Please could you experts kindly advise and help. For the past 3 growing batches, I have experienced huge problems with Hermies, resulting in the buds filling up with seeds - crop right offs.
I thought I was doing everything correctly so cannot understand why this happening. If I give you my total setup / growing procedure, hopefully you might be able to spot where things have gone wrong for this continual hermies / seeding problem.
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Seeds - purchased feminised seeds from a reputable supplier - DNA Genetics (Amsterdam)
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Qty - 8 plants in the tent
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Pots - final sized pots - 20 lts (5 gals)
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Growing medium - coco fibres (canna)
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Nutrients - Cana A + B and Rhizotonic in accordance with the manufacturers quantity guidelines. Nutrients are added every second day and on the other day plain water is given. The medium is kept moist (not to dry and not overwatered)
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Ph - 5.8 -6.0
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Seed planting time to changing from 18hr light to 12 hr light - 8 weeks
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Pruning - heavy lollipopping of the bottom third of the plants just before changing the lighting cycle from 18hrs to 12hrs (when putting the plants into the flowering stage). From time to time after that, some large upper leaves are removed to allow light penetration to the lower buds.
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Indoor. Grown in a Trojan grow tent "(2.4m x 1.2m x 1.8m) (8ft x 4ft x 6ft)
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Air extraction - 8" powerful fan
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Air circulation - have 3 x 6" fans circulating air around the tent
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Lighting - 1 x 600W High Preasure Sodium (HPS) / Metal Halide (MH) lamp. 2 x 1600W Led lamps. Have had to use this combination to keep temperatures down otherwise it gets to hot. When the lights are off the inside of the tent is in total darkness.
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Temperature - 26 - 28C (78 - 82F)
The hermies start to form around 3-4 weeks after the plants are put into flower and come with such speed it is very dfficult to remove all of them without missing some out, which I presume have pollinated the entire crop of plants in the tent
The plants at all stages look really healthy - no diseases, no pests - just great looking plants that show huge promise until the hermies / seeds appear.
This has become a huge time wasting and very expensive problem. A total nighmare. Any ideas what might be going wrong?