Gorilla Glue (Fastbuds)+ Quantum Boards

Day 36 - The plants are wilting from the top down a few hours before night cycle, and throughout the night cycle and a few hours into the day cycle (as they struggle back to what is a mostly healthy demeanour) . They are not just doing the slight nightly droop. Looking back I can see its been happening since around day 27, and I initially thought it was a watering issue, that didn't fix it. I thought it was a night air circulation/ventilation issue so I tried turning the fan off and on, and the ventilation on/off - no fix yet. So I'm looking at it possibly being too much light still, or a PH issue. Today I lowered the light wattage to 200w. This seems very low, but I'm willing to give it a try. The plants are due for a watering today or tomorrow so I'll also consider watering half the plants with a higher end PH feed (6.5ish), and the other half with a lower PH range feed (5.5ish) and see if they show improvement in either half, unless the light reduction seems to be showing positive results. I am hoping my decision to stratify the air-rocks with a higher concentration of air rocks in the lower half of the pot, slightly less in the next layer, and then just straight coco in the top layer of the pot hasn't introduced some wierd PH imbalance/oddness in the medium. Day 37 - I flushed two of the plants with PHed tap water just after lights out on the last dark cycle to see if this helped the wilt. It didn't seem to do much. I've built a frame for the lights that spreads the four boards apart light the original HLG-550, this will give a much nicer light distribution. I've also researched the wilt issue, and I get the sense the plants are hitting the wall of their limit for photosynthesis abilities each day and are shutting down. However the underlying cause for this is still unclear. I'm tempted to try distilling some water and checking the PH of some samples of the coco. Its time to water the plants, the coco is pretty dry going by pot weight. I'm not sure if I should switch to flowering nutrient regime, or stick with one more of the veg feed so I can isolate my changes and be able to see if the light cycle/spread changes fixed the issue. I will get photos of the wilting and hopefully someone else can weigh in if I can't find the solution myself, It's a bit heartbreaking after all the time refining this setup. To be clear the issue is dramatic top down wilting around 2-3 hours before lights out to slightly varying degrees across all simultaneously, lasting all night and not coming right till an hour or two into the next light cycle. Adjusting circulation/ventilation/light saturation has not mitigated it in any real way. Research suggests shortening the light cycle by 1-2 hours from 18 to 16-17 might alleviate the issue. As mentioned the lights have been spread to give better distribution, and they are now running at 240w at a height of 80cm. Ventilation and circulation are 24/7. I have checked other grower diaries and see several good harvests where growers were up to full strength nutrients at week 6, so I've decided I'm going to try a higher strength feed today and see how that affects the wilt. I've had the plants on 1/2 strength or less until now as my focus has been on not over-feeding or over-watering, however given they are at week 6, I may have gone to far in the other direction. It's 5 hours into the light cycle. I am about to give the plants a 3/4 strength feed (+3/4 strength additives) and if the wilt continues unabated, I'll try reducing the light cycle by 1/2-1 hours per cycle incrementally and see how that goes. I am starting another diary, using an identical 4x4 QB Coco/Airpot setup, with 9 Fastbuds Zkittles. The difference with the second tent is that I've used a straight 30/70 perlite/coco mix over a base of clay balls and not the stratified air-rocks. I will be interested to see how it goes in comparison to this endeavour. DAY 38 - After giving them the increased strength feed I casually checked the PPM of the run off and fuck-me-blind if they weren't reading an insane 2000+ PPM across all the plants, except the two which I'd flushed which were reading just over 1000 PPM each. I've never given them more than 1/2 strength nutrients, but looking back I can see now that I wasn't watering to enough run-off at all my waterings. Having to water 8 plants with 11.4 litre airpots, using two 10 litre mixing containers left me a bit short to get the amount needed to get a good full run-off and I guess I skipped the extra hassle of making more nutrient ,too many times, and it led to plain old simple nutrient build-up and lock-out and wilting. I've now flushed each plant with PHed tap water with around 12 litres per pot and the PPM readings of the run-off have dropped to around 450-650 over all the plants. It's now 3.30am and I'm buggered and done for the night. Flushing 8 plants simultaneously has required the co-opting of the shower, the bath-tub, the kitchen and laundry sinks and the filling and PHing of around 90 litres of water using a new 23 litre container (with tap) which although far more efficient than previous watering has been a 4-5 hour job. So all the messing around with light intensity, and air ventilation and circulation has been a bit of a needless (yet not unproductive learning exercise) dance. At this stage I'm fairly certain the wilting was all from improper watering habits - A mistake I shall not repeat with this tent or the new Zkittles tent. Live and Learn I guess. I only hope this last few weeks of wilting has not had a massive impact on the total final yield, and this flushing and improvement in watering practice will see the plants still have time in their finite autoflower lives to build on some structure to support a fair yield. This entire endeavour is much harder than simply assembling the "best" components, growing cannabis certainly is a skill that needs practical experience and a reasonable level of attentive common-sensed focus, it would appear. DAY 39 - The plants have suddenly started growing again, going back to the tent at the start of the light cycle today revealed a startling increase in height and overall health of the plants. I've held of any further flushing or feeding to see how they go over the next day before I take anymore steps, however after the last 11 days of "fear and wilting" I can't say how satisfying and relieving it has been to find the actual cause and to have implemented a remedy. After all the (8hrs+) of research into the wilting issue, I have to say, not one single source mentioned testing run-off PPM or salt build-up as a potential cause. I'm glad I didn't just go for a light reduction, which may have mitigated the wilting without addressing the underlying cause and would have allowed me to travel further down that path of destruction, possibly even to fatal catastrophe. Day 40 - Noticed some slight wilting on most of the plants near the end of the last light cycle, with a couple showing wilting still half way into the dark cycle, so I am giving the plants another 3+ Litre flush with PH water just after lights on (aiming to take runoff PPM down to the same as the flush water PPM). This will be followed by a 3/4 strength feed. Hopefully this will see the end of the salt build-up saga and a return to normal growth. In the meantime I will go create my Zkittles diary for my second tent, and upload the setup photos taken so far. They required one more flush to get the PPM down to the level of the in-going PH'ed water. I then feed thgem as per previous paragraph. The photos from Day 40 show them as they looked just after all this. Wow what a learning curve the last few weeks have been. I feel foolish for allowing the situation to happen, and looking back at my diary I can see I made many assumptions about the ever-increasing signs of nutrient build-up and thusly carried on quite blindly allowing it to happen. All this said I can't help but be quite pleased with ultimately finding the cause, and then successful remedying it. Most importantly I feel like the whole experience really gave me a much more tacit understanding of some the complex dynamics involved in the tent environment, and that should anything else arise I now have a much better handle on how to isolate and identify any future imbalances in my growing systems. In other words, I am making mistakes, but I am also learning from them. I have also found my details (almost OCD) note taking in this diary have been invaluable in assessing and reviewing the problem. Day 41 - Hooray the plants are all growing again, and showing signs of new growth on all tips. The flush has brought the pots back to normality. Hopefully they will boom off from here on out.