Question about upping nutrients as plants grow.

Hello. I have a couple Mama Mia's that are about 22 days or so from seed in a rdwc. I have been feeding them around 150ppm for a week and they seem to be growing well. My base water is 150ppm for a total of 300ppm. My nutrients have stayed at 300ppm steady all week. PH has stayed at 5.7-5.9 all week and I have not adjusted it yet.

I am going to do a res change in a couple of days and was wondering if I should stick with 150ppm?
A better question would be how do you know when to increase fertilizer dosage?

Am I supposed to be watching the PPM's for a drop? Meaning the plants need food... and then up from there slowly?

First Grow BTW

Thanks in advance!

As she sits today.

You definitely up them as they grow.
It looks a bit small for 22 days I will say, but it's healthy for the most part. I would up the pm to maybe 400 Max. But wait til it's bigger. 5-650 in flower. RO water would make a huge difference for your health. You can get orbiting those water machinemachines in grocery stores. It's 0ppm.

Airwalker16 said:

You definitely up them as they grow.
It looks a bit small for 22 days I will say, but it's healthy for the most part. I would up the pm to maybe 400 Max. But wait til it's bigger. 5-650 in flower. RO water would make a huge difference for your health. You can get orbiting those water machinemachines in grocery stores. It's 0ppm.

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That’s the short route but it’s at 50 cents a gallon on the low end. Even a small system holds 20 gallons of water. That’s $10 a run. I would recommend putting a RO system in the house since they are not horribly expensive. It would pay for itself if you are in for the long haul. It also has saved me money in drinking water.

I agree. Just stating an option.

Airwalker16 said:

I agree. Just stating an option.

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I was agreeing with yah man just thought I’d add in the math that I did.

I think RO water is the way to go. You start with a blank slate pretty much. The only thing is you have to add is calmag; since you pretty much start from 0.

Hey thanks for all that. The question still stands though. Is there an accurate, measurable, repeatable way to tell when your plants need you to up the nutes? Or does it not work like that with growing things?

Yeah the plant is small but I feel like as long as it stays green and growing upwards I am doing something right....for now hahaha

TIMtoKILL said:

I was agreeing with yah man just thought I’d add in the math that I did.

I think RO water is the way to go. You start with a blank slate pretty much. The only thing is you have to add is calmag; since you pretty much start from 0.

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Not "pretty much", you straight up start from ZERO. Zer0 ppm.

What nutrients are you using?

5BY5LEC said:

Hey thanks for all that. The question still stands though. Is there an accurate, measurable, repeatable way to tell when your plants need you to up the nutes? Or does it not work like that with growing things?

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You just increase as it grows man. It's pretty straight forward. Make sure you're adding a bit more Phosphorous when flower time comes around.

GH Trio. Right now adding between 1 and 2ml/Gal

Sweet. I have 4 weeks left of seedling before veg. I am around 150 now. Upping 50ppm/wk will get me around 350 when I start veg which is right around half of the recommended dose for veg. That is the plan anyway

Here is a pic of the biggest one. I think it is growing a five leaf.
Also, I am planning on topping once and then tying down. Any suggestions?

Follow this to a tee
Use RO water. Mix Cali magic FIRST. STIR.
Then Micro. STIR. Then Gro. STIR. And finally Bloom. STIR. I know it says micro is first but it's not. CalMag is first.

Thanks for that chart! I had not seen that one yet. Here are the roots two days ago.
Here are the roots today. I did not expect that growth when I looked in today. They have been sluggish to this point. Pretty Happy.

1/4 TSP would be around 1.25ML/Gal which is very close to where I am at

5BY5LEC said:

Thanks for that chart! I had not seen that one yet. Here are the roots two days ago.View attachment 4172690
Here are the roots today. I did not expect that growth when I looked in today. They have been sluggish to this point. Pretty Happy.
View attachment 4172692

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They're only gonna blow up in size from here on out. That's for sure. You've got nice even distribution of them coming out from all sides. It looks really good and I can tell you, that'll be a winner. Those single site buckets can be tricky. Do not underestimate the amount they can drink in a single day once they get started. I'm talking like easily 2 gallons a day.

5BY5LEC said:

1/4 TSP would be around 1.25ML/Gal which is very close to where I am at

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You should be going off of line 2 by week 3 for sure. Also, always stay on the high side of pH to avoid problems. Lower is worse than higher ime. 5.5-6.5.

Thanks for the heads up about the water. I am going to keep a pretty close eye on them as they get older. I changed my res last night.
Line two on the GH Bottle is 5ml/gal. When I mixed as line two says I got around 700ppm
I used 9ml / 5 gal to get me at 350ppm which is 50ppm more than last week. Sound about right?
I think your right about PH. I have been keeping mine 5.7-6.2 and not messing with it unless it is outside there. Which is not often so far.

Base water is 100ppm BTW so really I am feeding 250ppm.