my nutrient solution has gotten really warm and has been hovering between 75 and 80 degrees for a while. my plants haven't grown at all. no new leaves; same height for weeks. i read that high nute temps open me up to root rot but will it also cause the plants to stop growing?

i can't afford a chiller so i was going to lower my temps by dropping a bottle of frozen water into the tank. i figured if i froze a couple of bottles i could just rotate them in and out of the tank and freezer until the weather cools off. just wondering if anyone has a better method of cooling nutes without a chiller or if anyone using this method had some tips for success. thanks.

gP

I'm not a hydro guy but I do not think that 80 degrees is a problem. How about PH and nute concentration? I am sure a hydro guy will stop by. I will send a mod a message. I used to be one here.

Yes, I have heard others using that method to cool off their solutions. I am a dirt grower, but will send a hydro guru over ASAP!

peace

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ack! You do NOT want your nutrient solution above 72F, MAX...65-68F is what you want. There is not enough dissolved oxygen in warm solutions, root rot will set in, you have to get your nutrient solution temps down.

Frozen 2L will help, but it sounds like your RES may be too hot for that to work. I would reccomend that you either get a chiller or change to a medium based hydroponic system; rockwool, coco, peat...etc

Hey GreenPunter, High temps in the res is not good.Yes it can slow the growth.But the biggest is root rot.With high temps and a light leak in the res and you have root rot.JPB is right too, check your PH and PH meter too.If your res isnt to big put a pisce styrofoam under the res.This will help to keep the res mix at the temps you set them longer.I have seen poeple put the res in a styorfoam cooler and use the frozen bottles to cool it off.Dont do this as somebody did and they wont do it again,is put your nutr mix in ice trays and freeze them and add them to the res.That will change the nutr and kill off the micro's and kill your plants.I didnt ask how big is the res?Do tie a string to the frozen bottles so you can get them out easier.My res doesnt get over 78 at the high of the day and it stays around 72 to 75.What strain are you growing?Peace

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Hi there,
I was asked by our JAngel to help you in this. As Bill has said, 75-80 is not a high temperature for the nutes. Actually your nute temperature is ok up to 75, more than this the water will lose some cappacity to transport O2, but some tests have demostrated that at 75f the plants grow healthy. I would check the PH, or the room temperature instead??? High Ph and/or high room temperatures will stunt your plants. Also can you give more details of the nutes you are using? Can you post some pictures of the plants??? This could help to see the problem
And yes, you can use the nutes solution to freeze several bottles. I am suggesting you use the same nute solution as sometimes some bottles can break and/or split the water in your nute rez, and if something like that happens and you have the same nutes in those bottles you will not have any problem, but if you have tap water or unPh´ed water you will have a mess in your rez
I hope this can help you, but if you need more help, do not hesitate to call for it
Peace

well i just took the temp of my 5 gallon buckets and they were at 88 degrees. my pH jumped to 6.41 again which it seems to do every day. I bring it down to 5.8 and it goes up to 6.4 within a day or two. right now i'm using 5 gallon buckets but i plan on switching to one large 15 gallon res. soon so i'm hoping it will be easier to keep at a level pH and will hopefully not heat up as fast. also, a frozen 2 liter bottle will fit easily into my bigger res. if that approach becomes necessary.

room temps are a problem. they tend to run high at around 85 degrees and sometimes a little higher but i now open up my room when the lights come on and put a large box fan in the door to help cool while the lights are on. it's my mother room inside the grow room that gets super hot; as high as 90 degrees.

i'm using advanced nutrients sensi grow and bloom two part. i'm thinking of switching to General Hydroponics nutrients though and using the "Lucas Formula" because it is supposed to be simple and stable. (Lucas Formula (General Hydroponics 3 step formula) - The Garden's Cure)

i've attached some pics. the clones have been this size for almost a straight month with no growth. the flowering Querkle has been in flower for almost a month or maybe 5 weeks and i barely have flowers forming at the tops. should i just scrap these plants and save the money on the electricity? is there a chance they can actually grow to produce something in the next month or more?

thanks for the help. i have a tendency to kill everything.

gP

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	pKClones.jpg (58.0 KB, 8 views)
	querkleWeek5.jpg (65.5 KB, 7 views)
	querkle2Week5.jpg (46.4 KB, 8 views)

Hey, The pixs tell the story.The PH is off in the medium,you have rock wool cubes.You will have to flush them out.Pour the flush right through the cubes and hydroton.That's why I dont use rock-wool,you have to ph it and it holds water and the salts build up.Flush them out with a low PH 5.0 flush water so it lowers the PH of the cubes,dump that out and mix the nutr and PH it and you will see new growth.The plants lock up and not up taking the nutr just water. Peace

