I'm wondering if the plants couldn't use some Mag, Sulfate? I have a bag of Pennington Epsom Salt I got from Home Depot.

I'm back. I am little confused. You stated that the ppm is 548 and those started out at between 550-600 and some of them have been in that same solution for about 2.5 weeks. If you're maintaining the water level then they haven't used much nutes at all and for those size plants it shouldn't be the case. Are you topping up with fresh water or more nutes? Granted fresh water in your case will be tap containing close to 200 ppms and probably tons of calcium carbonate since they use it as a buffer which reminds of something. I have never seen it happen but I read that too high of calcium concentrations can cause to bind with sulfur and precipitate out of the solution. Sulfur deficiency can cause yellowing of your leaves usually starting on the newer growth. Hex2006's comment made me think of that. Again, don't know if that's the case but unfortunately when trying to diagnose stuff like this there are usually many things it can be and not just nutrient related but environmental and even plant specific. I've had multiples in buckets before of the same plant and one would shows signs of issues and the one right next to it is perfect. It can be frustrating.

I think I confuse myself as well. OK bucket #1 (big guys) started 3/21 went in buckets 3/27th & 3/28th @900ish ppm. Buckets #2, #3 & #4 started 3/30 went in buckets 4/7 @550-600ish ppm and at that time I removed some water and added fresh tap to bucket #1 after doing some research and realized I had started that bucket out too high. So I lowered it to 620ish.

Bucket #1 548ppm (leaves are getting worse)

Bucket #2 449ppm

Bucket #3 564ppm

Bucket #4 608ppm

All the smaller plants #2, #3 & #4 have small yellow leaves emerging. All the buckets on the left of my tent seem stunted.

I'd move everything to the right side then. Ha! Problem solved ; ) Do you have different lights or maybe a hot spot or something on the left side?

Well, that's better as far as nute usage but weird there is such a big disparity between some of your buckets with plants that were put in at the same time and started off with the same concentration.

Do you add any kind of dechlorinator to your tap water before you put it in your buckets? Tap water is going to contain either chlorine or chloramines and both aren't good for your plants in excess. Chlorine will gas off pretty quickly but chloramines will not. When I used tap water it would work okay for tomatoes and pepper but any leafy green like lettuce would not do well at all. Stunted growth and all kinds of leaf issues. My tap water is about 200ppms, very hard water and contains a lot of sodium which some plants are very sensitive to.

It seems to present itself mostly as an iron issue but I don't know. It's only been a week for most of them so they shouldn't be having a true deficiency like it's not available so that would imply it's an uptake issue or lockout issue. I know I am not really saying anything useful right now, just thinking as I type.

You could run a test. Go buy about four gallons of RO from the grocery store or go to one of those Water Mill places, don't know it they have them near you, it only costs $1 per 5 gallon here. Switch out a bucket with the RO and see if that makes a difference to eliminate any tap water issues. Even though I think the Lucas Formula is stupid because there is no formula there, it's just a NPK ratio and was being coined as something special, you're using MaxiBloom which I use myself and it shouldn't cause these issues with that mix.

That's about all I have. Wished I could be of more help. If you just let them grow they will probably produce just a little early. Stressed plants will generally produce sooner, in my experience, out of survival, they need to spread their seed.

No hot spot on the left side, all lights are the same also. I have my tent open in the front and the stand up fan is blowing over them 24/7. My plants have their own room lol!

The buckets got nutes separately, so some were higher then others.

I know I have Chlorimine in my water because I found that out 2yrs ago when I had my aquaponics system. It was strongly suggested that find out before adding fish to the system. I didn't know Chlorimine would affect the plants though. Good news is I still have plenty of ClorAm X left over. I'll be using it when I change all the buckets out.

Can I use Carbon Filtered water for the buckets? I bought some TG Lee Dairy Drinking Water from a local store and tested it, the ppm is 6 and the pH is 6.0

We'll be looking into RO,,,any suggestions on a good one?

That will work fine for removing chlorine and chloramine. I used to use Prime since that's what I use for my fish tanks. Small amounts of chlorine is actually used by the plants and chloramine is related so I imagine small amounts don't hurt but I know larger, whatever the ppm would be who knows, can hurt from some studies I have seen as well as anecdotal evidence.

6 ppm is great. The RO I get is about the same. I wouldn't trust the 6.0 pH from your meter on the RO though. It contains no buffers so it's tough to get an accurate reading and it can change very easily when you add nutes but that also means it will not creep back up like tap water. The buffers in the nutes should hold it fine and it will probably be just right, pH-wise, after you add nutes.

Carbon filter does very little to make hard water any better. The only way to get RO quality is either install an RO filter or buy RO water. I buy it. RO filters waste a lot of water. Last time I checked they were like 3:1 meaning for every 1 gal of "pure" water you're getting about 3 gal goes to waste. It can be reclaimed to use for other stuff but still. I wouldn't worry about that unless you find that your tap water isn't suitable for hydroponics. I very well may be fine. I don't know, I just know when I switched to RO I saw a big difference in my plants. Starting with a fresh slate but that also means the calcium and magnesium that is usually in tap water won't be there either. I had to started using a cal mag product when I switched to RO.

