Hydro nute solution

[CaptnPlantit]

I understand lighting, temp., ph and alot of other fun stuff. Lets say for a ten plant setup with an indica dominant strain. How often should the nute solution be changed or how do you tell when it needs to be changed. Before i go indoors this is something that i need to know

 

[Dravis85]

I have read in multiple threads that 1 week changes are best, but 2 weeks is ok or even 3 can work depending on your setup. I have read about certain nutrients being deficient while others excel as being the main problem the longer you use the water without fully changing it. If you monitor your ppm you can get an idea on how much your plant is taking in and adjust accordingly, but it is hard to determine specific nute levels. I would guess the strain might play a part in what nutes get used quickly too. I am planning to use several different solutions of varying strength as well as a pH balanced distilled solution without nutrients to keep my plants well balanced.

Hope that helped and good luck

 

[IndoorHaze]

Check your PPMs daily. It's usually a race between the plants consuming the solids, or evaporation concentrating them.

 

[1970s Grower]

Jakester... great advice! reps to ya!

 

[WoCha]

Nah he knows what hes doing and maybe not you complettly...yet!

Flush that solution once a week...fill it with a nice soup day 1 top every day with ph'd water and if you got signs of deficiency make a higher soup next week, dont overfeed for fun too. Actually the guy above is super right about ppm just change it like a clockwork every 7 days

Cuz if your roots get slime over it......you know it stinks

 

[HydroManster]

The thing about not changing the water is you really have to be on your game. The plants roots as they uptake nutrients and water they release ions (+H) as well as you have bacteria turning nitrates to ammonia and a slew of other chemical reactions and changes that affect ph levels as well as concentration levels. So without some serious hardware and a chemistry degree as well as being proficient in plant biology, it is way easier and better to just change the water often to restore or maintain "balance".

The healthier the plants the more aggressive toxicity levels can be reached, and then the plants are not so healthy anymore.

Cheers!

 

[HydroManster]

This is true, it is kind of a catch-22 almost, the solutions "IF" everything is peachy will balance itself and actually become MORE stable over time. The idea is that when the roots uptake "x" amount which in turn releases "x" amounts of ions, you should gain the "x" amounts of ions back so to speak.

The ammoniacal nitrogen plays a big role in how stable your ph will be. The nutrient you use should have a slightly higher amount or ratio instead of 1/4 percent of the total nitrogen content.

If a grower is experiencing problems with nutrient stability or balance, they should change the water out often, as stated it is the easiest way especially for less experienced growers.

Some environments we have maintained could go 20 to 30 days easy before any imbalance issues or stability issues are noticed, at another location you can not even get 7 days barely......differences? Water source mainly but a bunch of other factors as well.

Using biology and Biochar we were able to complete an entire grow with NO change outs at all only topping off with fresh RO water, and NO nutrients were added at ALL! The biology fed the plants the best diet possible.

With all that said; it most cases especially when using RDWC systems like the UC for example, you want to change your water out often.

Cheers!

 

[HydroManster]

To each his own I guess.

RO water can be a very wasteful thing in most cases with the rejection water being as high as 5 to 1 in some models. We did extensive testing with several units. Even with booster pumps in place to up the water pressure which will in turn lower the rejection amount of water, you are wasting water to get water.

Each case or water source should be checked before jumping into a RO unit, most tap water is very ok for use in Hydroponics. The main thing you worry about is the total alkilinity of your water as opposed to bacteria (unless it is well water). If this number is to high (TA) you will have issues and should get a RO filter. Most do not even understand that it is the TA in most all cases that cause problems with tap water as opposed to TDS. The exception to this is places like Arizona where tap water can have a value as high as 900PPM!!! YIKES!!

Well water is about the only scenario I have seen where bacteria is an issue and even this is pretty rare. Most all city water municipals will keep bacteria at bay (DUH!) so contrary to the above post stating ALL hydroponics should use RO water....this is a prime example of wasteful way lots of uneducated growers think....google searches is just not enough to use as a only tool for learning.

We need to be smarter about the way we do things, especially horticulture.

I can not tell you how many gardens I have seen and consulted with only to find there using a RO system when the tap water is 100PPM and 7.4pH. This same grower will then spend the money on Cal/Mag to add that back since his RO filter removed it all for him. Senseless!! I asked them why are you doing it this way? Answer- The guy at the hydro shop said I must use RO water with hydro systems or it wont work. This is VERY common unfortunately as you see this example in a post above this one.

I hate to pick on jakster here, and I am really not, you just have to understand that most of these people giving advice on what you should or should not do came from about a 15 second google search or a improperly setup so called 'experiment"...ROFL!! Instead of taking a class or reading a book on horticulture so at least you learn the "proper" way or the "basics" and you can then go from there.

