Well... I am following the directions on the bottles.. Got me about 200ppms on nutes alone plus Si and my biocozyme and nothin burned yet.. so thats about a third plus some compared to the 500+ I was using once every third watering.. I dont have an EC meter or setting on my ppm meter so I'm gonna follow my instinct.
Thank you for all your help. Now pertaining to EC.. if say 500ppms can vary in EC then what causes this?? From what I understand from this thread ppm doesn't go hand in hand with EC correct?
What causes the variation is the different PPM scale of TDS/PPM meters people use. Electrical Conductivity (EC) and Parts Per Million (PPM) are two ways of arriving at the same conclusion; the concentration of mineral in the solution.
EC is a direct reading, while PPM meters are calibrated conversions to one of three different popular PPM scales, listed in the link Homebrewer supplied. So the PPM to EC conversion will depend on what scale your TDS/PPM meter is calibrated to.
Using EC is a standard, kind of like saying if everyone used Greenwich Mean Time to tell time, we would never have to convert to time zones.
I bought a cheap Chinese TDS/PPM meter and was wondering the same thing. Nowhere did it say what scale it is calibrated to. I later discovered it is calibrated to the "Hanna" or "500" scale, because the calibration/buffer solution provided with it is labeled 1382ppm, which I learned is the calibration ppm for the 500 (Hanna) scale. I would think most Chinese knock-offs would be the same. If you got 1382ppm solution with it that would confirm.
Found this from a Hanna document:
"Hanna PPM Scales for Hanna Meters
1.Any meter that requires a calibration solution of
1500ppm is generally on the .7 calibration scale (called
the 442 scale)
2.Any meter that requires a calibration solution of
1382ppm is generally on the .5 calibration scale (
called the sodium chloride scale)..."
Learned all this right here man...