RO water and buffering

[bluter]

Anything is possible my friend. It’s indoor. Manure, coco, perlite, old potting soil mix.

since it's amended as a live soil i don't think i'd bother with RO. might depend a bit on whether you run bottle nutes or not and how they are derived. it still wouldn't be much of a factor.

 

[H20gro]

That's a screenshot of a spreadsheet that calculates the PPM's of the chemicals that are in the different commercial products that are listed across the top.

Find the row for "K" and scan across the line - 13, 139, etc. That's how many PPM are in a gallon of that particular nutrient. The highest value is 139 PPM so if you drop in about 50 PPM of K, that's a huge percentage change in the amount of K in the res.

The ferts in the picture are the only ones listed in my copy of the spreadsheet and I know nothing about them, frankly, I was just using the data in that part of the spreadsheet as an example.

One key item to remember is that one of the characteristics of hydro is that things can happen very quickly, far more quickly than in soil, so it really does pay to "measure twice, cut once".

Another piece of it is that a lot of growers spend a lot time changing thins in their nutrient mix when, one, there's probably no need to and, second, what they're doing is, at best, of no value and, at worst, causing problems. I think it's a tendency of the people who are attracted to this hobby. I'm not knocking it, certainly. It's part of what makes a lot of us tick and it's something that spur us to ask "Am I doing this for me or for the plant?"

I don't know/recall if your plants actually had a K def but, if so, per the two paras above, "tread gently".

Wow. Thank you. I almost missed this response. I was about to ask you again and saw this. Much appreciated!

 

[H20gro]

So, do you believe it possible to grow successfully w little to no “bloom” nutes. Like flora bloom, as im using the 3 part+calmag. Wondering if its possible…. May have to experiment a bit more

 

[Cannabist1]

since it's amended as a live soil i don't think i'd bother with RO. might depend a bit on whether you run bottle nutes or not and how they are derived. it still wouldn't be much of a factor.

The tap water here has way too much chlorine, fluoride and chloramines in it. Along with carcinogens, pesticides and pharmaceuticals. I noticed when I grew with RO, my bud was “Live.” With the tap water I leave out overnight, the bud isn’t at nice. I’m going to give soil another run with RO!

 

[Delps8]

So, do you believe it possible to grow successfully w little to no “bloom” nutes. Like flora bloom, as im using the 3 part+calmag. Wondering if its possible…. May have to experiment a bit more

I don't use "cal/mag" because I have calcium and magnesium in my fertilizer…like every other fertilizer sold in the cannabis market. A lot of growers, when seeing something that they think is going wrong will, encourage other growers to "add cal/mag" or "turn down the lights".

"add cal/mag" is a running joke on other forums. And the reflex decision to cut back on light is, almost always, as soundly based as bleeding the patient was in pre-scientific medicine.

I have no idea if this is true but, per another forum, Jacks never offered a "bloom" nutrient because they did not believe that there was a need for it with cannabis. Jacks has been around for decades so I figure that they have significant expertise. They have added a "bloom" fert recently in response to customer demand.

Do I believe that you can be successful using the same mix?
Absolutely. I don't know of a scientifically demonstrated reason to use anything other than the same mix, assuming that the "standard" mix provides adequate levels of the 18 chemicals that plants require to maximize their genetic potential.

My decision to use the same mix from seed to weed is based, in part, on what I read in the thread by @farside05, by the significant number of growers who use Jacks 3-2-1 and use the same mix throughout the grow (they're on another cannabis forum), by the fact that Jacks recommends the same mixture from seed to weed for their nutes, and by the fact that, in the hundreds of hours that I've spent reading research on cannabis growing, I have yet to come across any data from a controlled study that shows a benefit.

And, seeing that I'm a Bugbee fan, the only comment I've seen from the infamous Dr Bugbee was, essentially, "meh".

Oh, yeh - I stumbled across the nutrient mix that Bugbee uses for his cannabis research and, lo and behold, he uses the same mix throughout the grow.

I'm more than happy to add almost anything to my res to get a better crop but lacking evidence that there's a positive and direct cause and effect, I don't.

Bugbee's nine parameters are in the attachment. The biggest impact is adding CO2 but personal growers rarely have a grow environment that can "trap" the air so we're limited to ambient levels of CO2 (410 ppm ATM). Putting that aside, if you go through each of those parts of your grow and bring them up to "good", you'll get a lot of weed. If you optimize them, you'll get a "metric shitton" of weed.

 

[farside05]

So, do you believe it possible to grow successfully w little to no “bloom” nutes. Like flora bloom, as im using the 3 part+calmag. Wondering if its possible…. May have to experiment a bit more

If your full strength mix contains:

150-170 ppm N
30-50 ppm P
180-220 ppm K
25-50 ppm Mg
75-100 ppm Ca
25-50 ppm S
All the other Micros

You should be able to use it from seedling to harvest. Obviously you don't feed full strength to a seedling. Start at 1/3 strength and increase as the plant matures. When you're at full veg/full bloom, you'll be full strength nutes.

 

[H20gro]

Ive been surprised since getting my RO filter at how little ph up/down i have to use. When using tap i was using10-30 ml of ph down per batch and never ph up.

Now after mixing GH 3 part in the ro water its usually right at 5.8 ph. Some plants the ph remains mostly stable and some the ph drops. Either way, all im using now is 10-20 DROPS of ph up occasionally. I do believe ph in dwc is a daily thing as @Bill284 has mentioned a few times. But it seems much less of a hassle. And less product to buy. Mostly, i hope the quality h2o will make my ladies happier.