Here's one for the trouble shooters

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Hushpuppy

Dr MadBud
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So a few weeks ago I took 3 cuttings and put them in rapid rooters and then set the rapid rooters in cups of coco coir/pearlite mix. Pretreated my coco with solution of calmag to balance the coco. Set plants in domed box and rooted them very quick (10days they began to show growth). I took them out of dome after some hardening off. they were doing fine. Then 1 by 1 they began to turn south after significant growth.

I also planted 2 seeds which germed quickly and were showing good growth. About the time the first cutting began to fail, the first seedling failed. A few days later I set another seed in new coco/RR. As the cuttings slowly began to fail one after the other, the 2 seedlings were growing fine. Then when I was down to the last cutting, my healthy older seedling began to show the same issues. I now currently have lost all cuttings and the older seedling is on life support. The younger seedling isn't showing any signs of issue so far.

The seedlings started with plain water with some root tonic. Cuttings were on 400ppm solution of nutes and root tonic after rooting. watering solution is kept at 68f but the cups of soil get warm between waterings (80ish).

here are the pics in chronological order.

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These 2 are now in the intensive care unit with the dome. I am foliar feeding them trying to keep them alive but I don't think the last cutting is going to make it.

I did a post-mortem on the 2 cuttings and the one seedling. I found a few tiny clear larvae in each of them. These appear to be fungus gnat larvae according to what I looked up. I also found that the roots were destroyed in each case, like "root rot". I gave all of the survivors a dose of Azamax to kill off the fungus gnats. I also got some sticky pads to catch fliers. Oddly, while I did see a few fungus gnats early on, I haven't seen that many, and my sticky board doesn't have many fliers.

All right guys, diagnose away :)

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In the 2 pics above: the first pick is the older seedling with the younger seedling. the older seedling is beginning to show the problem. In the lower pic is the same older seedling, a couple days later, sitting with the last cutting in the ICU dome. The youngest seedling is still unaffected.
 
I didn't flush my coco. You think this is a salt issue as opposed to a fungal/bug attack on the roots. In the 3 cups of medium from the dead plants, the roots looked badly damaged. would the salt do that?
 
The issue is definitely in the coco as they all began well and were in the rapid rooters. Not until later when the roots grew out into the coco did this begin to happen.
I soaked my medium with water/calmag when I rehydrated it to balance the cations. should I flush it first then add calmag, or do a soak with calmag then flush?
 
Thanks, Ill do that. Ive never had this bad of an issue with salt in the coco before. The companies must be getting slack about washing it before they sell it. I never had this problem with coco years ago when I first began using it. I suspect the demand for it has shot up a good bit.
 
Hey guys, I have since flushed all my coco (big mistake trying to flush ALL of my coco at once. took a lot of work to get it dried out so that I don't get more pathogens).
I had one seedling that survived. I think its because I flushed it early enough to prevent the roots from burning up. I think it must have been the salt. Thanks guys :)
 
Good to know you have a happy ending. I had no idea about coco. Good luck Hush. My very best green mojo to you.
 

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