Hi chuckwagon009,

Thanks for the reply,

The water temperature is 28.5C.

A brief history with this setup. I started the setup about 1.5 months ago. Started with 4 plants. Added the nutrients to my best of knowledge, but 2 of them died. I change out about 1/4 of the water with clean tap water and the 2 remaining plants bounced back. 1.5 weeks ago I received my ph and ppm meters. The reading showed ph5.5 and ppm 300, so I adjusted the water to the current reading of 6.7 and 500 and they started to bleach. They have always been in a shady area.

So I should change out 1/4 of the water with clean tap water?

Roots of the large plant.

water soluble fertiliser. In blue colour powdered form.

To me that does not look like a hydroponic fertilizer. Does it list all the other nutrients that are in it besides the N-P-K? Plants need a solution that has many more nutrients than the base macro nutes included iN a soil based ferT. "Edit" After looking it up it is NOT a hydroponic fertilizer and is the root of your problems. "Edit"

If it is a complete fertilizer than either your meter is way off (do you have calibration liquid?) Or your PH is way out of whack. To me the plants look like they are bleaching which means the sever lack of nutrients and the plant is depleting all of the Leaves of their nutrients to keep the stems alive.

28 degrees is also very high temp for the water to be at. It can cause stunted growth, stop Nutrient uptake, and form algea in the reservoir quickly. Id reccommend freezing bottles and applying to the reservoir to keep the temps below 20 c.

My best guess would be that the nutrient is not balanced for hydroponic use and by diluting with tap water made up some of the missing components. For now try diluting again and as quick as possible pick up a nutrient that is made specifically for hydroponic use. Foliar feeding will still help keep them alive untill you can change or figure out your situation. There are several hydroponic websites and stores around singapore that i found while searching. Your best bet would be to go pick up a cheap true hydroponic fert and replace all your liquids. Cheapest option for you would likely be a product called General Hydroponics maxibloom. It sells in the states for $13 a 2lb bag and is a one part dry mix that contains all needed nutrients to grow hydroponicly.

Good lucK, keep us updated and merry christmas

The fertilizer does not state any other besides the NPK. My bad on assuming they do contain the micronutrients. I was trying not to rely on the liquid hydroponic fertilizer here in Singapore. Have sourced around for powdered type of hydroponic fertilizer but here they only have liquid type which cost quite a fair bit and instruction is 5ml of nutrient to 1 liter of water. Which to me cost a lot!

The meters are alright, I did a calibration when they arrived a week ago. Did some test on tap water as well.

For now, I have changed out 1/4 of the reservoir, added in liquid hydroponic fertilizer and foliar feed, hope they recover fast.

Thanks for your help!!! Merry Christmas! Will update in about a week or so.

Hey joe, any luck recovering them peppers?

Hi, sorry for the delay.

Yes, they are growing very well. There are a lot of dark green leaves now and started to flower

There is another problem, there are some white stuff under some leaves, which doesn't look quite right to me, and I pluck the leaves out, about 30 - 40 leaves.

The picture above is after I plucked out the leaves which still have plenty left.

I'm going some basil too and recently the leaves seem odd to me, there isn't anything growing on the leaves but they have small little dots on them.

Not sure if it is of concern.

Its pretty difficult to see from such far pics but the white stuff looks like possible salt leaching from the plant. This happens in kratky method in warm weather with higher salt content nutrients. At your next nutrient addition, drain the system and run straight ph balanced water for a few days to reduce the salts in the plants.

The basil i can almost see pin hole looking leaves but again with pics soo far away i cannot really tell anything. Check very closely For insects using a magnifing glass, if you find any try to ID them.

Closer pics of leaves and trouble areas would help alot

I understand your comments about your chilli peppers I have tried all types of systems including (KRATKY) with little success as peppers do not like their roots too wet. I tried Ebb and flow no success DWC no success and finally drip system, which up until a month ago the plants were struggling. In all my other systems except Kratky I have aerators but on my drip system I did not. I went out and bought an aerator and immediately the plants came alive. I regulated the watering to 3/4 hour off and 15 minutes on sufficient to feed the plants and at the same time time to dry off a little. I have also found that the drier the solution or watering the hotter the chilli. I understand that others may have had success with other systems , and I would like to hear what they have to add. I might add in my ebb and flow that I was growing tomatoes in container boxes so with a different PH and different EC this was definitely the wrong thing to do.

Have taken some closed up pictures. Have not notice any crawling insects around the basil, do have 1 or 2 flies sometimes.

Sorry that the picture of the chilli leaves is blur, not sure if you can make anything out of it. Couldn't take a new one as I have thrown them away. The white stuff looks like some insects.

Another question, how does nutrient burn looks like? Something like this? The small leaves and some bigger leaves are "drying up" and dropping off

HI robert, I'm very new to this so just playing around.

My chili plants seems to be doing well and flowering, now that I have add in proper hydroponics nutrient. I am using KRATKY method, once in awhile I will change out some water (may be 3 liters, reservoir is about 32 liters), replace with the same amount of fresh water I take out and add in nutrient according to the amount of water I replaced.

Its still very difficult to see what exactly could be both the holes in leaves and possible insects on leaves. Common insects for peppers here are aphids and thripes. Do some research on those and see if it might fit your issue. Hard for me to tell the other insects you might have as they vary by region extremely.

Thrips seem to love peppers and capsicum they decimated all my plants last year but I got on top of it this year using soap based sprays and a mite spray I got from my hydroponic supplier.

I found the bugs that are causing the problem.

They are very small, took quite some time before I found them even after very close inspection.

Looks like trips to me...still too blurry to guarantee but ID guess that's what it is. Blast them off with water on the basil and treat with a insecticidal soap. On the peppers before they get fruit you can treat them with an insecticide pyrethrin till you get peppers then I would switch to soap.

noted. Thanks !