I have been growing in a RDWC for a while now and I know a bit more than the average guy. I am heading into week 5 of flower and everything looks terrific, as far as the leaves, buds, stems, etc. (I can post pictures if needed). But there has been something that's been really bothering me lately and its the rising ppm. Everything had been going smooth up until about the 3rd week of flower when I decided to add A LOT of nutes because of how big my plants were getting. My buddy told me that the strain that he gave me (Sour Kush), loves nutrients and that I can keep feeding them because they have a high threshold for it. I use Dutchmaster Flower A&B as my base nutrients, and when I added them in week 3, it was about 200ml of each part. I know that sounds like kind of a lot, but my system holds almost 120 gallons of water, and adding that much nutrients raises the ppms about 600-700 each time. I know that when water levels go down and so do the ppms, that means they need more nutes, and that if the ppm rises, you're giving them too much. So that after week 3 I noticed that the ppms were rising day by day.
I thought a good way of solving the problem would be by letting my plants drink up as much water as they can so that when there was only about 1/4 of the water left in my system, I would pour in all that new water and dilute the hell out of it. Well, twice now I've done that. Both times I added all that water and the ppms were still almost 1000!! I'm talking about 90-100 gallons of water and its like nothing diluted!!
Don't get me wrong. The plants still look fantastic, but I know that this is not normal. I've been reading everywhere about how/why this could possibly be happening and I've found nothing. It almost seems like the plants are getting all this fresh water, but releasing so much nutes that I cant even add anymore. At this stage in flowering, I would like them to be at 1200-1300. I will give you guys a good idea of what nutes and how much I use when i go to add them in at this stage:
125ml(each) of Dutchmaster flower a&b
100ml of Ginormous
125ml of Silica Blast
100ml of Sweet Raw
3-4 scoops of Great White
4-5 scoops of BigUp Powder
One last thing. I know many people will tell me how ill advised it is that I NEVER fully change out my water, rather I just top them off, but that is how I've been doing it for years and I've never had problems. People on here will say "don't be lazy, just shop vac all that water out/get a pump and let it run out into a drain". Well, with the way my room is setup, and how enormous my plants are, that is nearly next to impossible. It's a miracle that I can even get the garden hose in there to put tap water in. Let me know if there is anything I can buy or do to completely cleanse my system(or plants) of locked up nutrients. Maybe H202? I don't know, I just want good advice from whoever can help without damaging my crop. Thanks!
I thought a good way of solving the problem would be by letting my plants drink up as much water as they can so that when there was only about 1/4 of the water left in my system, I would pour in all that new water and dilute the hell out of it. Well, twice now I've done that. Both times I added all that water and the ppms were still almost 1000!! I'm talking about 90-100 gallons of water and its like nothing diluted!!
Don't get me wrong. The plants still look fantastic, but I know that this is not normal. I've been reading everywhere about how/why this could possibly be happening and I've found nothing. It almost seems like the plants are getting all this fresh water, but releasing so much nutes that I cant even add anymore. At this stage in flowering, I would like them to be at 1200-1300. I will give you guys a good idea of what nutes and how much I use when i go to add them in at this stage:
125ml(each) of Dutchmaster flower a&b
100ml of Ginormous
125ml of Silica Blast
100ml of Sweet Raw
3-4 scoops of Great White
4-5 scoops of BigUp Powder
One last thing. I know many people will tell me how ill advised it is that I NEVER fully change out my water, rather I just top them off, but that is how I've been doing it for years and I've never had problems. People on here will say "don't be lazy, just shop vac all that water out/get a pump and let it run out into a drain". Well, with the way my room is setup, and how enormous my plants are, that is nearly next to impossible. It's a miracle that I can even get the garden hose in there to put tap water in. Let me know if there is anything I can buy or do to completely cleanse my system(or plants) of locked up nutrients. Maybe H202? I don't know, I just want good advice from whoever can help without damaging my crop. Thanks!
