGEST PART!

Snow White's pH skyrockets in like 6-10 hours. I pH the bucket to 5.5, and by that evening, it's 6.8, 6.9 again. Now the other two buckets are starting to do it since they showed foam, but only to 6.2, 6.3, but as it gets worse, I imagine I would be pHing them like 3-4 times a day if I wanted to keep them below 6.2 all the time.

I would drop the sugar daddy and add some benes or enzymes. Looks like you are about to get the dreaded slime. Sugar feeds bacteria and allows harmful bacteria to multiply unless controlled. There are many options to remedy the situation. Like i said you can run benes or enzymes, you can also use sm90 or h20. Don't use combinations of any two without looking into it further.

Ugh that's discouraging. I tried SO hard to clean it, wore gloves, was careful not to contaminate anything, etc. Now I'm 5 days in and having these issues. Really frustrating.

Makes me want to huck them out except I love them too much fuck

I'm going out to the hydro warehouse across town to get the stuff from the Heisenberg thread. It won't hurt to use it regardless.

Yeah those little things dont need sugar daddy that early. Keep res temps down and add a good beneficial.

Do I have to bleach the buckets or can I just empty out the res, restart the res, add the benes in 36-48 when they're ready?

I hate bleach, sanitizers, things like that anywhere near my plants which is why I originally used hot hot water and dawn to clean everything because Dawn gets grease out of baby ducks

Add a little hydro shop grade (not pharmacy) H2O2 Peroxide. I used it outside to fix some algae growth in my water buckets - just poured a little in. Stuff works great and gives O2 to your roots. Might raise the pH so keep an eye on that. Make sure the little girls are getting water. I feed from the top until the roots reach wetness. Keep the nutes low. Hydro plants like to hunt for nutes and grow big happy roots

Also make sure you have way too much air bubbles and keep the res temp in the mid 70s MAX!

Cheers,
Mo

Here is the foam I got from using Sea Green:





Cheers,
Mo

I've had foam in dwc before. No big deal unless it smells or gets out of hand.

I would say the amount of foam in the pictures is on the line of out of hand. Just put plants in a new clean bucket. Or put them somewhere while you clean its current bucket. I just use dawn and a sponge with hot water. Wash rinse, repeat if i've had issues with the water, if not just a single wash and rinse is fine. I also rinse the roots into an empty bucket to get rid of foam thats on the roots(usually where the waterline is) and any stray roots that have fallen off.

I would also say the foam is from all the shit you're adding. Plants just need water and nutrients. Not sure why some people make it harder and add all these sorts of expensive supplements.

Oh an the water needs to be the right PH or all those nutrients wont be able to get absorbed.

I start off high with my PH(6.0) and then it drops naturally(so ive been experiencing lately) I used to start low(5.5) and let it rise, but my PH only drops lately.

Well it smells, really bad. Really bad. So, I'm not 100% sure it is what I'm adding. It's so bad it makes the room smell when I pop the res open.

It's slimy and gross. I don't think this is from the nutes. Especially since I emptied the bucket and it's back faster this time.

You're right, I said it was from your snake oil thrive alive and sugar daddy.

I've had the whole nasty smelling slimy water once in the year ive been doing hydro. And it was within 24hours of a fresh res. Because of super thrive! I know now it was because I must of had some bad bacteria in and it exploding in growth overnight.

my god! that's a lot of foam!! Are you using organic or chem nutes? You could also be over killing on the air stone

feeyoh said:

my god! that's a lot of foam!! Are you using organic or chem nutes? You could also be over killing on the air stone

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They're technaflora nutes. I did use some Thrive Alive Red which is a synthetic version of their thrive alive green (organic). The pumps turned down and the other buckets are fine now surprisingly...

I haven't added the tea yet but the other two buckets oddly seem to not have it building on the edges anymore? Weird. I rinsed out the really bad foamy res you saw in the picture, sterilized the bucket airstone and line with alcohol then h202 then soap then rinse repeatedly. She's only sitting in tap water now pH adjusted to 5.6.

