Organic Ebb & Flow help

MitchConnor

New Member
I've been thinking about setting up a 3x3 ebb & flow in a 4x4 space with a 600w HPS. I plan to use BPN Farmers Pride Organic Nutes. I have a couple questions that I can't find an answer to.

-Does the PH adjust itself for the most part like in organic soil? If not what is a natural ph down and up that will not hurt the plants?

-Will these nutes work with this system? I like these a lot. Amazing taste and potency.

-Should I use coco, rockwool, clay pebbles, ect? What would most likely work best?

I really want to get rid of the soil because of the waste disposal, mess, cost, and slow growth rate. Hydro seems like it would be more for me.
 
PH should be in a range of 5.3 at the lowest to 6.5 at the highest for hydroponics which your ebb & flow is. Your PH will fluctuate especially if your going to use organic fertilizer in the hydro system. If your going organic pick up some form of innoculant which will help your roots absorb more of the organic fertilizers. innoculants are a funguses and bacterias that help your roots grow and stay healthy.

I'm not sure if those nutes are made for hydroponics but as long as the bottle say it can be used in hydroponics then yes you can use it. Most fertilizers are between 50% - 100% higher dosage for hydroponics than for soil. The best way to ensure you aren't over doing it is using a PPM meter.

Germination: 250 - 450 ppm this includes water ppm if you have any. Try to use water with the lowest PPM possible like Reverse Osmosis Water.

Vegetaion: 350 - 800 ppm. The higher end would be as the plant matures while the lower end is early vegetative stage.

Flowering: 650 - 1200 ppm. Start in the lower range of flowering as you want your plant to adjust to the nute change for the bloom nutes but you want enough nutrition to not start forming deficiencies. As buds form and colas thicken you'll raise your ppm if your plants look like they don't like it back off a little and lower your ppm. You don't have to dump what you made just need to water it down some. More on that in a minute.

Personally coco usually needs to be mixed with something to help stabilize it's ph or so I read I have personally never used it. Rockwool is simple just soak it in ph'ed water for 12-24 Hours to help break down the lime in the Rockwool and use it with the clay pebbles (Hydroton). You'll surround the rockwool with the hydroton in net pots.

Some tips with hydro:

Allow your PH to swing from 5.3 to 6.5 you can go as far as 6.7 before adjusting is needed. Usually you would want to add ph'ed water to bring it down. But personally sometimes they haven't drank much water and I'll just adjust the res. with ph down to get to a suitable ph level again.

If your ppm is high and you want to lower it, all you need to do is add water with a lowered ppm. Even if you have to drain some of the water out to add your new lower ppm water than do so. It's better than wasting your money and nutes down the drain just to make a whole new batch of nutes.

You'll want to clean the tray the plants are sitting in probably once a week so that the nutrient buildup over the week doesn't effect your nutrient solution once pumped back into the holding tray again.

Adding a cap full or two of regular hydrogen peroxide from walgreens helps greatly with keeping things from growing in your water that you do not want. But with organic fertilizers I wouldn't use this as it will kill the bacteria that's in the organic fertilizers also. I'm unsure if there is an organic alternative.

Cover your rockwool cubes. This is important or you may begin to get a white fungus or mold forming on the rockwool it self. If this does begin to happen than you must get the rockwool covered quickly. If you can wipe any of the mold/fungus off do so or it may take over the rockwool cube and kill your plants.

Besides having a PH Meter buy one of the PH Acid tests so if you begin to have problems in the middle of a grow you can ensure you ph meter is matching approximately to what the acid is showing. Since using the Acid tests becomes difficult to get an exact measurement to do it being a color based chart it should be used only when you want to make sure the water is about what your Digital PH Meter is showing. This is my personal preference on this but you can't tell what your ph is for sure with the Acid test.

If you start seeing weird spots on leaves, or leaves beginning to twist in funky ways, or anything that is odd compared to the rest of the plants vegetative growth, quickly online begin researching through google, this forum and multiple others about nutrient deficiencies. Nutrient burn can look alot like Cal-MG deficiency and people were convinced in other forums my girls had nute burn but really the had a Cal-MG deficiency because I was using Reverse Osmosis Water. If you have leaves that could be either nutrient burn or cal-mg deficiency that best to tell the difference is look at the leaves on the plant if most begin to curl upwards than most likely its a Cal-MG deficiency but if most of the leave tips are curling down wards than it's most likely nute burn.
 
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