Greenthumbgrower1986
Well-Known Member
638 ppfd at canopy
RO WATER
- Thread starter Greenthumbgrower1986
- Start date
Kushash
Well-Known Member
It would help to know if there were any feedings after the 1st feeding when flowering started. If these were fed at the beginning of flowering, I see a couple of possible issues. 1st you have water heavy with calcium which is what is creating the crust on your faucets. The 1st pic ingredients has dolomite lime in it. The main purpose of dolomite lime (heavy in calcium) is to raise PH. The bat guano is a fast-acting fertilizer, fast acting is best when there is a deficiency but could also add too much too quickly. MJ does not need flowering food at the beginning of flower, the demand slowly increases and peaks when the stretch is over. Bone meal is a slow acting phosphorus fert that probably won't do much in the 8 weeks left till harvest. Combined those two fertilizers are probably leaving you a bit short on Nitrogen by mid-late flower. What you should use IDK, I can keep them green to harvest using happy frog 4-5-3 or bio-live 5-4-2.
Fallguy111
Well-Known Member
do you have a water softener? Seems common sense but has to be one of the first questions.
Greenthumbgrower1986
Well-Known Member
No I don't
Greenthumbgrower1986
Well-Known Member
I'll have to try next run
Greenthumbgrower1986
Well-Known Member
Doubt it's the feed as I've tried various different nutes, from Bacs, shogun, biobizz etc. The only thing all the grows have in common is the water
Billy the Mountain
Well-Known Member
Visit your local grocery store and purchase some distilled water?
tstick
Well-Known Member
You can get some distilled water or, if you can't for some reason, then do several runoff tests. It saved my grow. It might not have been accurate, but my pH was SO far out of whack, that it gave the indication as to what the problem was. And that indication was enough to steer me in the right direction. Otherwise, I might have been running for the cal-mag and ended up exacerbating the problem. I think that pH lockout is a LOT more common a problem with growing and it often gets diagnosed as something else.
Greenthumbgrower1986
Well-Known Member
I'm convinced it's pH problem, but it makes no sense as I always pH my water, let it sit with an air stone in for 30 mins then re test pH and I always get it to 6.4-6.5
tstick
Well-Known Member
Same here. My problem made no sense to me, either....but, for whatever reason, my soil mix ended up spitting out runoff water that was 4.0! My tap water is around 7.5, so I had always been pH-ing the water DOWN to get it in better range. But when I started to do runoff checks, I could see that something wasn't right. I had to start pH-ing my water UP after that and flushed several gallons of water that was at around 8.0, until I started to see the runoff test was finally starting to move. After I got it to around the 6.5 range, I backed off on the pH UP and went back to my regular routine. So far, every subsequent runoff test has been looking good and stable at around 6.5 and the plants have definitely bounced back.
tstick
Well-Known Member
By the way, I am now adding a small bag of bio-char and a few TBSPs of dolomite lime to my soil mix. Undoubtedly, there are some inconsistencies with using bagged soil as a base mix. I suspect that I got some extra-hot ferts or some real acid-y peat moss or something. I have been using the same mix for years and never had any issues. I thought I had my system dialed in. But, apparently, I have to treat each new batch as if it might be completely different than the last one.
Greenthumbgrower1986
Well-Known Member
Is it worth flushing at this stage of pH is high
Greenthumbgrower1986
Well-Known Member
Done a slurry test. Well worked with what I had. I PhD some dechlorinated water to 7. Mixed equal parts soil and water. After sitting for 30 mins I PhD tested it and was 7.8
Greenthumbgrower1986
Well-Known Member
Yes a blue lab
sfw1960
Well-Known Member
Hmmm probably not the levels.
That's not bad but IDK about the mix of color spectrum - still 638 usually doesn't anger too many strains, so for that - I got nothing.
Do you have a way to test it's accuracy?
I've got a few cheaper ones that I gave up trying to calibrate - they regularly swim in potassium chloride and are stored damp in-between uses but I have a few books of the old reliable pH test strips that I almost always use on each batch.
Litmus paper has NEVER failed me and it's best that it's DRIED OUT rather than a pH pen probe filling it's diapers when you least expect it.
Does the blue lab have a lot of run time on the probe?
Would be great to see you get this sorted!
Edit:
I run coco nowadays and it's not always fun to dial in for some of the finicky critters lol
Living & learning beats repeating the same!
Last edited:
calvin.m16
Well-Known Member
I'm going to say just save your time and grow Photoperiod, learn to clone plants that are proven to not produce hermies. Ruderalis (Autoflower) are very prone to herm. WHen I started growing indoors back in 2018-2019 I grew autos and they always had a hermie almost every run in my 4x8 tent. I ditched autos and couldn't be happier. I would rather have 2 small tents (one for veg, one for flower) than one big tent for autos.
Your water isn't causing herms. Also 320 ppm is very clean tap water depending what those ppms are. My tap water is 750-800 ppm of iron, salt and who knows what else. (Well water) and so I'm forced to use RO water. Any time I would use my well water my pH would go all over the place and it was just extremely inconsistent.
I would use RO if you want to be very sure everything is dialed in and clean as possible. Marijuana plants uptake a lot of junk from the ground, heavy metals, chemicals etc. Anything in your water is probably in your smoke. That said, use RO if its a concern for you.
Your water isn't causing herms. Also 320 ppm is very clean tap water depending what those ppms are. My tap water is 750-800 ppm of iron, salt and who knows what else. (Well water) and so I'm forced to use RO water. Any time I would use my well water my pH would go all over the place and it was just extremely inconsistent.
I would use RO if you want to be very sure everything is dialed in and clean as possible. Marijuana plants uptake a lot of junk from the ground, heavy metals, chemicals etc. Anything in your water is probably in your smoke. That said, use RO if its a concern for you.
I suggest using distilled or RO, anything else can effect the ph.
Billy the Mountain
Well-Known Member
As mentioned above, that's not a valid or accurate test if you don't use distilled (or RO) water. There's a good reason distilled water is called for when doing a slurry test to determine pH of the growing medium.
Adjusting the pH of tap water is not a valid substitution for distilled/RO water.
I was just thinking, rain water is probably the next best thing if distilled or RO isn't an option.