Roots are looking much better and she’s perking up again… 
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I used distilled water in my first grow with no problems.
I’m currently using RO water, and seem to be in a constant battle with brown spots on my leaves. I’ve added a hefty does of Cal/Mag to every refill, and it seems to be doing much better.
I upped my hydroguard dosing from 2ml/gal up to 3ml/L - that seems to have made the biggest difference for me besides the switch back to distilled water.
Also have some great white on hand for soil (but it says can use in hydro too) - might try it out in one of the next grows to compare results. Still doing research on whether or not it’ll compete with the bacteria in the hydroguard or will compliment it, so far it does look like both can be used together but I’m still not certain and don’t want to risk it as things are looking better already.
Another thing I was reading but seems anecdotal, as haven’t found vendor recommendation stating such yet, is that when using hydroguard the reservoir should not be changed for the first 3 weeks to allow the bacteria enough time to grow to maturity and establish a colony on the roots. Is there any truth to that? I’m tempted to leave my other grow in the same water for a few weeks to find out, particularly because I believe this next drain/fill will try to dispense nutes and the feed tubes are empty.
Side question – have we received info how grobo knows if nutrients were sufficiently dosed? I’d imagine it looks for pH/EC changes? The reason I ask is because my 2nd unit was recently put into operation and that means the feed tubes are empty, so the first pumps will likely be sucking air – I believe this is why my very first drain/fill in my very first grow didn’t dose correctly, not because of overheating. I’d be interested if anyone else noticed this or was curious about it. If that’s the case it’s likely that every first dose comes with a risk of not dosing?
((#BooBoo)):
((#SoHappyForTheTurnAround)): 
((#Nutrients)):
#fundamentals:nutrients-and-water
@Stephen says:
Yes, I do dispense nutes in stage 1 during the 1st week. Not much, but I do. It’s more to prime the lines than feed the plant much. And keep the pH probe healthy. It doesn’t like sitting in RO alone.
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Thanks for answering that @SilverGrobo!
So these were the roots just two weeks ago, same pics as in prior post (same links even):
And here they are right now:
What I did after the original pictures were taken was:
- added about 30ml of hydrogen peroxide to res with a dropper so it was not all dumped in one corner.
used the 3% stuff from pharmacy, not the recommended type but it was what I had. picking up some more concentrated stuff soon but hopefully won’t need it much - 2 days later added about 24ml of hydroguard
- 5 days later added another 24ml of hydroguard
- day or two later did drain/fill, added about 24ml of hydroguard to water prior to fill
- 4 days later added another 24ml of hydroguard to res
I have a whole quart of hydroguard and need to use it up in the next few months, and from what I have read there’s no harm in adding too much – if anything it’s more harmful if too little is added and it doesn’t do the job or so that’s now my opinion. 
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You shouldn’t expose your roots to the light! 
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When my last grow had issues the first request from support was for a picture of the roots, so since then I’ve been a bit less worried about that. There wasn’t much/any direct light on them and the better things are looking the less I investigate for issues in that area. 
Had meant to upload this version, I fixed that pic to be a bit brighter than it really was:
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So this is what she last looked like up top:
And below (same as prior post):
But a few days later she started to sag and shrivel:
A few days later I took her out and put her on a bucket to be sanitized, as there was a tonne of brown slime on the roots again (forgot to get pics of roots at the time):
After 24hrs she started to perk up again:
While that was happening the grobo was being re-sanitized:
- The tubes are all in the res this way to better clean the system “end to end”. The process is basically this repeated:
- Hold down the float sensors (carefully) to make it think it emptied, then
- Make it think it is filling for a while by holding the top two down to keep the pump running, then
- Let it sit for a while until the feeding pumps run
- Repeat until feeding lines look clean(er)
Meanwhile the roots have also been cleaned after being “in the ER” for about 2 days, literally bleached back to being (closer to) white:
Squeaky clean again:
A few days after being sent home she’s gaining height and keeping the leaves up but not really super happy about it:
Over next few days the leaves with rust spots got worse and were snipped, and she was topped::
A week later, two new main shoots are emerging and she’s still gaining height, but “lazily” as she’s not bringing leaves much higher than this but not much lower either:
Nothing special in the root zone at this time either:
Nearly a week later, still consistently gaining in height:
Almost doubled in height over the course of the next week, still not bringing leaves up any higher than this:
Roots are trying to do something but not very quickly. Everything is slowed down it seems:
- I also noticed she was growing a few balls where she was topped and slightly up one shoot so I plucked them off.
A week later the height growth trend seems to be slowing and she’s focusing on flowers instead:
Down below still some nice root action, but she’s trying to flower so it’s a bit late for this now and it’s not really progressing fast (waste of energy):
This was also when the hydroguard + recharge-like concoction was used, saturating the cocopod with it, squirting it all over root zone and adding it to the res.
Almost a week later, she still hasn’t stood up leaves much:
Some interesting results on the roots, though, a lot more are actually reaching the water finally:
Another week later Autumn is in full effect, nothing seems to help slow down the loss she just wants to finish:
Double-checked after finding this seed and found 3 missed balls (one had exploded):
Some buds were unaffected, though still incredibly small:
The roots seem to be doing much better too on all counts but timing 
Here she is the day before harvest:
Roots actually look good from an improvement standpoint, the recharge bennies did seem to make a huge difference:
This is the raw cuts:
Here they are trimmed:
Handful of seeds and probably just over a g or two of micro buds:
She made it to the end. 
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((#Harvest)): 
:
Summary
Is it me, or does this (**microbuds) look still like flowers?: What did the ((#Trichomes)): 
look like?:
Our first Green crack was (PopcornBuds):
--
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Great doctoring of this one 
glad to see she made it. Better luck next round
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I’m sure you did already @vegetato but look up my auto cheese grow since for reference granted you had some problems from the beginning. Good luck next time for sure it’ll go/grow better!
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For your next grow autos shouldn’t really be messed with in terms of stress. You should be using lst very lightly but by the pics it went through a lot of stress
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