As everything has continued to get worse I've kept looking for an answer as to why and I think I may have finally figured it out.
First of all, not every plant has the same deficiencies.
Plants 2 and 5 have a sulfur deficiency but no signs of cal/mag issues. Mobile deficiencies.
Plants 1 and 6 are showing clear signs of calcium deficiencies. Immobile deficiencies. 1 has also had a magnesium issue from the start, which is mobile.
Plants 4 and 7 are turning yellow and crispy from the top down. Immobile deficiencies.
Plant 3 is suddenly deficient in phosphorous and it seems to be happening from the top down which is backwards because P is mobile and top down problems are immobile.
I didn't realize the Cal/Mag Plus I use has iron in it as well as other necessary micro nutrients/metals. Well when you use humic acid and mycorrhizae it allows the plants to more easily absorb elements like iron. Couple that with soil that got too acidic (5.8ish is the lowest run off I saw) and now you have plants that are absorbing iron and other metals like crazy which is going to block out phosphorous and calcium, and the problems are going to appear immobile. The immobile metals are blocking out the mobile elements which could explain a top down P deficiency.
The problems with the soil probably started when I fed nutrients too early because I saw leaf tips changing color, which was actually light burn. I kept chasing the deficiencies until I realized it was light burn. I've flushed the worst looking plants three times now and flushing only makes things worse every time I do it. Plant 4 is the only plant that hasn't been flushed and it has probably about 500% more bud on it than the rest of the tent combined which leads me to believe it's not as much a problem of too many salts in the soil as it is just the wrong food in too acidic of soil. A week after adding lime to the soil, the run off from every plant except 1 is between 6.4 and 6.6, with plant 1 still showing 5.8
When I saw the calcium deficiency starting on plant 6 I took that as a sign that all of the plants were headed down that route so I drastically increased the amount of cal/mag plus I was feeding all of them. The plants with more obvious calcium issues got double the amount of cal/mag, which also means double the amount of metals. Next grow I'm only going to use dolomite lime and epsom salts for cal/mag needs and if I see a metal deficiency I'll bust out the liquid crap.
Anyways, I've more or less given up on this grow. The amount of stress and frustration that I've put on myself isn't worth it anymore. At one point I literally said out loud “I'm done growing.” I changed my mind after a couple of days. I'm growing photo periods next and I'm trying to figure out how to start vegging them so that as soon as the grow tent is ready I can get the next plants in there. I'm not sure if I'm going to let these plants make it to harvest or not. What I truly want to do is just cut everything down and start over. My first grow felt like if I wanted to I could extend it until everything is healthy but with this grow I'm well aware there is a window and it's closing quickly. If these plants don't start producing buds like today then I'm basically growing air fresheners.
What's so frustrating is when you've done everything that you're “supposed to do” and it takes hours of work every time you water and still everything just gets worse and worse. Well, at least there's no herms...yet.
@MisterPandaBear, Light used was an HLG 550 3000k V2. Tent was a 4x4 Gorilla Grow Tent. Exhaust Fan/Can was a 6-inch Vivosun package on Amazon. Main air circulating fan in the tent was a Honeywell Quiet Set. That's all of the equipment I can really think of that matters.
Some lovely colors on that lady. Fantastic work. Beautiful purple color starting to come in nicely. Keep doing what your doing and best of luck the rest of the way growmie
Just wanted to add that I got the opinions of some growers I respect and they have diagnosed the problem as too much calcium. Lesson learned for next grow. I'm not going to supplement calcium in any form until I see an actual deficiency that isn't caused by lockout, which I may or may not be able to recognize, but I'm willing to try ;)
I'm posting this on day 43. I watered a few plants tonight and did the same nutes for all of them, but used 10 drops of pH down in one gallon, and no pH down or up in the others. All gallons used had the same pH (6.5) when I measured them with a digital meter. I then went and tried the pH test kit that's done with drops of test solution that came with my pH down/up kit. That also shows the water is at 6.5.
I tested run off for pH. The gallon that got the 10 drops of pH down produced 5.9 run off. Liquid test confirmed it was very close 6.0. The other gallons produced 6.1 run off and liquid test was a tiny bit greener meaning the pH was slightly higher.
I think I'm going to flush with some straight up plain old water that hasn't been pHed and see if I can get the soil to be less acidic. I think I finally understand what's happening with the multiple deficiencies and I'm hoping that things haven't reached the point of no return yet.
Is it normal for tap water pH to fluctuate?