Orange Sherbert Auto - First Grow

Wow. It's been a tough week.... let me start by saying that when I started this, I didn't realize quite how in-depth it can get. This grow started out in my attic, more for space reasons than stealth. Recently had it all boarded out, it has power sockets, I can keep all the stuff up there and it won't be in the way. But I didn't count on the absurd fucking temperatures it would get to when the British climate decided to give us a spell of nice weather. Outside, temps went up to 27C. The tent in the attic was hitting 38C..... wooops. I tried to keep it cooler, but short of installing AC in the attic, it was just too damn HOT. One of my 3 girls was already a no-show (RIP Annie) and now the other 2 that had made it up through the ground were curling up the tips of their leaves with heat stress. I had to do something, so moved the whole grow into a cooler room on the ground floor. They still didn't respond very well, so I had to start researching what else was wrong with them. Well, it seems that the one problem of heat had caused all sorts of other shit. They were stressed from heat, so not taking up stuff properly through the roots. Also, because of the heat they had endured in the attic, the soil had become very acidic (heat causing more evaporation from the solution, sending ph down below optimal and EC through the roof). So, just moving the plants to a cooler location was not enough - I had to fix the other damage the initial heat had caused. I'm growing in coco/perlite, so only one thing for it. Complete flush with ph'd distilled water to remove all salts and completely reset the balance of the medium. Then replace all that water with a new nutrient solution at the correct levels, and this time MANAGE THE DAMN RUNOFF. After the initial bad start to the week, I am really happy with the way they have recovered and are growing (now I've learned how to do things a little better...). High frequency feedings, completely saturating the pots and replacing the old solution each time. It's a bit hectic, but I've managed to get a system going that I'm happy with. Started out with some light nutes, been slowly increasing the strength from 25%, to 50%, to 75%. Oh, and where I live, the tap water quality sucks, the water is hard as hell. Even after going through a Brita water filter, the PPM is 350, so I've been using distilled water as a base for the nutes with a calmag sup. So now I'm sourcing distilled water like madman on top of trying to balance the feeding events. But it's all looking good....for now :) tl;dr - I taught myself a valuable lesson that heat sucks and can seriously screw with your plants.