Issues with first grow, help appreciated!

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What strain is it? 

Royal Queen Seeds “F1 Orion”
Royal Queen Seeds “Critical”

Is it in Veg or Flower stage?

Flower

If in Veg, for how long? 

All plants germinated on 5/17/23

If in Flower stage, For how long? 

Three Days (7/10)

Indoor or outdoor? 
Indoor

Soil, Soilless or Hydro? 
Soil

If soil/soilless, what is in your mix?
Fox Farms Ocean Forest (straight from the bag)

If soil/soilless, what size pot? 
10 gallon grow bags

Size of grow space (LxWxH)?

4x8x8

Make and model of grow light? 

2x Sonlipo SPF2000 (200w each)

Light distance from the top of the plants? 

Around 18-30 inches depending on which plant for around 600-900ish PPFD

Temperature in the environment? 
 
75F

Humidity in the environment? 

60%RH

PH of medium or reservoir?

6.5

EC/PPM of medium or reservoir? 

1100ppm runoff (ph runoff is around 5.5ish)

Any Pests?

Possibly!!!

How often are you watering? 

I water every few days when the soil gets dry. I don’t water on a schedule per say considering how many different strains I have.

half strength of Growth Science Nutrients (the $30 starter kit on amazon) and general hydro cal-mag I used as a foliar when I was having a calmag issue I THINK a few weeks ago.

First and foremost I want to thank everyone for taking the time to read this and respond. I have been a lurker of mr grow it for a few years now and now that I can grow legally I wanted to save some money. I started around 20 plants or so in three different spaces and my three oldest plants are having some serious issues and I think it may be spreading? To make a long story short. The plant in question is the RQS Critical strain and over the last two weeks she has been developing more and more paleness and the last two days or so she really looks “weak.” I gave her nutrients four days ago and I gave her a gallon of water last night before bed. The other plant on here is my RQS F1 Orion Autoflower and I gave her nutrients 4 days ago and water last night. Also gave her foliar calmag at half strength every few days the last week or so due to the leaves. I also attached pictures of the other plants in the tent. I think I may have thrips. I am literally FREAKING OUT. I should have asked for help a while ago but sometimes people get pretty nasty when people ask for help. Usually its because they blatently did something dumb and didn’t read but I really hope I checked all the boxes to get help etc. I do have the books, watched the podcasts, etc I just feel like I have more than one problem going on. NEW GROWER BE NICE PLEASE!!!!

I spent more time than im willing to admit trying to get more than one picture to upload so I created a new journal in the bud app so here’s the link with all the pictures. Also all my progress for the grow is on there maybe if someone has time they can see where I shot myself in the foot. Worst part is we leave on vacation in four days and I literally want to cancel the trip :-/ (not serious, just over-reacting, these plants are like my kids).

https://www.growbud.co/journal/qwEKIwguhS#t3P3a3MQrp

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So my magnifying glass was delivered today and on top of the webbing. I also found some tiny black bugs stuck to my sugar leaves on the flowering F1 Orion plant. I did pull this off my pretty bad off Critical plant that is the subject of this post. This looks like thrips larva. it’s super tiny white maggot things. When I was shining the light on it there was multiple ones likes crawling around. you can see them dead center of this picture and upper corners of the leaf there’s at least one more visible.

[CamZ]

So first off, sorry it took a couple days to get a response. Second, there are no snobs here. No one is going to make fun of you or make you feel bad or I will personally remove them. There is nothing wrong with trying to run damage control yourself. No one wants to ask for help when things go wrong.

 

You seem to have a couple different issues going on. Check the underside of the leaves and look for mites. I’m pretty sure the “rust” spots are from a calcium deficiency, but you just said you gave them calmag so that’s probably just old damage. The webbing you showed doesn’t appear to be that of spider mites, though I can’t rule that out entirely until you check the underside of the leaves.

The white larvea you showed could possibly be a leafminer larve, though the damage generally looks more like squiggly lines on your leaves than stippling. I advise you look them up and see if you have any damage that matches.

