First Hydro with Drip System, early burn problems?

Hey All, I'm posting after a year off or so. I've tried to look around the forums for help, pictures, and general tips on what I might be doing wrong but I can't pinpoint my issue because of the specific stage i'm having the problems at. Most people seem to have these problems during flowering, yet I'm just starting the vegetation stage.

Last time I grew in soil, the young plants were beautiful for weeks as they started out. Beautiful green, very little nutrient burn, final product was amazing.

Now I'm going hydro. Here's what I've got so far:

- I've got a 2 unknown bag seed types in a couple waterfarm drip system buckets kept separate.

- I germinated in rockwool cubes under 4x T5 CFLs, then after the first 2-4 leaves came out, i moved them under 600W Gavita Conversion bulb in a tent. They are growing very rapidly, so thats a good sign. I'm on 14 days and they are HUGE compared to the soil grow, however not without problems...

- The leaves on the bottom (not the embryonic leaves, those are already yellow, dried and gone) But the first set of leaves is very burned, brown on the tips and those aint comin back. The next set of leaves now are starting to burn too.

- Another weird element is the large leaves are starting to look like they are crispy, but they are not to the touch, they feel soft still, but they aren't flat, more wavy.

The weird part? My water/nutrient solution is extremely weak!

I've start off with Tap water (our tap water is under 200 PPM and sits at 7.0PH), and leave it out in a large open rez for a few days (usually 24-48 hours). Then I PH down to between 5.5 - 6.0 PH and let sit for a few hours. Then I put in my Nutes, currently using the new PH perfect Advanced Nutrients trio and F1-Golden Honey.

At the start, I used the recommended dosage of nutrients from the bottle, which caused my water to go to PPM 800 (which was way too high). Thats when the first set of leaves started going yellow. I noticed the PH was really high, about 7.0 again! I changed all the solution, to a clean water solution that was PH down to about 6.0. And attempted to flush the rockwool/hydroton with fresh water slowly and ran to waste.

Now I've had the plants in stable 6.0 clean solution for 7 days. Still though, the next set of leaves are starting to turn yellow as well.

Now I'm using a very light feeding solution. In the end its about 250-450PPM (thats including my 150-200PPM reading on the fresh water). EC reading of 0.4-0.6 on my wand. It includes a little of all three bloom,grow,micro and a little bit of DripClean (i use half recommended) and a little bit of F1-Golden Honey (very little). I've held these good values for a few days, the growth has been very obvious, and its moving fast, but the yellowing is still occurring.

Anyone can suggest how I might proceed, or maybe there is nothing I can do, but wait and see if the plants survive. I just don't want it to keep growing but all the latest growth goes yellow after a week



Here's some images. I tried to make them smaller than the original photos so it doesn't take so long to download, but I didn't want to lose the clarity, so I left them about 1/2 a megabyte each, hopefully thats ok. I put in a couple with the full plants so that you can see the overall, also I have images of the new growth so you can see whats happening now with the plants.

what are the temps like in there? almost seems like they mite be getting heat stress. I also run a couple waterfarms and I have slight burn on the bottom set of leaves but never ends up traveling up. But I also just wing the feeding haha. I ad 1/2 tsp every other week with a flush for the plants every 10 days. What are your water temps in your res?

Well, the water/temps are quite good. The tent is what really makes this happen.

The garage itself can get kinda hot. It's 87F right now, it's just starting summer here. It can probably get to 100F in the garage on a really bad day.

The great thing is, the tent doesn't actually get that hot. Because I keep it sealed, and it has a nice turbine fan going with a 6" light tube, the head gets sucked out of the tent right away. The thermometer in the tent says its 70-75F usually, and has gone up to about 80F, but doesn't usually go higher. It's never been in the 90's I dont think. It has a High-Low tracker, so I'll check to see the extremes. Worst case I have to turn off the light during the daytime, but I'm trying to keep it on a 24 hour cycle to grow fast

The temp of the reservoir can change pretty drastically, and I am not sure I will ever have control over this. The reservoir stays outside of the tent, so it doesn't get heat from the lamps. It sits on cold concrete, with only a slab of tile to raise it about 1/4 of an inch. Usually the temps of the reservoir are about 50-70 degrees. It fluctuates a lot.

There is also a fan in the tent, that moves the air. Enough that you can feel a breeze when you open it up.

You thinking heat stress huh? (for the crumpling of the leaves) I raised my lights about 1 foot more, currently they are about 4 feet above the plants (which according to many posts, say thats very FAR!)

And you are thinking that I should just keep going with the light nutes, and keep them growing and see how things go? I can't go much lower than NO nutes and right now, it almost has none.

Well you can throw frozen water bottles or ice packs in the res to keep temps down. But if your sucking all the hot air out of the tent where is the fresh air coming in from???? Could try to bump the nutes up a little or a water change. I change my water every 10 days than leave them with no nutes for 24 hours than I bump the nutes up from there.

well first of all i would go for RO water ph is lower to start 6.0 .when adding a product like ph down u only wanna go down .5 a day.when trying to correct a 7,0 to a 5.8 is hard and a bigg swing but 6.0 to 5.8 isnt bad also Nute recommended doses are high u wanna start low 200 300 ppm and work ur way up 100ppm a day imo .also imo i would flush to plant for a few days with JUST ro water until its growing and looking good then slowly bring upp nutes