MP's Hydro A Go-Go

[MP_Grow]

There may have been some happy dances performed by myself upon observing this

Now if only the other plant will start popping out roots! It’s being a giant tease lol

[StonedCold13]

Fixing to Blast TF off

[OGIncognito]

Like they’re on steroids

[MP_Grow]

@StonedCold13 & @OGIncognito -
Any thoughts as to how long it usually takes for the majority of the roots to reach the res water? Just trying to gauge what kind of expectations I should have with all this

[StonedCold13]

Not me buddy, I’m not a bucket grower but OG will chime in
I’d imagine only a couple of days with correct water to net height

[OGIncognito]

A few weeks after the tap root

Near havest

r

[Alien_Shore]

@OGIncognito

Near havest

MERLINS BEARD!!!

[MP_Grow]

That’s epic!

[Birdshot]

That’s Awesome!!

[OGIncognito]

Close

[MP_Grow]

Veg Week 2
2024-08-29T04:00:00Z→2024-09-04T04:00:00Z

So where the first week went somewhat good… the following week got ugly, and quick

Some of the plant leaves looked almost as if they got completely depleted of nutes based on how they looked. Along with one appearing to curl up like a taco, it put all my speculations from the previous week into question. Light intensity, nute amounts, etc. Along with that, the brown gunk returned to my res buckets about 4-5 days after doing the previous res swap.

Oh and did I mention? Somehow I had two diodes on my pH/PPM meters just shatter without any rough contact on them. Total POS. Def need some more viable equipment. Fortunately I have other spares that can be used in the meantime

Talking to some people throughout the cannabis-web, I made the call to do another res swap. Instead of adding in CalMag like I did previously, I only opted to fill the nutes up until the PPMs reached it was about 150 over where my tap water PPM was at (This also includes the pinch of espom salt I added) which puts the total water PPM at 225. Give or take the nute deficiencies I’m observing, I cautiously filled it about 10 over to around 235-240 just to hopefully perk up the plants

Also regarding the lights… the bottom set of leaves began curling up like tacos. The original intensity was up around like 50% on my lights, but I actually backed them down to around 40% to help them try to recooperate. Have not observed any further light strains after doing so

Big change here instead of adding peroxide to the res water, I instead added around 6 mL of Hydroguard (2 mL per gal) on Monday 9/2 once the lights came on at 4:00pm. This was added
after adding all the nutes, and then got it pH balanced to 5.8 to see how things handled. I posted a couple pics of the rooting system. There are a few smaller roots that were barely poking out
the bottom of the net pot prior to adding the Hydroguard. Few days later and it appears more pronounced. Am I sold that the Hydroguard fixed stuff? Yes and no - need more time to pass before I make a viable judgment call on that, but if anything it doesn’t appear to have done any further harm so that’s good… hopefully

There’s def growth still occurring, but it is very slow. Really am hoping that I don’t need to do another res swap for a longer period of time. One of the other few positives aside from the plants being totally torched, is that the temps have stayed pretty well maintained too. When I add a couple ice bottles the temps stay between 64-70°F for a couple days so that will hopefully allow for a healthy grow medium and prevent root rot from occurring. With the addition of Hydroguard, it’ll be better protected as well should a high temp fluctuation occur

I’ll just stick to the Week 2 recommendations until I see more roots hitting the water. Patience is key at this point

Until next time folks… Stay tuned and -

Day 9 - Strawberry Cough

Day 9 - NYC Diesel

Day 14 Defects

Day 14 Roots - SC

Day 14 Roots - NYD

[MP_Grow]

Veg Week 3
2024-09-05T04:00:00Z→2024-09-11T04:00:00Z

This week only got uglier and crazier with the plants. There was not really much growth in terms of rooting or anything

Definitely think I encountered some kind of algae or pathogen in my res buckets. There appeared to be some brown slimy substance which got all over the roots, and forced me to do ANOTHER res change on Sunday 9/8. Given the latter, I opted to do the following:

• Cleaned out the buckets with a half water, half bleach solution
• Dunked both net pots with a water & h202 solution (Up to around the bottom of the rapid rooters where the root growth begins)
• Installed new black tubes going from the aerators to the air stones. Dunked them all in water & bleach solution, rinsed thoroughly, and then wiped each tubing end with an alcohol swab before installing
• Prepared new veg juice. Brought res PPMs back up to around 275-285
• Thoroughly rinsed out both buckets with clean water. Refilled the res buckets with water, nutes, hydroguard, etc

For the record..... this is what my clear tubes looked like prior to the swap:

I should mention, that with the addition of the hydroguard, the brown slime def cleared up a bit. I think more of the worry for me was on the rooting that I could not see contained within the hydroton. The peroxide dunk seemed to do some wonders cleaning up some brown grime off them. After a couple days I started observing leaf/root growth again

Towards the end of the week I slightly bumped up the light intensity again. I gradually have been increasing it and now it is sitting back at 50% again. Also am adding small amounts of hydroguard every day (I think around 0.25 mL) to make sure the issue doesn’t recur

To add to the fun… one of my aerators took a shit on me Wednesday 9/11. Thankfully there was plenty of that extra black tubing that I just rolled out. Did the same and cut a long piece out, sterilized it, and then installed it into the other outlet on the other working aerator. Really glad I doubled down on equipment - it played into this VERY scenario so that I wouldn’t be totally screwed

So for the time being, again just going to be patient and see how things go. Learned that making sure you sterilize EVERYTHING is so pivotal to having a hydroponic system. Hopefully now, we things move more in the right direction now that this brown slime is no longer forming

Until next time folks… Stay tuned!!!

Day 15 -

Replaced the tubing -

Having a backup plan saved me here -

Lights On Day 21 -

Lights Off Day 21 (Seeing growth again which is great) -

[MP_Grow]

Def making some progress here. Just for reference…

This is my plant maybe a day after I did that sterilization clean back on 9/8 -

This is the plant as of 6:00am this morning -

The older growth may not be recoverable and I’ll most likely prune off those lower leaf nodes in due time… but to see some newer growth coming in and looking healthy seems like a great sign moving forward for now

[Ed43758]

I grow Hydro and have 7 years of experience. I run my nurients at 400 seedlings wirh water 4 inches from basker. What kind of nurients are you using? I have a grow journal.

[MP_Grow]

So I hear what you’re saying. I had my water maybe only like an inch or so below the bottom of my net pot. Moving forward I may opt to give it a little more distance as I was worried maybe some hydroton got dissolved into the res water and gunked it up. Since literally bleaching and sterilizing everything… I have not seen a recurrence of the problem

Nutrient wise this is how I’m mixing up my veg juice for feeding. It’s all mixed within a 1 gal container of water:

NUTRIENTS:

• TPS Silica = 22 mL
• GH FloraMicro = 40 mL
• Dyna-Grow Grow = 12 mL
• GH FloraBloom = 16 mL
• Diamond Nectar = 20 mL
• Pinch of epsom salt
• H²O² = 2 mL

My pH is also balanced after adding all that at around 5.8-5.9. To combat some of the earlier ailments I added around 6 mL of Hydroguard for each gallon of water in my res. Also been squirting in a few drops of it every morning which amounts to around 0.25 mL… that’s at least until I can confirm whatever was gunking shit up has disappeared

They’re looking much better today. But of course, I’m not against taking in advice from a more veteran hydro grower

[Ed43758]

Too much hydroguard will also slime. While it is beneficials it will still cover the roots blocked nurients. A little slime is normal on hoses it can be either beneficial or harmful.
The harmful will cause ph flux from my experience. Now i seen you said peroxide. That will kill all both the bennies and bad. The best thing to watch is water temp I try to keep as cool as possible. The house Ac keeps it atound 65 summer and 60 in winter. The more air saturation in the water the less issues you will have. So lower water temp equal more oxygen in the water.

[Ed43758]

I use seedlings 2.5 ml of each gh micro, bloom, and, bloom. The time the roots hit the water about a week or so I up it to 5ml of Micro and grow and around 3 ml bloom per gallon.
This puts my base at 450 and my water is 200 so total is 600.

[Ed43758]

I meant micro grow and bloom.

[MP_Grow]

Yeah absolutely. Thanks for all your insight!

My temps have been slightly higher… but we are talking like 65-71°F. It’s held within a viable range for the most part so I didn’t believe that was the problem

The peroxide is not mixed in with the res water directly, it’s only added to the veg juice to kill off anything that might potentially try to grow in it during storage. I do the same for the water that I add to my humidifier just to try keeping things as sterile as possible

That slime was mostly brown when I was dealing with the issue. Since adding hydroguard all the brown slime has disappeared as far as I can tell. It would normally start building up on the roots within like 3-4 days but so far I have not noticed anything yet. Also the plants are responding so much better to it

The only thing I am considering is raising the PPMs. Given how you aren’t the first hydro grower I’ve talked with who has much higher water PPMs, I’ll consider bumping that up just to make sure I don’t see any further issues appearing

[MP_Grow]

These plants are starting to grow in normal-ish now

Strawberry Cough -

NYC Diesel -

Rooting -