I'd give that RO water a shot on a bucket. See if it makes any difference. If not...we'll try something else.

Oh yeah, use the same concentration you were using before. The overall ppm will be lower since you're not starting at 189 ppm tap water but that's fine.

Hope this isn't hijacking. I think it's relevant. I'm concerned about the yellowish color of my cucumber leaves. I definitely don't want to lose the plant.

Looks like mg deficiency to me. Check this out Mitch. I had this bookmarked. Ignore the sciencey stuff. Check out the deficiency photos.

http://sciencedomain.org/download/MTE2MjRAQHBm

Very cool article. So...Epsom salt?

Yup.

How's that bean plant doing that you tried the new mix with and dropped the ppms some? Any better?

Bean looks textbook. And I have two new ones that just poked their heads up.

So hey...I'm learning!

How much Epson salt?

I agree ,magnesium issue. The other thing is you said you are using Lucas formula which is geared for RO not tapwater. Its very likely the calcium ppm is higher than it should be as lucas formula provides all the calcium needed (ro has none)

hex2006 are you referring you me or to mitchnc? If you're referring to me, yes I use the Lucas Formula (just use MaxiBloom) but I also dose my buckets separately (see a few posts up). I add a little at a time until I'm at a desired ppm, not 7g per gl.

Just finished checking the plants and CHECK IT OUT!!!!

Those leave where pale almost yellow, I see green slowly creeping in from the middle.

The little ones I said all had new yellow growth coming in...NOT TODAY!!!!

Compare...this was what the above bucket looked like yesterday

Happy Day :)

Did you do anything to those or did they just fix themselves?

all buckets got pH Down and nothing more.

Then that sounds like something I mentioned earlier, or maybe it was in another bean issue thread, IDK, beans grow fast and sometimes I think they can't uptake or translocate elements fast enough which can be easily exacerbated with even small issues of getting enough air, pH, temperature, etc. Looks like they just needed to catch up to themselves. Whatever is was that's good news!

If dropping the pH more is what actually tipped the scales in order for your plants to uptake what they needed I would take note of what the pH is right now and don't stray far above that. If the plants are teetering on the edge of enough uptake and not enough then something minor might cause this again.

I'm going to tell you what I think happened...a little long but here goes...

Back in 2014 when I was starting up my Aquaponics system I was for months before hand testing my tap water every week, it was always a perfect 6.0. I never in the entire time I had that grow going had any issues with my tap water and never had to treat for pH issues. Now when I put the first two plants in the bucket I checked my pH and it was once again 6.0 so added nutes @900ish and that was that. I noticed after three or four days the leaves were a little dark and pointing down. I thought maybe it needed some time to adjust which it did, here's a pic from 4/7 when I put the others in their buckets and pulled out some water from this bucket to lower ppm to 620ish.

my only concerns for these plants where some leaf issues and it's the reason for lowering the ppm.

Left plant:

right plant:

now I'm going to admit that I didn't check my pH when I added all the other plants to the buckets as I've never had a problem with my waters pH...that WAS MY BIGGEST MISTAKE!

Remember on Tuesday when I checked my buckets and they where all in the 7's? Well I decided to check my tap water late last night. It was dark blue on my API pH test, so broke out the never opened High pH test solution.

HOLY!!!

Now I'm thinking back...I remember two or three days after I put the new buckets out and changed out some of the water to bucket #1 I got a white hang tag in my mailbox from the county saying the water was fine, past all test and it was safe to use. I can tell you for a fact we never got anything stating that it wasn't. So I don't know what the heck happened with the water and if they added stuff to it because there was a problem but I can assure you that my tap water in the two years I've been testing it has never been anything other then 6.0.

Sorry so long!

My water goes from pH 8.0 to 6.0 when I add nutes.

Problem is my pH is usually 6.0 from the beginning but as you can see from the picture above, out of the tap for some reason it's 7.4 and adding nutes did nothing to bring it down,

Think I should add some Mag. Sulfate for better uptake?

Where do you live? The government probably added some mind altering substance to your water. :)

Florida LOL!

OK well I'm adding the Mag. Sulfate in the morning, unless someone tells me I shouldn't and why. Everything I've read about it for hydro is good, so...

I'm with you..I'm throwing stuff into my buckets in the morning and hoping for the best.

Mick,

if the plants look to be on the mend i would wait 2-3 days before adding anything. Making one change at a time will give you a better chance of nailling down an issue so you can avoid it in the future. If you change 10 things at once you`ll be none the wiser and likely to run into the same problem again :).

Ok I'm going to give it another day (unless other wise suggested). Here's how we're looking this morning. I'm super happy and appreciate everyone's help with this.

