Coco grow going sideways, I need some help!

[Shneex0338]

Okay, soo.. Yeah. You guys were right. The big one is literally perking up with each hour gone by, after I didn't water yesterday. Lights will turn on in a little less than an hour, I took a little peek inside the tent, and.. it actually looks like it'd look with lights on after a few hours. I'm excited as to what they look like when the light turns on.

You guys probably saved my ass. Thanks a lot, you got a new member. Take this as a warning though, I'm a literal cannabis killer and I'll probably ask too much. But you got a new member

[Rootsruler]

It's what we do! LOL!

[Gingerbeard]

Between soil and coco/perlite, coco/perlite is an absolute snap.
Soil makes me nervous because nutrient issues are harder to deal with than with coco.
Seed to coco. Never worry about light intensity because I follow manufacturer's recommendations and figure my light at 250+ watts is a cell phone flashlight compared to the sun. Water for the seedling. Straight 8+pH tap water works (for me) until half nutes and cal-mag, pH'd, twice (using soilless nutes) when the first serrated leaves show up. No need to water past the drip line (edge) of the canopy. Water when dry. You can let a plant get bone dry for a day with no ill effects if your humidity and temperatures are decent. I rarely water to all that runoff. Full nutes after first two waterings.
My plants might could be bigger, greener, with nasty buds. I'm okay with that. I get what I get with what I got.
And keep your fans blowing! Circulate, my friend. Circulate!

[Shneex0338]

Between soil and coco/perlite, coco/perlite is an absolute snap.
Soil makes me nervous because nutrient issues are harder to deal with than with coco.
Seed to coco. Never worry about light intensity because I follow manufacturer's recommendations and figure my light at 250+ watts is a cell phone flashlight compared to the sun. Water for the seedling. Straight 8+pH tap water works (for me) until half nutes and cal-mag, pH'd, twice (using soilless nutes) when the first serrated leaves show up. No need to water past the drip line (edge) of the canopy. Water when dry. You can let a plant get bone dry for a day with no ill effects if your humidity and temperatures are decent. I rarely water to all that runoff. Full nutes after first two waterings.
My plants might could be bigger, greener, with nasty buds. I'm okay with that. I get what I get with what I got.
And keep your fans blowing! Circulate, my friend. Circulate!

The light intensity part really confuses me though, I currently don't know if my plant got too much light, or not. Check out this image:



The serrated edges are "curling" for some reason, almost everywhere. This looks like light stress for me, doesn't it? Well this "light stress" happened at just 15DLI, or around 250PPFD, WAY under the manufacturers recommendation, like WAY lower. This is what currently still confuses me and makes me unsure about what exactly that is. Can it be a symptom of the overwatering I had? Or is it too much light? I'll never understand what's going on in this case, I'll just have to wait and see how it grows now.

[Rootsruler]

For me it's the opposite. Soil, for me, is the easiest medium to grow in. With Coco you need to be more on top of pH and Mag always seems to be an issue in Coco. I can fix issues in soil easier and if I fuck up soils got my back. pH to high or low? No worries. Soil has buffers to get you close.

[Rootsruler]

The light intensity part really confuses me though, I currently don't know if my plant got too much light, or not. Check out this image:



The serrated edges are "curling" for some reason, almost everywhere. This looks like light stress for me, doesn't it? Well this "light stress" happened at just 15DLI, or around 250PPFD, WAY under the manufacturers recommendation, like WAY lower. This is what currently still confuses me and makes me unsure about what exactly that is. Can it be a symptom of the overwatering I had? Or is it too much light? I'll never understand what's going on in this case, I'll just have to wait and see how it grows now.

Serrated edges are probably from overwatering. Give them a few days to recover and see if the leaf edges improve. Windburn is another cause.

I use this chart as a guideline for weekly DLI.

[Gingerbeard]

I have to disagree about overwatering and curled edges. It may be, but I still have to.
You read my last post about letting plants dry. Read my next about the curled edges.

[Gingerbeard]

I have the same thing on one of four plants. PE Bench Sitter is my runt. Far as I can tell, it was high heat and humidity for a couple days. I know it was not the light as PEBS was the farthest away. I can't say with your setup.
You cannot get rid of what has happened. After you get your watering dialed in, keep an eye on newer leaves to see if you keep getting the lily pads.
I see you have a dehumidifier going. The downside is anything electric makes heat. Do you have control of your temperatures?

[Rootsruler]

I agree it could be what you are saying but OP says his DLI is below minimum so I'm ruling out high PPFD. As far as high heat, it could have been but OP never said heat was an issue.

[Bluey]

I was watering 3 times a day with zero runoff in coco 13gal pots, but that was in flower and the plant was large and produced a pound of bud, under strong LEDs with low humidity and heaps of airflow in the room.
Same plant in the veg stage once a day was probably a bit too much.
Best not to runoff often IMHO.

[Shneex0338]

I have the same thing on one of four plants. PE Bench Sitter is my runt. Far as I can tell, it was high heat and humidity for a couple days. I know it was not the light as PEBS was the farthest away. I can't say with your setup.
You cannot get rid of what has happened. After you get your watering dialed in, keep an eye on newer leaves to see if you keep getting the lily pads.
I see you have a dehumidifier going. The downside is anything electric makes heat. Do you have control of your temperatures?

