What causes young seedlings (clone) to flop

I checked on my young girls this afternoon and noticed that one of my young clones which was 2 weeks old and about 3 inches tall had suddenly flipped over and gone all limp. Any ideas as to what would cause this. It has been growing up quite quickly. All the other plants are just fine. Just this one plant which is white queen.

If you could show us a pic we could better say @ this point guessing doesn’t solve a thing.

Will


Here is one that flopped.

What do you mean it flipped? The stem went limp, or it just fell over like it didn’t have a lot of big deep roots holding it firmly upright in the netpot?

If it damaged some roots when it fell over, it would go limp for awhile as it repairs its root system.

Be sure you are not getting the stem above the pebbles too wet, that can lead to stem rot and pythium. Once the roots are well established in the reservoir below, most people stop the drip in the pebbles.

This one went first and then this morning I went in and this one was like it to now… I don’t know why.


The only thing that changed was I took them out of the cloning tent and put them in the grow tent. I also changed over from the clone and seed booster to normal nutrient and super thrive mix. PH and EC at correct values or within range. None of the other plants did this when I changed them over into the grow tent. What could it be?! Please someone I hope you have an answer and most important and quick solution.

This is the rest of the girls in the same tent. These were all transfered from the clone/seedling tent.

The one that is still hanging in there, it looks like “over watered”, all bloated and drooping, instead of the limp and “under-inflated” wilting look from a plant that is too dry, eventually it can go to looking totally limp and similar to under watering as well, as can be seen in the one’s that are maybe too far gone.

I’m not a fan of peat plugs on top of hydroton clay, I think they tend to stay a little to wet, but in most cases the plug doesn’t necessarily stay or get that wet depending on how they are used with the hydroton clay pebbles. The ends of the hoses might be getting the stem too wet as well.

In hydro, when you get the over watered look, it usually means not enough air or the water level is too high and maybe keeping the material and root mass in the hydroton or other grow media too wet and again contributing to a possible anaerobic condition in the roots or contributing to the stem getting too wet.

Just some food for thought, I’ll have to get back to you when I might have some more time and if i have any other ideas.

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There are plenty of roots for them, as these photos show. But check out all the other photos

The water is sufficiently aerated and also a drip. I have taken the drip feed off them and lowered them from the 400w MH. They were (until it failed) under a fluorescent growlite. I really want that smaller one to survive. It’s the last surviving clone from white widow plants that actually didn’t work but the tiny clone took for me… :+1:

Did you acclimate them to the new environment? I’m thinking the bigger one was large enough and hardy enough it survived even without acclimation, and the smaller ones don’t look like they were developed enough to be in the big girl’s room yet. I’m thinking also maybe light intensity, but mostly the humidity probably isn’t high enough to support the smaller, less developed clones.

Otherwise, I’m not sure as you now have a good idea of what to look out for. You are sure the reservoir temp is in a reasonable range?

Yes I did change the environment. But no different to when I did the others…

The small ones with really small leaves, they might not have been able to handle such a drastic change in environment, and they may still have needed lots of humidity and maybe lower temps to keep from losing too much through transpiration.

I know some of this was possibly addressed. I see salt all over the top of your reservoir, and it appears that you have a drip line spraying into the net pots, that appears to be splashing slats all over the place. If this has occurred daily; It would damage the plant like in some of the piks.

Also; My eyes are bad, but read up on this: pythium wilt

http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=tightropetb&type=11351&p=pythium+wilt

Ok thanks. Yeah that salt looking stuff is just from when I moved the drips and got water over top of tub. Not on plants daily though.

I got home from work this morning and after a few days of flop they are coming back.

Good deal …it will take time but they will make it

Will

If you look into some techniques when taking clones, they cut a lot of the larger lower leaves in half, this slows transpiration, or slows the plant from drying out, and helps retain turgidity.

If you notice in your recovering smaller plants, the plants have basically done the same thing, to some of their longer lower leaves, all on their own. Like I said, I think, along with everything else, they probably just weren’t ready to go into the big girl’s room just yet.

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After a few days of tender care I bought my babies back to life. They got moved out of there tent as the light ended up faulty so I’m wAiting on a new one so they can go back, however I transplanted the bigger one into a different pit system which is gravity fed from a resovoir. Here are some pics and also some pics of my big girls after I have tied them all down. One more week of grow then down to 12/12. With the small ones back in there little tent.

The story with the three really little clones is I had 10 failed attempts to grow white queen outside but they all stunted on growth and died off. I managed to get three little clones off this plant and they took. They were only 1 cm when I cut them. I then put them in a tent.
k i

Here is my whole setup which is fully automated an temperature controlled with co2 and humidifier. Loving it and having lots of fun doing it. It’s been over ten years since I grew inside. Had a lot of successful outdoor ones.