The roots aren't even out the bottom of the net pot so cleaning them is a no go. I don't want to pour anything harsh down the hydroton either, it's a small ass plant, not sure what it can take. I want to try to save them since I'll have to do this in the future but it's my first grow and to say you at least got some bud on your first try would be tight.

I'll get the tea brewing tomorrow when I get the last ingredient, and Monday morning add it to all of them just to be safe.

Mohican said:

Here is the foam I got from using Sea Green:





Cheers,
Mo

Click to expand...

Okay so I don't have that much but my foam isn't like soap suds foam. It's like gross sea foam you see on the bay washing up against the rocks as the tide is on the ebb period sea foam, and it stinks. Or it did before I washed the bucket and shit.

I could see how that would be rowdy and I hope to not have to deal with that in my closet lmao

firsttimeARE said:

You're right, I said it was from your snake oil thrive alive and sugar daddy.

I've had the whole nasty smelling slimy water once in the year ive been doing hydro. And it was within 24hours of a fresh res. Because of super thrive! I know now it was because I must of had some bad bacteria in and it exploding in growth overnight.

Click to expand...

Do you think if I was running benes from the get go (which I don't see any reason not to from other people's results) this wouldn't have sprung it's ugly head up?

36OhBuds said:

Do you think if I was running benes from the get go (which I don't see any reason not to from other people's results) this wouldn't have sprung it's ugly head up?

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I think if you weren't using all those additives that wouldn't of happened.

Your res temperatures sound fine.

You could run bennies. I have used them before to clear out problems and they work great. Unless your roots are brown and slimey feeling I think all you will get is a nice sleep at night from it. If you rinsed your roots of foam and made a clean res, you should be fine. You're feeding way too much though. At this stage I would not be using nutrients at all and if I was it would be something like my water is .12EC out of tap and i'd do like .2EC total. So not even a .1EC so something like 50ppm.

I've gotten the foam before and everything stayed healthy. Just changed the res every 1-2 weeks.

Oh and stop PHing tap water. PH balance is only relevant when nutrients are present to absorb.

36OhBuds said:

They're technaflora nutes. I did use some Thrive Alive Red which is a synthetic version of their thrive alive green (organic). The pumps turned down and the other buckets are fine now surprisingly...

I haven't added the tea yet but the other two buckets oddly seem to not have it building on the edges anymore? Weird. I rinsed out the really bad foamy res you saw in the picture, sterilized the bucket airstone and line with alcohol then h202 then soap then rinse repeatedly. She's only sitting in tap water now pH adjusted to 5.6.

The roots aren't even out the bottom of the net pot so cleaning them is a no go. I don't want to pour anything harsh down the hydroton either, it's a small ass plant, not sure what it can take. I want to try to save them since I'll have to do this in the future but it's my first grow and to say you at least got some bud on your first try would be tight.

I'll get the tea brewing tomorrow when I get the last ingredient, and Monday morning add it to all of them just to be safe.

Click to expand...

it's hard to tell what is causing your soapy looking foam... maybe soap residue in the pipes? Anyway I would say stick to chem nutes in DWC. You'll avoid a lot of problems. get yurself a ppm meter if you don't already have. maintaining your ppm at around 400-450 is the sweet spot and you can't go wrong. having a ppm or EC meter allows you to know how much nutrients your plant is eating. So you can adjust and avoid over feeding.

also make sure your res temp is under 76-78 degrees since hoter water retains less oxygen and in DWC oxygen to the roots is crucial.

anyway.. i'm still a noob myself but my plants are looking great now by just keeping it simple. making sure the plant is eating equal amount of nutrient and water, res temp under 78 degrees, ph at 5.8-6.0, and you should be fine.

but hey! beside the foam your plant looks great to me! I follow hygro hybrid on youtube.. You should watch his " how to grow DWC" playlist. totaly worth it. peace!