BlackMesa
Active Member
A huge overlooked issue lots of DWC growers over look is root mass and the effect it has on volume in the reservoir. By the time your 2 weeks into flower your roots are taking 1/4 to 3/4 a gallon of liquid volume and if you don't take the loss of water into account it will throw your nute levels off from what was intended. By the end of flower you can loose 30% of your actual water to root mass volume.
Here is a simple example:
Lets say we have 2 plants in a 13 gallon tote that is filled with 7 gallons of water, by the time we get into flowering we lost .5 gallons of water to root volume per plant but for this example we aren't taking that into consideration. Every time we mix nutes for a reservoir change we are using 7 gallons of water to determine nutes but in reality we only have 6 gallons so we are off every time. This can cause big problems like burn or for us to scratch our head when we use the TDS meter.
I just wanted to point this out because it is one of THE MOST OVERLOOKED common mistake that a DWC grower makes without ever knowing it and it is almost never talked about. This explains so many weird problems so many have and if estimated accurately allows a DWC grower to be at what levels were they want to be with perfect accuracy. It is almost impossible to have deficiency of any sort (if PH levels are correct) when growing DWC and root mass is the cause most of the time in miss diagnosed various other problems.
I just wanted to share for the growers out there that are overlooking the issue and it has more impact on the growers who are using the smaller systems.
Here is a simple example:
Lets say we have 2 plants in a 13 gallon tote that is filled with 7 gallons of water, by the time we get into flowering we lost .5 gallons of water to root volume per plant but for this example we aren't taking that into consideration. Every time we mix nutes for a reservoir change we are using 7 gallons of water to determine nutes but in reality we only have 6 gallons so we are off every time. This can cause big problems like burn or for us to scratch our head when we use the TDS meter.
I just wanted to point this out because it is one of THE MOST OVERLOOKED common mistake that a DWC grower makes without ever knowing it and it is almost never talked about. This explains so many weird problems so many have and if estimated accurately allows a DWC grower to be at what levels were they want to be with perfect accuracy. It is almost impossible to have deficiency of any sort (if PH levels are correct) when growing DWC and root mass is the cause most of the time in miss diagnosed various other problems.
I just wanted to share for the growers out there that are overlooking the issue and it has more impact on the growers who are using the smaller systems.