DWC Crystal Candy

You are need more potassium not nitrogen. Brown straight tips on leaves is more potassium you are more the good on nitrogen.

Check out this site and go down to the pH section. Very informative. https://manicbotanix.com/hydroponic-nutrient-science/ It is most likely your nutrient buffers wore off, so now you have to stabilize it with pH up. I find it better to add pH up twice over the same day to get the pH much more stable. It is easy to add pH up, see 6.1 then walk away, but an hour or two later the pH is really much lower. Your pH is largely attributed to your nutrient ratios and the cation and anion exchanges. I doubt you have bad bacteria built up using chlorine. If you go to that site and read that section, it will give you much more information than I can in this chat box.

I would try and use LST before defoliating an auto, The lower yield is not worth it. Other option could be to try and bend some of the leaves out of the way without fully removing them. Granted an ultra conservative defoliation could work just for a few sites on the plant if you feel its warranted. Best Of Luck! ***disclaimer, multiple people are answering all questions as there is a contest called GOTM, when a user is selected as the answer they get a point. Please see the contest page for information regarding the details: growdiaries.com/giveaways/GotM-August-2022 Please note, when you reply to anything on the questions part of Growdiaries website, no one will be notified of this. Not even if you use a "@" tag in their name. Best to reach out to them in DM using your inbox, it can be found in the bottom right hand corner of the site. It's the small paper airplane button, it will be highlighted green if you have new messages***

Your grow is definitely doing its fade and looking good and MIGHT be ready to chop soon - but you need to get a closer look at the trichomes - even if it's zooming in with your camera and then zooming in on the resulting picture... you'll want to see all of them milky with some turning amber... As far as the plant still being full of small buds, that's not surprising given the jungle you've got going! LOL! I had the same thing happen with my Tangerine Dream.. so what I did was to harvest the top third or so and give the lower buds another couple of weeks.. this didn't help to increase their size particularly but what it DID do was allow the trichomes on the smaller buds to ripen fully... and they WON'T be ripe when the trichs on top are ripe... they will STILL need more time... All in all, I was happy to harvest that way - I hate trim jail with a passion and that allowed me to spread out my trim work! Good luck!