Instead we have plethora of web forums full of bad advice but growers trying to help other growers..

Cheers!

 

[StonerJ]

Well I've only got one plant going in a 5 gal bucket at the moment although it is quite large and I'm just flipping the lights today to start flowering. I changed to a clean water flush yesterday and the bloom nutes go in today when the lights go back on 12/12 this evening. I've been able to go 2 weeks between nute changes. ph has been stable around 5.9 and ppm levels drop by about about 100 daily when I top it off with pH adjusted water.

Solution temps had been steady around 68 until this early spring kicked in this week and outside temps started increasing. This required me to beef up the ventilation in the closet to bring the temps back down from 80 to mid to low 70's and the solution temp started getting up to 75 every day. I was putting frozen bottles of water into the bucket every day but that was getting old real fast so I broke down and bought a 1/10hp chiller, just waiting for it to arrive so I can install it. Got an incredible deal on it! I had hoped to avoid this level of complexity but it seems like I just keep getting deeper & deeper into this setup which I originally envisioned as a pretty simple one with a bucket, light, and fans. It was so easy to just mix up a new batch of nute soup in a fresh bucket and just move the lid with the plant in the net pot and the airstone dangling over to the new bucket. Now I'll have hoses, pumps, etc..... oh well. I guess I'll need to move to a separate reservoir (bigger of course) and an RDWC setup with my next grow. I'll valve it to be able to pump out the old solution when I need to replace it and just pour in new I guess.

It'll all be worth it though if I can get this girl to really produce as I think she can. She's gotten quite large and is extremely healthy.

 

[HydroManster]

When you see the advantages of a "dialed in" system you will totally be thanking yourself! Keeping the water at a constant temp below 70F does amazing things for plant health! Each little tweak you do adds up and before long you have knocked off a few weeks time in the growth cycle and you start to use less nutrients which saves money. Next thing you know you have a fine tweaked MACHINE that will give you INCREDIBLE fruit for your labor.

The 2 major things that helped most with us anyhow was controlling the water temperature and water levels, ph and EC; and the next biggest thing was a nutrient profile. Once you stop looking at the labels and start looking at the plants and your meters instead, you will again notice a huge difference in plant health, time it takes to complete grow cycles and yield.

Through years of testing we have found that fast growing plants do not need 2 separate feeding schedules (grow and bloom) for starters. We started using a bloom only formula through the entire growth cycle and that alone increased our yields by almost 10%.

Dyna-Gro Bloom for example is the most concentrated nutrient on the market and is the almost perfect ratio for veg cycle and growing huge root mass and many stems for bud sites. The addition of cal/mag allows for the extra needed minerals.

House & Garden Aqua Flakes is another great nutrient that you can use from start to finish! Lots of myths out there and bad advice/habits from growers who "think" they are experts is usually to blame for the spread of these misconceptions.

Cheers!

 

[StonerJ]

I have been using bottled distilled water but I'm really getting tired of hauling it. Seems like I'm buying 12 gallons every week. The girl is using 1/2 gal every day so I go through it quickly. I have a second bucket set up with herbs for my wife under an LED and it's doing great. We had fresh herbs all winter, of course the herbs are very forgiving and can handle pH instability a lot better than ganja for sure. And the nutes for they herbs are just a simple grow formula with no mixing, very inexpensive. But it does increase my need for water unfortunately. I did buy a small RO setup but haven't set it up yet.

I also decided to see if I could use my tap water since ppm is relatively reasonable at 150ppm but it's way too alkaline with a pH of 8.3 as measured today. Calibrtated my meters to be sure of accuracy and I thought maybe around 7. When I saw 8.3, I thought aw crap, I'm still gonna be hauling distilled water I guess or get my RO set up.

 

[StonerJ]

I bought a small RO system, 50 gal/day but just haven't set it up yet. We're going to moving from our current home & selling it in another year or so, so I'm reluctant to set up anything permanently. At the moment, my grow closet is set up so that the only thing I'll need to repair before putting the house on the market is the ventilation port through the closet wall, otherwise, everything is easily torn down & packed away. Although I'm sure that people will question why there is a double gang receptacle box in the closet wall (I mean who wants power in a closet?) but that's easy to explain because I just tell people that I had servers set up in the closet. Actually, I guess I could leave the exhaust port too because servers generate heat so I needed to exhaust the closet.

I plan to set up the RO using a faucet adapter to supply tap water to it. I'm just too lazy to set it all up I guess. I'll get there soon hopefully, I just try to keep a low profile on this with my wife. She knows I grow but I don't like to be "in her face" with it if I can avoids it never becomes a topic of conversation. If she only knew how much I spend on this "hobby" of mine.....