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Hi there again, if you follow Toke´s steps you will have a growing plant in less than a week. One more thing, 88 in the room is way toooooo high, please check your air inlet and outlet, open extra holes if needed or buy a cheap exhaust fans, but you need to cool that place down. Your cannopy temperature should not be higher than 76-77, if your room temperature is 88, I figure your cannopy could be in the 90+, check that and control the temperature. You can also put a circulating fan blowing directly into your plants, this will make stronger stems, and reduce the high temperature in the cannopy area
Ph problems in hydro is one of the main reasons why grows could fail, it is so important as the air the plant breathe. Do as Toke said, flush at 5.0, drain that water and start all over again. But instead of putting your Ph at 5.8 as you have been doing, take it to 5.5 and let it goes up to 6.1 (or even 6.2) and correct it again at 5.5, you will notice that you will be doing it just one time a day or every two days (I am giving you this advice because I have suffered the same situation, I did my grow as you are doing now, I used rockwool cubes, hydroton and hydro system, and those problems you are going through now I had them before, but with the help of members like Toke, Hatch, Zigzag and others I learned how to correct them)
Keep us posted. Do not hesitate to call for help if needed
Peace

thanks everyone for the help. i'll flush my flowering plants, from the top, with 5.0 water to try and clean out the rockwool. i decided to abandon rockwool for the rest of my grows and now i use just a one inch cube to root my clone in and then place that in a hydrotron filled pot. The clones i have in my mother room are set up that way but they haven't grown either so is there a different problem with my clones since they're not in a giant rockwool cube?

i'm still wondering if i shouldn't just throw out these plants and save some money on electricity and then today when i went in my room i discovered a piece of plastic fell and let in a light leak. it was small but probably equivalent to turning on a small flashlight and leaving it on the floor partially obstructed. there was no direct light on the plants just a little bit of a glow. Are they going to revert now and cause more problems? have i just broken the camel's back and it would be best to simply start over?

thanks again. sorry about the constant questions.

gP

If you are in the veg. stage your plants can have light 24 hrs a day. So unless your in flowering it does not make any difference if you had a leak.

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the light leak was from the mother room into the dark flowering section. there's a half door that blocks the two sections and the mother shelves are shrouded in black plastic as well. one piece of the plastic had a corner that was curled up and allowed light to leak just below dead center of the half door. so there wasn't a direct beam on the plants but a small glow.

here's a pic of the plants. they have been in flower for over a month. haven't grown more than a few inches tall and no new leaves. just a small flower at the top of the plants. cut them down?

gP

Attached Images

querkleFlowering.jpg (73.8 KB, 6 views)

Listen to toke and 4evergreen and you will back in business again. You're burning the crap outta those in the pics. They are already sucking the fan leaves dry trying to survive. Heat! Is an enemy.

Are your roots slick and slimy? Brown in spots? What do your roots look like? This looks like rot and lock to me.

i haven't looked at the roots. how can i do that without hurting the plants? can i just push aside the hydrotron until i see roots?

last night i put together a 5 gallon bucket of florokleen and 5.0 pH water. i hooked up some dripper stakes to the water pump, placed the stakes right in the rockwool cubes and i've been running the water through since last night. i checked the pH a couple of times and it jumped from 5.0 to 5.8 twice and i brought it back down. the ppm went from around 60 to 130 to 158 but hasn't risen higher. tonight i'm going to take out the flush tank and replace it with fresh nutes at a ppm of 800 or so.

heat is a constant problem for me. i live in a hot climate and i don't have air conditioning. i have an air cooled hood and i run my lights at night with several fans blowing on the plants at all times. the temp in my room usually stays above 80 degrees but it feels cooler because of all the air moving around the plants. i was using co2 because it allowed higher temps but i ran out of money for more co2.

i have a controller box that controls lights and fans and i have the temp. set at 86 degrees for the fans to turn on and generally, when the lights are on, the exhaust fan stays off. then i have small fans blowing on the plants and a large box fan blowing cool(er) air through the door onto the flowering plants. that's the best i can do. if i kept the nutes cool would that help the plants manage the heat? how do people grow outside in warm climates? it gets hotter than 80 degrees all over the place in the summer but people still grow outside successfully. how does that work?

thanks.

gP

I thought you had roots hanging in water, I guess if its pure hydroton checking the roots would be a pain. I'd say you should run your exhaust fan anytime the light is on, and try to get a good intake pulling air straight from outside.

If you can't get your temps down you may want to consider a different medium. Coco and Peat/perlite are hydroponic mediums which are much more forgiving than hydroton. I'd also say you should be running silica in some form. Silica does wonders to reduce heat stress.

Plants in dirt, outside can take way more abuse/heat than a plant in pure hydroton/water. The ground where there roots are (feet down underground) isn't going to be 88F

sorry if i wasn't clear. i'm using an ebb and flow system and i have 4" rockwool cubes in hydrotron in a cat litter tray but i've just switched my new clones to 1" rockwool cubes in hydrotron in 4" pots. all of the pots will go in a large 3'x3' flood tray.

i run my cooled hood with a 6" fan whenever the light is on but not if the room is cooler than 75 degrees. i also have a 6" fan drawing air straight out of the room. both the hood and my inlet share a 1ft by 6" vent with the inlet having a 4" eco plus fan boosting air into the room when the exhaust fan turns on. if that's not clear, i've attached a pic.

i'm going to get some silica tomorrow. thanks!

gP

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	ventillationWithoutCarbonFilter.jpg (50.6 KB, 3 views)