MR M3RKLEZz
Active Member
yeah but your using the soil version im on about the slabs i already use the soil.
im on about using the slabs is there a difference.
im on about using the slabs is there a difference.
Coco Growers Unite!
- Thread starter Masterofgenetics
- Start date
ZEN MASTER
Well-Known Member
ok well i guess i'll quote myself "it's reusable, cheaper, less time consuming, a lot less effort with some what similar results". also no hoses, no clogged hoses, no reservoir, no constantly checking ph, or ppm's, or EC,no pumps, or airstones, or cleaning out your rez, no alge, pump failures, no timers, or rez chillers, or warmers, not worrying if the pump goes, or somthing clogs and your plants DIE, but thats just off of the top of my head. the choice is yours!!!!! but before i go i must be sure to ket you knoe that this is only my opinion(1 in 300 billion people). there are a lot of poeple using slabs. matter of fact i mentioned madazz, dude check out his thread, purely amazing, but also pay attention to what happened when his pump went out. so like i said either way if it works for you, or you like one method more than the other "RUN WITH IT"!!! let me know what method you decide to use.
PEACE!!!
-ZEN-
PEACE!!!
-ZEN-
hotboxhatchback
Active Member
#1. i'll never use my tap water to grow, regardless of what medium or nutes i'm using. as i said, my municipal water supply is recycled and carries lots of shit they don't bother to get out - 300ppm of it. i give that water to my dogs but not my family or my garden.
#2. i've tried watering more and less and i've found my girls like being watered twice a day and to give them enough to get any runoff it keeps the coco moist for a while but its always beginning to dry by the time i water again.
there are no beneficial microbes that i know of that are made speficically for coco. even rhizotonic is for both hydro and soil including coco. i don't see how using voodoo in coco would cause any problems.
i appreciate your reply so please don't think i'm being argumentative but my current problems seem to be caused by using the wrong nutes in the beginning and these girls aren't coming back.
i think the most important advice to get out of my experience is not to skimp on nutes with coco. you have to select nutes that will be compatible and the only way to be sure is to buy coco specific stuff - seriously limiting what you can use.
i sat down and thought about whether i should continue in coco or go back to dwc and came up with some points that i thought i'd share to provide another perspective here, but not to argue:
canna a+b costs me $16/L or $57/4L. canna coco costs me $28/50L bag. there's only one place to get canna products around here and its out of my way.
i can buy advanced nutes way cheap through my dispensary (as in $11/L and $38/4L for most products including sensi a+b grow and bloom) and advanced products work noticeably better with cannabis because they are the only true cannabis specific nutes out there with proper ratios for these plants. advanced nutes are also more concentrated than canna so they have lower application rates.
advanced nutes don't work well in coco though and to buy canna products AND run dtw i'll be spending literally twice as much $ for nutes and medium! i did my math based on what i was spending using advanced in dwc and canna now and its actually just over twice as much!!
advanced nutes are also easier to use, i've read that canna needs to be used dtw, not mixed with other brands, and there's the "tap water" mention in the instructions. advanced nutes don't bring any of those issues and i know by experience they mix well with other brands, provided the other brand wants to play.
considering the details of MY current situation, i'll be going back to dwc. i got some odyssey, og kush and blue dream yesterday and i can't bring myself to do anything else with them so i'm working on rebuilding my setup this afternoon.
i really appreciate the tech support for coco here but like i said it doesn't fit my current situation (or my growing style, obviously).
jberry
Well-Known Member
snowwhite you are correct... the reason it works better is because the levels of BB are soo much higher the second time you use it...
this is the same reason you shouldnt run plain water threw coco, bcuz the benificial bacteria wash away from coco very easily... always use a EC of 0.6 or higher.
jberry
Well-Known Member
that sucks... coco is the best medium bcuz you can colonize beneficial bacteria but it can still be grown and feed hydroponic style... its the ONLY medium that gives u the best of both worlds...
ZEN MASTER
Well-Known Member
hey no problem bro, that's what we are here for to throw around different ideas at each other. i hate that that is the decision that you have made, but it is your decision. but i will ask you once more just to take a objective look at my thread. i wont say it will change your mind but it will definitely keep it on your mind. because until i really looked into it(contacting the home page, and consulting experience coco growers i was dead set on trying conventional hydroponic methods(ebb&flo, dwc,etc.) and hey you can ask anyone on this thread how difficult they percieved it to be, and how easy they found out it was. oh yeah, i didn't find you argumentative at all.
