Second Grow, Early Problem, Swift Diagnosis

barbz

Member
The Buddha Tahoe and Delahyde have been moved to the bloom tent. A word on that; we were able to flog off some of our extra from the first grow to the dispensary and got enough to buy a new 600w light for the bloom room.

I am learning so much! We clipped some under-canopy branches to clone. We've seven clones in the plastic cloning box, all are showing new growth. That's nice, they're doing what they're supposed to do.

My partner decided that RO water would be better for the plants, so he brought over one of those water cooler things with the spigot, and 5 gallons of RO water. He has an aquarium and it's good for fish. Not so good for plants, however!

Our tap water is hard, laden with minerals. The last grow, we only used water from the bubbler bucket, we're running an aquarium bubble stone. This removes the chlorine and chlorimides our water department adds.

So, the two girls go into the bloom tent and are getting fed with RO water and newts. I noticed strange splotches, barely visible under the glare of the light, on the lower fan leaves. These developed into horrible dry, crispy spots, so I came here to look for answers.

The answer was, calcium deficiency. The only new elements in our sauce, new light, RO water. Since the lower leaves were suffering, obviously the light wasn't the problem. Turns out RO water, absolutely pure H20, attaches to minerals, so it was draining the plant of the ability to assimilate nutes, as trace minerals are necessary and vital to the process.

So, we cancelled our order for a RO filter and went back to bubble water. I pruned off all the fan leaves that were affected as they'd just add more stress to the plant. That was three days ago. Switching back to the bubble water made all the difference. We're back on track, and the new growth looks fine.

Now I gotta learn more about clones, their care and feeding.
 

barbz

Member
Yes, it's part of the feeding regimen. However, without minerals, uptake is slowed or stopped, resulting in the problem above.
So, you take RO water, add minerals and such to make it useable. Our water here is full of minerals so we're back to using it with all the chloramides removed by running bubbles thru it.
 
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