Bucket #1 leaves are all green

Bucket #1/plant #1 lots of growth happening on this plant. What do you think is going on this that leaf? Should/could I remove it? And if so from where? I'm not worried about looks, just thinking it might benefit the plant to not put extra energy into trying to repair that leaf.

Bucket #1/plant #1 New healthy growth on top :)

Bucket #1/plant #2 two damaged leaves (remove or no?)

another damaged leaf on plant #2 (remove or no?)

Nice looking roots, water looks great. pH is holding at around 6.4, ppm 541, water level is starting to go down again :D

Everybody else is doing really good, as a matter of fact I have new growth coming in on the right side of the tent. Hopefully they all recover and become big healthy plants.

I read somewhere that yellowing of lower leaves is a deficiency, but now I can't remember of what. Been doing too much reading and not enough retaining.

Typically lower leaves, older growth, would be a N deficiency. N is very mobile so it gets transported to new growth easily and when there is not enough that leaves the lower growth deficient since it all got sent to newer growth.

You can remove damaged leaves if they are real bad but if they are still mostly healthy leaving them gives the plant more surface area to gather energy.

I see no need to add epsom salt. I don't see a mg deficiency. I see some tip burn which could be any number of things and some necrotic spots, interveinal, which is typically a phosphorus deficiency but with the prior pH issue it just may take some time for the plants to recover.

Thanks a bunch hvg, hex and mitch. I'm just gonna let them be. It's amazing how fast things can get ugly and more so amazing how fast they bounce back. I'll keep you guys posted of their progress of course.

Stripping leaves will just add stress. If they are useless to the plant, it will drop them itself. I know its hard to resist trying to "help" but sometimes its best just to leave them be ;)

I'll leave them be hex XD

My cucumber is getting worse! How do I fix it?

What the hell are you doing to your poor plants? ; )

I assume you used some epsom salt to up the mg some before when they started to look bad?

How do the roots look?

Roots look great. I added 1 tsp Epsom when the yellowing started.

show us your roots ;P

1 tsp isnt much to go by, its better to use weight then we could calculate how much Mg you`ve added. Knowing the volume of water you added it to would be helpful :)

I would suggest 0.3g epsom per litre (1.135g per us gal) of res and see how they look after 3 days

Ok Guys these leaves are actually getting worse.

Bucket #1 plant #1

Bucket #1 plant #1 new leaf starting to look the same. Starts with leaf curling in, then starts to get blotchy yellow.

Bucket #1 plant #2

It seems like all the leaves that are being affected are both plants first leaves. My ppm is 528 (including 189 tap) and pH is 6.5. I'm really starting to wonder if I should up the nutes for just this bucket. I have to do a res. change anyway. And I'd like to drop the pH to 6.0. What do you think?

Hex,

I just weighed a tsp of Epom salt and it weighs 6 grams!

I didn't get a response and this res. needed changed. So at 11:00am the nutes where 911ppm pH 6.2, at 2:00pm the pH was the same ppm 890

Is that margin of error of your meter? Doesn't seem like a big difference.

not sure what you're asking mitch

I had a look around for the maxibloom analysis and as the name (and low N %) suggests its not really geared for vegetative growth.

The high phosphorus levels combined with additional P from phosphoric acid based ph down will increase the need for Mg but will also reduce the availability of Ca,Fe,Zn,Cu and K, which are directly linked to chlorophyll production.

http://gh.growgh.com/docs/LABELS/maxibloom.pdf

At 7g per US gallon you`ll have around 92ppm of N, 121ppm of P, 214ppm of K.and 64ppm of Mg.

In comparison, Maxigro at 7g per US gallon will give you 157ppm of N, 40ppm of P, 214ppm of K and 37ppm of Mg

Maxigro can be approximated by combining Maxibloom with calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate and epsom.

Thanks for the reply hex...would you suggest using Maxigro instead? I actually have them both. I was under the assumption that MaxiBloom was all you really needed.

I use Maxigro for veg and switch over to maxibloom for fruiting. I also add cal-mag and epsom salts and some other stuff to adjust the ratios on both for my final mix.

I have seen people just use maxibloom before all the way through as the "Lucas Formula" and never agreed with the reasoning but...that's just my opinion. It is lacking on some N for overall veg growth in my opinion but I don't think that the ratios are so far out of whack that it would cause any other uptake issues.

If you have it then i`d recommend using the maxigro. The amount of P in the bloom is excessive even for fruiting and flowering., I never go above 30ppm for toms or 50ppm for strawberries which are real phosphorus hogs :).

Me and hex do it similar. My P for veg is around 20 and 35 for bloom but that's for my base mixes. I will adjust them individually if necessary depending on the plant. As hex noted some plants just need more. Greedy bastards! ; )

Lettuce needs as much P as strawberry and raspberry, melon is another :) There`s not many edibles that do, its typically flowers like carnations, roses, etc, grown commercially in hydro for the cut flower market.