Anybody coco users out there feeling me on this? if so c'mon and chime in let's get this guy on the team, and help him understand.LOL!
PEACE!!!
-ZEN_
ZEN MASTER
Well-Known Member
hey JBERRY check out my thread and tell me what you think.and hey i'm wide open for any comments and suggestions.
MR M3RKLEZz
Active Member
well i was just interested but wat i think is the soil version
is by far the easiest an safe way for my style of growing
so im just guna stick with that i have 18 plants at the moment
growing in soil version but i did mix it this time around with westlands organic
compost which was a mistake the compost is shit and have realized a 5-6
week nutes already innit an have slight nute burned my plants
which was stupid i should have read the bag but assummed cause it was organic
inbarrassing mistake but can be sorted
guna head down the local hydrostore an grab two 50 litre bags an transplant them
soon as never mix with other soils is my advice apart from perlite an vercumlite
like i normally do
but u live an learn a boys an cheers for the info
+ rep
is by far the easiest an safe way for my style of growing
so im just guna stick with that i have 18 plants at the moment
growing in soil version but i did mix it this time around with westlands organic
compost which was a mistake the compost is shit and have realized a 5-6
week nutes already innit an have slight nute burned my plants
which was stupid i should have read the bag but assummed cause it was organic
inbarrassing mistake but can be sorted
guna head down the local hydrostore an grab two 50 litre bags an transplant them
soon as never mix with other soils is my advice apart from perlite an vercumlite
like i normally do
but u live an learn a boys an cheers for the info
+ rep
Corwin
Active Member
ZenMaster,
While I don't wish to attack anyone I would like to present some facts and some ideas that I hold that contribute to my decision NOT to use tap water in my grow.
Because of the way we grow a Lot of water runs through a plant in it's lifespan. It sits there taking up the salts that we provide, knowingly or not, for it and incorporating them into their tissue or expelling them as the case may be. As far as I know there have been no gas chromatography-mas spectrometry test done on pot to determine exactly how much remains. But with a half life greater than the life cycle of the average plant and pots proclivity to buildup salts, we can surmise that it is possible that the substances could build up at much greater levels than exist in tap water.
One such compound is Atrazine, a pre and post emergent broad-leaf weed killer that is used at the rate of 76 million pounds applied in the US annually.
According to http://www.pesticideinfo.org :
Possible problems with Atrazine include toxicity to humans, including carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, and acute toxicity.
There have been studies with frogs that indicate, "Tyrone Hayes, a scientist at UC Berkeley, found evidence that it is a teratogen, causing demasculinization in male frogs even at low concentrations,[11] and an estrogen disruptor.[12] Male frogs affected by atrazine could reach testosterone levels below females."
But Atrazine is just one of the problematic substances in our water supplies. Studies now indicate that in addtion to industrial contaminates such as Barium, Lead, Copper, Arsenic and others we are now seeing pharmaceuticals show up in our water supply. Antidepressants, and hormone replacement therapy drugs just to name a couple.
If we consider that a plant may consume as much as 30 gal of water in its lifespan @ 8.345 lbs per gallon and a dry plant weight at harvest of say .5 lbs then we could speculate that the salt buildup could be in the neighborhood of 50 times that of the content of the water from the tap. Now instead of Atrazine at the rate of 3ppb we are talking 150ppb and this is 50 TIMES the rate that the frogs began to see dual sexes at.
Perhaps I am over concerned. Perhaps there is little or no threat but that is to be seen. Canna has little reason to work out formulas for RO/DI water supplies becouse in the European Union Atrazine hasd been banned. The US is slow to ban agricultural chemicals because of a tradition of making money being more important than public health.
To be fair the long term affects are unknown to humans when consuming plants reared on water containing these compounds. But I chose to err on the side of caution and have to supplement my Canna Coco nutes with micro nutrients and perhaps I don't have as good of success as I dial in this process. But at least I won't be growing any new junk down there, I hope!
Please don't take my word for it and think for yourself.
Peace out and happy toking!
While I don't wish to attack anyone I would like to present some facts and some ideas that I hold that contribute to my decision NOT to use tap water in my grow.