Nah, no dehumidifier. My "lung room" humidity is at around 50% all day every day, I only have a smart humidifer and a smart exhaust system that keeps everything in the best possible VPD range. I can't exactly raise temperatures that much, I have to live with LED heat and ambient temperature, which gives me a stable ~75F or 23-24°C at daytime. Heat stress surely can't be a problem in this case.

They're inside a 2.3x2.3x5ft tent, it's a strange size. 70x70x160cm to be exact, not the normal 2x2x5 tent. LED is the MarsHydro FC3000, currently at 20% light intensity and at around 2ft of height. I do have an emergency tent if things get ouf of hand, it's 100x100x180cm. Bigger tent means lower temps though, as the LED can't heat up that big of a space that much. Good high temps are always hard to reach, so I use the smaller one for now.

______________

DLI and nutrient schedules are generally a problem right now. See, the big plant has a VERY complicated past. It's hitting a bit over one month now. It all started in organic peat substrate (BioBizz), and I couldn't get the watering right, always overwatered. It was so severely stunted, the newest growth almost became white yellow, it just completely stopped growing for 10+ days.

I then washed the plant out of the substrate (really easy with peat, it just disintegrates) when it was stuck in growing it's first set of 3 finger leaves. I repotted into another pot, with fresh substrate, and f-ed up again. That plant went through lots of stress early on. I then got coco and all that stuff, and started another attempt with a new seed. It grew so nicely that I thought "f it", and once again ripped the plant out of the peat, washed the roots off with water and some peroxide afterwards, and threw it into a new pot with coco / perlite too. And that's when it took off REALLY fast, but sooner or later the leaves just started drooping daily. I trusted myself with this crazy process because I do own tons of plants, literally TONS of plants, even trees and all that random stuff, I do have a green thumb and know how to handle roots and emergency "surgery", but I am dumb as a brick as soon as I touch weed.

This plant is pretty much exactly one month old now, with lots of chaos in its past. But it's living now, and I feel like it's getting back to health already. Problem is that I don't know which stage it is in, as it was stunted so severely over weeks.

Wind burn was a thought too, I already raised the oscillating fan so it just throws a light breeze over the plants, moving the leaves slightly around, but not severely. I also just noticed that the small new growth on the bottom (where light doesn't really get through) also has those serrated edges curling a bit up, so it can't really be the light.

[Bluey]

I associate hard serrated leaf edges on my sativas, I call it saw tootling as they can be quite hard and sharp, with nute burn or possibly with a deficiency., I can't remember which but it was quite pronounced and I have a cal/mag deficiency in the making at the time then more things went wrong...

The one in the pic is slightly overwatered IMHO.

My understanding is peat has a very out of wack pH for cannabis...I think it's too low from memory but you need to check that. I wouldn't use it.

[Shneex0338]

One little update, which might be important - I read through some other posts today, and noticed something.

Is it true that coco exists in different.. lengths? Is this maybe the cause of my overwatering issue? Because I have Canna Coco Professional Plus, and when I got it, I was a bit confused because the fibre length is tiny. It's almost like dust, just coco dust. I heard the longer the fibre length, the more I can water. I still have 30% perlite in it, but considering that my coco is almost dust, I maybe onto something here or? I feel like this may be of importance and be actually the culprit of my overwatering, as anyone else is watering daily without any problems, even several times a day.


This is what my coco looks like:

[Rootsruler]

No. Light Pot.

[Shneex0338]

Yeah I already stopped watering for now, it's the second day of no watering today. Pot is still very bottom heavy, but it doesn't feel as moist anymore (fabric pot).

[9fingerleafs]

Yeah there's dust and there's fiber. Can be 100% one or the other, 90-10, 70-30 or 50-50. The branded sacks come in just one size but if you look for a wholesale distributor you can get the mix you need. Longer fibers allow for more air but retain less water

[Shneex0338]

I hope it's okay if I post another update - My plant is currently looking.. okay, not perfect, but okay. Still heavy drooping at night, especially in comparison to what I'm used to. I know the normal droop, but she's still looking "dead" at night, completely hopeless if that explains it well. At daytime, she's not praying or anything, top two fan leaves are still drooping heavily on the tips, and as of today, I noticed something else:



The bottom leaves are starting to show this. These colors seem familiar to me, I had this with my last bigger plants in peat moss, which died because of overwatering. Is this a known symptom of overwatering? I hope this won't turn out to be actual root rot in the end, which would call for.. drastic measures. I need a professionals opinion once again!

Little side info for current situation:

76°F day / 64-68°F night, 60% humidity currently. I'm aiming to maybe lower the humidity a bit more, to have the plant suck up more through the roots, than through the air. This may cause nute burn in the end, but I want the water out of the pot asap.
Last watering was thursday with 1.5 EC of feeding (0.4EC already by tapwater) / PH 5.8
Coco Perlite 70/30
Substrate still feels heavy, and is rather hard on the bottom of the pot, almost like a rock
Light intensity is currently rather low to let that plant relax a bit, half of what's recommended by the manufacturer
Leaves still droopy, not as severely as in the beginning of the thread, but plant still doesn't look happy

Any info / pics needed, just ask straight away!