I see 2 other possibilities in your picture and your feeding schedule leads me to believe you may be underfeeding your plants as well. I will stop here for now because I don’t want to overwhelm you.

Look forward to your reply.

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No worries on the late response. I was refreshing like crazy for the first few hours and then realized it would probably be a while before someone said something. Anyways, I do appreciate you responding!

I do know I have a few issues going on. This was my first grow and I waited too long before giving notes which I fixed with my other four plants etc and then everything was going well until the lady in question here started to look pale and started dropping leaves, which I thought again was a nute issue which allowed the infestation to continue etc. So I do know about the nute issue and the fact I was under feeding all along, which I have now fixed with a proper schedule (totally noticeable with my newer plants I started feeding right away, they’re so much better looking overall).

I checked all under-sides of leaves and with exception of the dead leaves with the little bubbles on them, no under leaf activity. I don’t think its leaf miner considering it doesn’t match ANY of the patterns mentioned in the grow bible, online here, YouTube etc. All the spots etc point to thrips but then again I don’t know.

What other possibilities do you think? You’re not going to overload me, I did all my homework I just tried to do things not as “heavy” and ended up shooting myself in the foot. I came here because ALL OF THESE ISSUES LOOK THE SAME!!!!!! I mean not seriously but yeah, a lot of them do!! ANY help is SUPER appreciated.

I did want to mention that all the plants are looking MUCH better after the dead bug treatment and a strong nute feeding.

[mrgrowit]

Thanks for including all of the details. It makes it a lot easier to diagnose. Just about everything you mention seems to be on point. Temp, humidity, pH all look fine. The PPM of 1100 you mention, are you using a 500 scale or 700 scale PPM meter? If using a 500 scale, you may just have a hungry plant and could potentially increase the feeding to upwards of 1600 PPM. Reading your initial post, did you only apply the CalMag as a foliar once or have you also been doing a soil drench throughout the grow? Reading your second post from the 17th it sounds like you are aware and taking steps to resolve.

I can’t confirm the pest that you mention but here is some more info on thrips:
https://mrgrowit.com/post/thrips-on-cannabis-plants/ 

More info on spider mites:
https://mrgrowit.com/post/spider-mites-on-cannabis-plants/

[CamZ]

Honestly, I don’t want to throw anything else into the mix because I think you have the problem figured out. I didn’t want to suggest thrips because I would imagine you’d have seen the adults flying around. I believe your issue is most likely pest related, and you are already taking steps to rectify that. Unfortunatly, you are pretty deep in flower so some of the more useful treatments are off the table. For now I just advise you mo it or the situation and see if the issue seems resolved. If more bugs appear then you will know your problem. If more rust spots appear without bug populations increasing then I would up the calmag. It’s hard to tell if your plants are deficient or stressed from pest damage, but the yellowing upper leaves are a sign of poor nitrogen allocation. Your lower leaves turning brown is fairly normal if they are not receiving adequate light. That’s just the plant conserving it’s energy. I will try and pop in to check for updates.

[zer0ping]

Thanks for your reply! I tried to include all the information you asked for in the “read first” post. It blows my mind that very few people actually include the details needed to make an assessment. Okay so the run off PPM was me using my PPM meter that came with my PH meter and measuring the run off without having anything to compare it to. I was just trying to figure out what it was but then realized with nothing to compare it to it was worthless. To make a long story short, I put all my plants on a full strength feeding schedule, treated them with the dead bug and DE, and did all the other little things to try and turn this grow around. With that said, all of my plants have made a full turn around/recovery. My one late budding F1 plant has completely turned around from her nute issue and you can see all the new green healthy growth where her buds are (sugar leaves etc). the damage was done but I caught it early enough in flower a few weeks ago that everything is working out well. I had all the information I needed but I was trying to not make the the mistakes everyone else seemed too make when they’re growing like over feeding and over watering or under watering etc.

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Just an update. Got back from vacation today, everyone is doing so much better. With my prepared nutrients and watering schedule etc combined with my previous treatments, massive improvement!

[mrgrowit]

Glad to see they made a recovery!

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