Because of the way we grow a Lot of water runs through a plant in it's lifespan. It sits there taking up the salts that we provide, knowingly or not, for it and incorporating them into their tissue or expelling them as the case may be. As far as I know there have been no gas chromatography-mas spectrometry test done on pot to determine exactly how much remains. But with a half life greater than the life cycle of the average plant and pots proclivity to buildup salts, we can surmise that it is possible that the substances could build up at much greater levels than exist in tap water.
One such compound is Atrazine, a pre and post emergent broad-leaf weed killer that is used at the rate of 76 million pounds applied in the US annually.
According to http://www.pesticideinfo.org :
Possible problems with Atrazine include toxicity to humans, including carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, and acute toxicity.
There have been studies with frogs that indicate, "Tyrone Hayes, a scientist at UC Berkeley, found evidence that it is a teratogen, causing demasculinization in male frogs even at low concentrations,[11] and an estrogen disruptor.[12] Male frogs affected by atrazine could reach testosterone levels below females."
But Atrazine is just one of the problematic substances in our water supplies. Studies now indicate that in addtion to industrial contaminates such as Barium, Lead, Copper, Arsenic and others we are now seeing pharmaceuticals show up in our water supply. Antidepressants, and hormone replacement therapy drugs just to name a couple.
If we consider that a plant may consume as much as 30 gal of water in its lifespan @ 8.345 lbs per gallon and a dry plant weight at harvest of say .5 lbs then we could speculate that the salt buildup could be in the neighborhood of 50 times that of the content of the water from the tap. Now instead of Atrazine at the rate of 3ppb we are talking 150ppb and this is 50 TIMES the rate that the frogs began to see dual sexes at.
Perhaps I am over concerned. Perhaps there is little or no threat but that is to be seen. Canna has little reason to work out formulas for RO/DI water supplies becouse in the European Union Atrazine hasd been banned. The US is slow to ban agricultural chemicals because of a tradition of making money being more important than public health.
To be fair the long term affects are unknown to humans when consuming plants reared on water containing these compounds. But I chose to err on the side of caution and have to supplement my Canna Coco nutes with micro nutrients and perhaps I don't have as good of success as I dial in this process. But at least I won't be growing any new junk down there, I hope!
Please don't take my word for it and think for yourself.
Peace out and happy toking!
jberry
Well-Known Member
nice post corwin,
it is obviously safer health wise to use R/O water and yer own supplements...
like u said, that can be tricky when it comes to providing the correct amount of everything you need in the correct amounts and will probably take several grows/products to dial it in.
after a lot of experimenting, i found the best results using a mix of R/O and Dechloranated tap water (i also supplement with around 150 ppm of MagiCal), this way you get a lot of the bad stuff out but it leaves enough of the stuff you need in trace amounts. I get much better results this way than with plain R/O... much, much, better.
maybe its bcuz i couldnt supply the trace stuff in the correct amounts? idk.
another thing to think about when using R/O is the insane amount of water that is wasted... my hydro logic merlin runs at a 3 to 1 ratio... To fill a 50 gallon rez, u have to waste 150 gallons down the drain! If i use pure R/O in my RTW systems than i end up using 8 times my allowed limit! Wasting water is not such a great thing and neither is smoking harmful toxins so i guess you have to decide between the two (or meet in the middle with my technique). I have a lot to say on the subject but i'm too lazy to go on. lol.
i'm not sure you are right on the "50 times higher levels theory", (anythings possible tho) im just not sure thats how it works when considering different run off levels, how often you water, flushing, ect.
you are right tho, cannabis does suck up whatever its growing in, thats why they grow hemp where toxic spills have happened because its 1 of the only plants that will pull nuclear waste, ect... out of the ground and into the plant.
and fyi, some of the medical cannabis clubs ARE already doing gas chromatography-mas spectrometry test's on weed bought from "patient vendors"... if it is legalized than this will be the standard.
they usaully dont deny your product unless it has pesticides, bugs, or mold spores tho, and hardly any clubs are doing these tests... but i feel it's going to be the way of the future...
get your biocanna skills and r/o machines ready if you plan on suppling the clubs over the next few years cuz i think they are going to be forced into doing these sort of tests since it IS medicine and should be regulated in the eyes of the government.
it is obviously safer health wise to use R/O water and yer own supplements...
