I have a Northern Lights Auto that is about 60 days old and is
showing signs of a deficiency. A handfull of the leaves have
brown spots on them and the leaves seem to be
yellow in between the veins. The leaves all seem to be a little lighter green than they should be as well. The plant is also
growing very slowly. I am not sure if this is calmag or manganese deficiency or possibly something else. It seems to be getting worse.
I am growing in
coco/perlite, watering every day with GH flora series nutes, and I do supplement with
GH calmag and Armor Si. I have extremely hard water (around 360 ppm) so I cut it with distilled or R/O water to bring it down to around 150-200 ppm. She
has been getting around 1.5ml of cal mag (I assumed my hard water would be supplementing calmag some) and for the last couple waterings Ive
bumped it up to 3ml/g, but it still seems to be spreading. I use pH drops to test the inflow and have been watering with yellow-yellow green so I should be in the correct pH range. I do feed daily to run off. The run off pH is always orange.
I just started testing PPM/EC last week and the run off was always lower than the inflow. I slowly increased my nutes and now for the past few waterings the EC difference has been +45 & +220, the PPM has been +21 & +103 (around 600PPM). I believe this is in a good range and am trying to stabilize them a little more. Im not familiar with what range of PPM difference you want for your plant, but I know EC is within +300 so thats what I've been following.
I'm afraid to up the calmag and overload the PPMs for my plant. I have epsom salt I have thought about adding as well, but
I think the main issue is a calcium deficiency. Could I be getting a calcium lock out from my hard water? I have recently started feeding with every watering (for about a week and a half now) so its been a minute since she's had plain water. Could the calcium be locked out from salt buildup (even though my outflow readings seem fine)? Not really sure what to do from here as this is my first grow so
any advice would be much appreciated.