RDWC Lockout

Hello,

here are two photos of the same grow, same system. Two of the plants have nutrient lockout and two are healthy as can be. I've included one photo of each. the top photo is a Erkel and the bottom photo is Zod. The Zod is locked out and the Erkel is doing great.

My tds is 620 (500 scale), ph is kept between 5.2-6.2. I'm using rock nutrients with mammoth P and terpinator. These are at day 24 of flower. No calmag added in flower. my air pump is putting out about 1.5 lpm. I'm using four 13gallon buckets with 3" manifolds, 13 gallon control bucket, 800 gph pump, chiller and RO water under two 1000w DE HPS lamps. Humidity is about 45% and the air temp is 79 degrees. My nutrients are mixed and PH'd before introducing them to the system. When I flip to flower the plants were let to run in PH'd RO water and 3 ml per/g Clearex for 2 hours. I then repeated the process at day 20 of flower. So, that's two chelating sessions in the first 3 weeks of flower.

My veg cycle is pretty similar but with calmag and veg nutes instead of bloom. Plants look great coming out of veg. After they start getting bloom nutes they get a super dark green color and, sometimes, get locked out.

Anyone have any idea how I can avoid the nute lockout or see a flaw in my process? I'm not running a very strong solution and usually keep it below 1.0EC. The plants never get tip burn either.

Any ideas?
Thanks
Boomhour



Erkel-no nute lockout

Zod-totally locked out

check the roots.

NapalmZen said:

check the roots.

Click to expand...

I checked the roots and they perfectly white. I run a chilled res and use a Root Tonic with every feeding up till week 4 of flower.

If you suspect lock out dump it and add a new batch.

Lock out is caused by poor nutrient use ie fucken up.

It could be your return pump size. I have a Under Current 6XL - 7, 8 gallon pots (56 gallons) and they size it for a 350 g/hr pump which exchanges the fluid in each container about 6 times per hour. The high flow rates can cause nutrient uptake issues. 800 gal/hr seems really high.

I also just read something from a Canna rep about even their Aqua line not being great for these kind of systems because it somehow agitates gasses out of solution causing nutrient lock out. I think they are coming out with an RDWC version. UC's line for RDWC somehow accounts for this. Not sure about others.

Are these plants next to each other - on the same side or something that they physically share in common? Do you have any sort of pic or diagram of your system - maybe it's something in the design?