like u said, that can be tricky when it comes to providing the correct amount of everything you need in the correct amounts and will probably take several grows/products to dial it in.
after a lot of experimenting, i found the best results using a mix of R/O and Dechloranated tap water (i also supplement with around 150 ppm of MagiCal), this way you get a lot of the bad stuff out but it leaves enough of the stuff you need in trace amounts. I get much better results this way than with plain R/O... much, much, better.
maybe its bcuz i couldnt supply the trace stuff in the correct amounts? idk.
another thing to think about when using R/O is the insane amount of water that is wasted... my hydro logic merlin runs at a 3 to 1 ratio... To fill a 50 gallon rez, u have to waste 150 gallons down the drain! If i use pure R/O in my RTW systems than i end up using 8 times my allowed limit! Wasting water is not such a great thing and neither is smoking harmful toxins so i guess you have to decide between the two (or meet in the middle with my technique). I have a lot to say on the subject but i'm too lazy to go on. lol.
i'm not sure you are right on the "50 times higher levels theory", (anythings possible tho) im just not sure thats how it works when considering different run off levels, how often you water, flushing, ect.
you are right tho, cannabis does suck up whatever its growing in, thats why they grow hemp where toxic spills have happened because its 1 of the only plants that will pull nuclear waste, ect... out of the ground and into the plant.
and fyi, some of the medical cannabis clubs ARE already doing gas chromatography-mas spectrometry test's on weed bought from "patient vendors"... if it is legalized than this will be the standard.
they usaully dont deny your product unless it has pesticides, bugs, or mold spores tho, and hardly any clubs are doing these tests... but i feel it's going to be the way of the future...
get your biocanna skills and r/o machines ready if you plan on suppling the clubs over the next few years cuz i think they are going to be forced into doing these sort of tests since it IS medicine and should be regulated in the eyes of the government.
ZEN MASTER
Well-Known Member
WOW!ZenMaster,
While I don't wish to attack anyone I would like to present some facts and some ideas that I hold that contribute to my decision NOT to use tap water in my grow.
Because of the way we grow a Lot of water runs through a plant in it's lifespan. It sits there taking up the salts that we provide, knowingly or not, for it and incorporating them into their tissue or expelling them as the case may be. As far as I know there have been no gas chromatography-mas spectrometry test done on pot to determine exactly how much remains. But with a half life greater than the life cycle of the average plant and pots proclivity to buildup salts, we can surmise that it is possible that the substances could build up at much greater levels than exist in tap water.
One such compound is Atrazine, a pre and post emergent broad-leaf weed killer that is used at the rate of 76 million pounds applied in the US annually.
According to http://www.pesticideinfo.org :
Possible problems with Atrazine include toxicity to humans, including carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, and acute toxicity.
There have been studies with frogs that indicate, "Tyrone Hayes, a scientist at UC Berkeley, found evidence that it is a teratogen, causing demasculinization in male frogs even at low concentrations,[11] and an estrogen disruptor.[12] Male frogs affected by atrazine could reach testosterone levels below females."
But Atrazine is just one of the problematic substances in our water supplies. Studies now indicate that in addtion to industrial contaminates such as Barium, Lead, Copper, Arsenic and others we are now seeing pharmaceuticals show up in our water supply. Antidepressants, and hormone replacement therapy drugs just to name a couple.
If we consider that a plant may consume as much as 30 gal of water in its lifespan @ 8.345 lbs per gallon and a dry plant weight at harvest of say .5 lbs then we could speculate that the salt buildup could be in the neighborhood of 50 times that of the content of the water from the tap. Now instead of Atrazine at the rate of 3ppb we are talking 150ppb and this is 50 TIMES the rate that the frogs began to see dual sexes at.
Perhaps I am over concerned. Perhaps there is little or no threat but that is to be seen. Canna has little reason to work out formulas for RO/DI water supplies becouse in the European Union Atrazine hasd been banned. The US is slow to ban agricultural chemicals because of a tradition of making money being more important than public health.
To be fair the long term affects are unknown to humans when consuming plants reared on water containing these compounds. But I chose to err on the side of caution and have to supplement my Canna Coco nutes with micro nutrients and perhaps I don't have as good of success as I dial in this process. But at least I won't be growing any new junk down there, I hope!
Please don't take my word for it and think for yourself.
