Thanks for the feedback on ph. I've also had some mag deficiency with Jack's 321 at 5.8-6.2 ph, going to try 6.2-6.3.
i feed twice a day now in dwc at 0.5 +0.2 well water.
I remember you mentioning that before. I'll never understand that.
I've never done DWC so lemme bend your brain for a second. I've understood DWC to mean you fill a res with water, add your nutes, PH, top off with water each day and swap it out once a week. Am I wrong here? In your case you would constantly be adding additional fertilizer each day which makes a bit more sense to me as to how this would work. So you're adding .5 ec each day + .2 well water. When you mix a fresh bucket what is your ec?
how do you do your res? do you start at 1.6 and then let it drop? or do you do addbacks to keep it at constant EC?
I hand water drain to waste so when I mix a res at 1.6 ec it stays at 1.6 ec until it's empty. 8800ft? Good god man. How's the snowfall up there?
so i use GH waterfarms (basically a 2 gal self contained rdwc/dwc). they have a sight tube on the side and if you cut that at the water level you want, it becomes the drain. i was feeding 10 minutes 1x a day but i noticed they were really low so i bumped it up to 2x a day for 10minutes. doing some experimenting i found that plants really didn't eat much more that 0.5 per day anyways so why feed them more than they could eat? if that makes sense
gotcha. have you ever measured your runoff ? i'd be curious what it is.
Man I'd love to have a waterfarm setup. It's gotta be easier than siphoning out saucers every time you have to water. That makes perfect sense. As long as the plants are happy there's no reason to increase the ec. Growers that run ridiculously high ec's usually have horrible tasting flower when it's all said and done. From my understanding a high ec causes the plants to store excess elements in the plant tissue (8th grade biology). Excess P&K in harvested flower is not an enjoyable experience at all. I bet the flavor of your buds are stellar. When I see growers running 2.0ec and wonder why their leaves are crispy I just shake my head
Runoff is usually 50-100ppm above what goes in. I run a couple gallons of RO water through each one at the veg to flower transition and once more around week 4 of flower just to keep the medium from accumulating too much crap.
i also use fulvic acid which i think helps me run a lower EC too. it helps nute absorptionMan I'd love to have a waterfarm setup. It's gotta be easier than siphoning out saucers every time you have to water. That makes perfect sense. As long as the plants are happy there's no reason to increase the ec. Growers that run ridiculously high ec's usually have horrible tasting flower when it's all said and done. From my understanding a high ec causes the plants to store excess elements in the plant tissue (8th grade biology). Excess P&K in harvested flower is not an enjoyable experience at all. I bet the flavor of your buds are stellar. When I see growers running 2.0ec and wonder why their leaves are crispy I just shake my head
i tried fabric pots with coco DTW and i kinda scratched my head and said "why cant i run a dwc the same way?" and it ended up working.
I’ve been growing for around 6 years with 24 plants a time, with at least that many in my veg room. I still have a lot to learn, but I do understand RO pretty well. I have a 1000gpd tankless unit. The filters are around $300 for the set. I used to use smaller units, and progressive bought bigger ones each time.Nah, 321 is around 850 ppm. Somewhere in there. Blumats don’t give runoff, so you have to lower the EC.
Just to clarify 321 per the feed schedule using the 3.6/2.4/1.1 ratios (recently modified by peters to 3.7/2.5/1.1) is 1200 ppm in both veg and flower finishing at 1050ppm with their finish formula. You may want to check your tds meter. I've had a bad meter shaft me more than once in the past. Couldn't figure out why my plants weren't growing right. Checked my tds meter against another and it was dam near 200ppm off.
My RO filter has a shutoff value. I use a floater valve and do the same thing with filling and mixing. I’m going to downsize my res because I’m using way less water and I imagine it will stay cooler since it isn’t sitting around for as long.
I’ve had cal/mag deficiencies if I don’t up the calcium, so pulling it out of the water and adding it back seems counterproductive. I could buy Jack’s RO formula, but my tap is like 100ppm so why bother? Plus the filters are crazy expensive. They last a long time, but still.
As always do what is best for your situation and garden. If you're at work someday looking to kill time you may want to read further on the benefits of using RO water for your plants. It's about feeding the correct ratios of elements which RO allows you to do. Calcium nitrate or even calmag is very inexpensive and a small cost to pay for knowing your plants are getting the right nutrition. Tap water throws an unknown variable into the mix that's different depending on which part of the country / world you live in and can adversely affect your plants. Also, many municipalities are now using chloramine instead of chlorine. Chlorine can be evaporated in 24 hours in a bubbling res. Chloramine cannot. As I mentioned there are unknown variables in tap water. Different municipalities will have different calcium and magnesium ratios in the water. RO is a clean slate.
I paid $30 for 2 75 GPD filters for my unit. Maintenance is very cheap. You do not need dupont filters.
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I’m still trying to figure it out. So far so good this grow though. As I said a little clawing, but I can fix that. Thanks for the suggestions.
You'll learn a little more every cycle. Keep jammin dude.
but if you use the 3.7 ratio, can't you just add water to get to your target EC? similar to Lucas, as long as you use 1:2 ratio, you just adjust to get the EC/ppm you want.
Nope. As I said earlier I have a floater valve controlling my refills. I do that with my vegging plants though. I guess I could stick the valve deeper into the res, but a lot of respectable growers on here have said they use the literal 321. Maybe I could top it off with tap water and kill two birds with one stone. I'll have to think about it.
no, i meant let's say you mix up the 3.7 ratio in 100 gallons of water. you come out with an EC of 1.0 but you only want to feed at 0.8, you can just keep adding water until you get to 0.8. but the ratio is still intact.
I get that. I meant my res has no room for adding additional water unless I stick my floater valve deeper down so that it shuts off sooner. When it gets to the top it shuts off, and there's only like 2 inches of room left. I doubt that would be enough to dilute it down to an acceptable EC.
I’ve been growing for around 6 years with 24 plants a time, with at least that many in my veg room. I still have a lot to learn, but I do understand RO pretty well. I have a 1000gpd tankless unit. The filters are around $300 for the set. I used to use smaller units, and progressive bought bigger ones each time.
It definitely is big. I originally got it because I was having to fill a bunch of 5 gallon buckets and walk them through the house to my grow. All of the smaller units were painfully slow and it was easy to flood my kitchen if I wasn't constantly checking on them. Then I did some plumbing work and was able to put it into my grow room with a res and all of that. Once the filters start gunking up and/or winter rolls around they all slow down dramatically.Ayekarumba that's a starbuck's sized unit! That thing has to be the size of a small volkswagen