PPM & Nutes?

Scrogdawg

Well-Known Member
I've built a small 2 plant RDWC system and have just moved 2 seedling that were started in soil to DWC. My tap water has a PH of 7.4 with TDS at 140ppm. I'm using granular PH down to reduce the PH to 5.8. When my PH stabilizes at 5.8 my TDS has increased to +/- 650ppm before adding any nutes. From reading, my understanding is that I should keep my TDS at +/- 600ppm for early veg. My question is, do I or don't I ad any nutes at this point? Any advise from the community would be appreciated.
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re: PPM & Nutes?

You need to add the nutes first and then ph.

Odds are you will use less ph down and have a lower ppm total.
 
re: PPM & Nutes?

If your base ppm is 600. You'll only want to add enough nutes to raise about 200. So total ppm would be 800. Start low and slow. Mine are bout two weeks old and ppm is 400 at most and THIER doing good so far. My base ppm is 250 So my meter reads 650. Going to raise soon. Hope this helps.

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re: PPM & Nutes?

Try using a different ph down.
If it takes 450 ppm of ph down to shift that water by that small of an amount then the ph-down that you are using is very much the wrong stuff. It should only take about 30 or 40 ppm of ph+ or ph- to shift a full strength nutrient mix. And to shift your water should only take a Tiny amount- probably not even enough to register on your EC meter.
 
Off topic but I noticed your buckets are on the cement floor not sure of your climate but cement floor temps can be lower then 58*

Cold nutrients will slow growth , a quick fix is to use squares of Styrofoam under each bucket or if the floor is real cold raise the buckets off it.

The plants prefer their nutrients in the high 60's & low 70's its important to be within it , paramount.
 
I bought some proper digital equipment to monitor PH, TDS, EC and Temp, got my water on track and flushed the system twice. I set the plants back about 10 days by my stupidity but they have recovered nicely over the last couple of weeks. These pictures are from day 41 of veg. They have been topped twice now and I have started LST.

Strain - White Widow Feminized (Crop King Seeds)
# of Plants - 3
Grow Type - 2 Hydro, 1 Soil
Grow Stage - Veg (Day 41)
Setup - RDWC
Light - 400 Watt MH
Nutrients - General Hydronponics (FloraMicro, FloraGro, FloraBloom) 30% mix rate
Medium - Hydroton
PPM - 580
EC - 1.14
PH - 5.8
RH - 30%
Room Temperature -70 to 80
Solution Temperature - 69 to 73
Room Square Footage - 35
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Thank you very much for the help.
 
Is your ppm still 580? Or did you raise it? Are you putting even portions of each flora ? Or more flora grow ?


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Is your ppm still 580? Or did you raise it? Are you putting even portions of each flora ? Or more flora grow ?

I have been mixing The flora Micro, Gro and Bloom at 30% of the GH website calculator for my size system. I'm due for a water change today and will be increasing to 35%. Heres my new recipe.
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The graphs below are color coded by water change and plotted daily. Week 1 was a write off so I did an early water change. You can kind of see the range I'm trying to stay within for TDS, Ph and EC since then. As shown, through each water cycle as the plants use up the nutrients both TDS and EC fall off and the PH rises slightly. Thats what I'm shooting for. This seems to be working well, the plants are both healthy.
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Hope this kind of answers your question.
 
Too bad you did did not have more details

Kidding haha , its pretty nice to be able to follow the drift like that

I have a similar graph that I use with a set of Wifi PPM and EC logger meters

Once the rdwc part of the dwc is built will use them for now just using pens.
 
PPM & Nutes?

The graphs are confusing. Still trying to decipher. Also. Your recipe is accounting for ppm for ph down and cal mag. First I've seen this. I only keep track of my base water ppm before nutes. Then how much the nutes raise it. I've never noticed ppm go up after adding ph down. I have cal mag but haven't had to use it yet. Very interesting. Not sure how to keep track of the ppm of those but will be pondering deeply. :)


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Re: PPM & Nutes?

The graphs are confusing. Still trying to decipher. Also. Your recipe is accounting for ppm for ph down and cal mag. First I've seen this. I only keep track of my base water ppm before nutes. Then how much the nutes raise it. I've never noticed ppm go up after adding ph down. I have cal mag but haven't had to use it yet. Very interesting. Not sure how to keep track of the ppm of those but will be pondering deeply. :)
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Just a little confusing Germinator.:) My tap water is around 160ppm. I add my cal mag to that first and it brings the ppm to around 400. I use that 400 as my starting point. Nothing up to this point counts toward nutrient ppm. Next I add my micro, grow, bloom...in that order. Next the additional additives. At this point my total ppm will be around 1000. In my world 1000 minus the 400ppm of tap water with cal mag and I get a nutrient value of 600ppm. I don't use any pH up or down due to using AN. As you can tell I only count the nutrient value, ignoring the cal mag and tap water, and it works for me.

If there is an easier way, I've looked for and incorporated into my grows....Lazy Grower Style. :biglaugh:
 
I have been mixing The flora Micro, Gro and Bloom at 30% of the GH website calculator for my size system. I'm due for a water change today and will be increasing to 35%. Heres my new recipe.
.
recipe.jpg

.
.
The graphs below are color coded by water change and plotted daily. Week 1 was a write off so I did an early water change. You can kind of see the range I'm trying to stay within for TDS, Ph and EC since then. As shown, through each water cycle as the plants use up the nutrients both TDS and EC fall off and the PH rises slightly. Thats what I'm shooting for. This seems to be working well, the plants are both healthy.
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tds1.jpg

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ph38.jpg

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ec3.jpg

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Hope this kind of answers your question.

What software and hardware are you using to track your readings?
 
Not sure where this thread went, I seemed to have lost it for a while.

Anyway, I have a Nutradip Growboss meter that gives me continuous readings for PH, TDS, EC and Temp. I look each morning at lights on and plot them to a graph in Excel manually. It would be nice if the data could Bluetooth its way to my computer but no such luck.
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