Peace out and happy toking!
well the water thing was not the point i was trying to make. if you go back and read it was really only one sentence in that post. but the reason i say that about tap water vs. r/o is because #1 i grew two plants side by side(well actually one out of a group of six, but the two most identical were used) and there was no difference in anything, in my perception. and #2 dude, everybody cant afford to buy R/O water, or an osmosis machine and for me and i imagine a lot of other people it is a relief that this product and the nutrients(as far as the loose version)is designed for use with properly PH'd tap water.
buy hey like isaid that's my opinion, but what you said is definitely something to think about. thanks for the informative info.
PEACE!!!
-ZEN-
ZEN MASTER
Well-Known Member
wel you know what Mr. M? thank you and boo-yow right back at you, appreciate that man. like i said i like the loose coco, and while admitting that my method may not be the best, and that others may have better ways that include more different kinds of nutes, i just keep it simple.
my total cost for an entire 8-9 week run goes like this:1 50L bags of coco-$30
A and B solution -$30 for both
and the floralicious usually last about three runs but if i run out it cot about $28. so ia essence i'm only spending about $60 for about a month's worth of smoking. and that's after i take out for my lights. but anyway the proof is in the pudding, so here is what you can expect following my method on a shoe string budget.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BTW I"M USING A 1LITER MT. DEW SODA BOTTLE AS A MEASURE
ok #1-2 are of the Blue Venom(that one bud in my hand i seven inches long)
#3-4 is the untopped sativa pheno of the NL
#5-6 is the indica version of the NL(the bud actually stops at the same spot
the wrapping on the bottle stops)
#7-13 is the topped sativa pheno of the NL(kinda went overboard but tried to give the best image
to show how thick and long these buds have gotten)
hopefully you all will be able to see the pics pretty clearly. BTW the indica NL has virtually no smell at all. also do me a favor and check out the leaves on these girls. except for pics three and four, that's the untopped sativa NL pheno, and it got too talllan was burned by the light(4'7" tall). seven and a half weeks flower and only the very tip of the tip is discolored, but overall they look damn healthy. that's just so you know that my feeding chart is pretty much flawless, not completly though,but for the most part like 97% it is. but you be the judge, and get back to me with your judgements.
PEACE!!!
-ZEN-
Attached Thumbnails
Masterofgenetics
New Member
I will be posting very soon guys, I am happy to see you all have kept this thread alive
Thats right i lost all my Blue Berry seedlings (that i'd just brought, and now need more) due to that pump dieing. i'm now having to handwater all my veg plants as they are so small they cannot go without water for much more than 12. My big Girls (flower room) can go without water for 24-36 hrs (if a pump fails) but after that kiss them good bye. i can constantly monitor my rooms so as long as i check daily i normally dont have any problems, but ill tell u this, the water system pipes need to be flushed every 3 months (even replaced as they dont clean very well) the black 4mm pipe and drippers replaced every 3 months otherwise u WILL run into problems with drippers blocking! my mate lost over half a crop about half way through cause he only used to check once every 4 weeks. The drippers blocked and the surviving plants got shit all yield cause they were all so starved of water/nutes.
Madazz
Madazz
Not much Really, a frame of some sort to sit the slabs on (one end higher than the other, for the run off) Drip system is the easiest way to probably water the slabs, u can put 2 or 3 plants per slab. roughly 3 trays per sq meter works best. A under water pump, Air stones & air pump, heatwand (22deg C, check that for F) A light tight tank, 4mm black hose, Drippers, i used 1/2inch PVC for the manifold for the black pipes to come out of. Check my Journal should be a pic showing how it looks there. its in my sig.
Zen Master is right with what he says, Also i would not use H2O2 throuout the grow maybe if u really want to use it once or twice at beggining of grow to clean up your system but i'm pretty sure that the H2O2 will kill all the good bacteria. Use Canna Zym.
there is only a slight difference in that the slab stuff is a little courser and wrapped in bags for the grow, (u need to put lots & lots of cuts on the bottom of the slab bags so they can drain freely) and they are kept in long rectangular trays rather than deep round pots. Its All still CANNA COCO and its the best!!!
MADAZZ
jberry
Well-Known Member
yeah thanks mate, i thought u'd like it seeing as its as fat as a mutherfucker.
cheers mate.
Madazz