Convince me I need to drain and replinish every week.

I have a little 6 gal DWC in a plastic tote with 3 female AK-48's (12"-14") going into preflower under hps. I have airstones, etc...I flushed before I went 12/12 and that's been 7 days today. I use AN 3 pt nutes & r/o water and NO additional additives. My pH is rock solid at 5.8 and water & room temps are in range. I have maintained ppm's, etc and added ph'd water and they are doing great.
According to many folks I should flush now and every week until they finish. I'm thinking they could go longer since they look great.
What do you think? How often would you flush a small tank?

Your rez being only 6 gals with three girls in flower I would imagine most the water will be taken up from the girls.

If not I would do a res change atleast every two weeks. Just smell the water eventually it gets nasty.

I add water back and replinish nutes as needed....Smells like Alfalfa....thx

Nobody else has an opinion on this???? Please folks, chime in here. Help out a bud.

Im running 6x site dwc's and I do not change them at all, just top up with nutes and water as needed. Im using the lucas formula and using this you dont have to dump your res at all, even when going from veg to flower. If you keep the res clean,cool and light-proof you dont have to dump it.

ever cut off any limbs in any farming accidents?

In flower I change my water no sooner than 7 days and no longer than 2 weeks. I measure the PPM levels at least once per day and use the accumulated data to decide when to change. If the plants are feeding very heavy I might change early. 10 days is my average for a 6 gal res. After two weeks your chemistry is most likely going to start drifting out of balance, especially if your keeping Ph levels ect in check. After all, the better your plants are growing the more likely they are depleting the nutes and throwing off the balance. Some strains care about this more than others. Also consider that plants excrete waste/excess like everything else, most of which is shed via the roots.

For mothers/veg I can easily go a month between changes.

Heisenberg said:

In flower I change my water no sooner than 7 days and no longer than 2 weeks. I measure the PPM levels at least once per day and use the accumulated data to decide when to change. If the plants are feeding very heavy I might change early. 10 days is my average for a 6 gal res. After two weeks your chemistry is most likely going to start drifting out of balance, especially if your keeping Ph levels ect in check. After all, the better your plants are growing the more likely they are depleting the nutes and throwing off the balance. Some strains care about this more than others. Also consider that plants excrete waste/excess like everything else, most of which is shed via the roots.

For mothers/veg I can easily go a month between changes.

Click to expand...

What he says! Plants shit just like humans do so consider that. I do run to waste so I clean them every 7 days. I always have some sort of build up at the bottom of my coolers anyways.

Paints - You nuts. What r u smoking????

I think I'll try every 2 weeks unless I see problems looming... thanks for all the great responses....HGH

i go for 15-20 days but i have a 50gal tank, i dont like to wait for deficiencies, cost of ferts is really negligible compared to price of weed

HomeGrownHairy said:

I have a little 6 gal DWC in a plastic tote with 3 female AK-48's (12"-14") going into preflower under hps. I have airstones, etc...I flushed before I went 12/12 and that's been 7 days today. I use AN 3 pt nutes & r/o water and NO additional additives. My pH is rock solid at 5.8 and water & room temps are in range. I have maintained ppm's, etc and added ph'd water and they are doing great.
According to many folks I should flush now and every week until they finish. I'm thinking they could go longer since they look great.
What do you think? How often would you flush a small tank?

Click to expand...

I usually don't change until 2 weeks sometimes 3 but I've got 20 gallons. My thinking is this: You can check the ppms, you can check the ph, but there is no way to know that after 2 weeks the n-p-k ratio is still the same as when you first mixed it. Good luck and happy growing.

True, dat!

Why wait over a week? The reason everyone says a week is because they have determined that is the average time that a plant can easily absorb the soluble nutrients in your hydroponic fertilizer. Certain minerals and metals will precipitate out of your solution after a given amount of time. Iron/magnesium being the one of the quickest. That' why magnesium deficiencies are so common in hydro. So after 7-10 days the nutrient mix becomes unbalanced. You want the proper percentages available AT ALL TIMES to the plant for maximum yield.

And what's up HGH, long time no see, lol

I try for every week, but I like to have some schedule. My recommendation to you is to use Cal/Mag, you're using R/O water, you will show signs of deficiency in another week or two, those little necrotic spots on the leaves. Don't think it's another def. and nute the hell out of them, that will only make it worse. As far as 6 gallons for 3 plants, I have mine in five gallon buckets, with about 4 gallons in them, and I'm continuously topping off with 1/2 to 1 gallon of water each day, for each plant, so to think that you can keep your NPK ratios in check over 2-3 weeks with a 6 gallons res is going to be a lot of work. It will be easier to just change it out when you've added back 6 gallons of water total.

i do every 2 weeks veg an then every week in flower i drain all but about 3" in bottom of buckets, i use a 50gallon spare res that was ment to be used for auto top up but have not brought float valve yet so i fill it up oxy the water ph it add nutes etc at the end of the week drain my buckets an fill with fresh, i think its good to let it sit gives it time to bring water to room temp as my water comes out the tap at 10 degrees 40 c, water is 7.6 straight tap an 325ppm so i fill res up ph to 7.0 leave for 1 hour then add DM zone leave for another 30-45 mins then add base nute A let that sit for another 30 mins then add part B leave for another 30 mins after that i then ph to 5.4 an thats it ph stays rock solid increasing over 2 weeks by .4 .5 to go to 5.8 ec stays at 1.0 throughout 2 weeks here's what i go by
Ec goes up, PH goes down=plants require less nutes.
Ec goes down, PH goes up=Plants require more nutes
Ec stable, PH goes up=Equilibrium=Good thang.
peace my man uk love

I fill mt 40L tote up on a saturday, give it nutes, ph it, and then i will leave it be till around thursday where i add a touch of water just to keep the roots healthy, and then on saturday i empty and repeat. I don't ever flush until the end, and even then that's a maybe. Adding nutes to half empty tanks can cause buildups of unwanted elements.

tip top toker said:

I fill mt 40L tote up on a saturday, give it nutes, ph it, and then i will leave it be till around thursday where i add a touch of water just to keep the roots healthy, and then on saturday i empty and repeat. I don't ever flush until the end, and even then that's a maybe. Adding nutes to half empty tanks can cause buildups of unwanted elements.

Click to expand...

i never new that i was under the impression that you want to keep some of your water in your system in bottom of dwc buckets or other res to keep certain colonies just the same way when you do aquarium change they do the same keep some of the water then fill the fresh what unwanted elements are you on about bacteria or nutes fungi???

just talking the nutes. NP and K. If a plant drinks half it's reseroir, there is no way of knowing that there is still the same ratio of N to P to K in that half reservoir. Halfway through it could be that the plant has used 7% of both the N and P but only 10% of the K, meaning you have a good abundance of K in that 1/2 reservoir. If you simply top back up with water and nutes, for example the LUCAS formular, then unknown to you you could then dned up with a full tank which now has a huge abundance of unwanted K and a lower than last time amount of N and P due to the abundance of K, in order to have the required levels of N and P, you'd need to bump up the PPM a fair bit, but it's all rather complicated to do as we have no idea on what the composition of the res is halfway through. People have showhn that it is perfectly possible to just top up as you go along, but i personally play it safe and just give them a new batch of water and nutes each week.

sorry reread again do you mean that you made a fresh bath of nutes your ladies drink half an then you add more nutes in the half empty tank i think thats it sorry man i am well cooked i know now

tip top toker said:

just talking the nutes. NP and K. If a plant drinks half it's reseroir, there is no way of knowing that there is still the same ratio of N to P to K in that half reservoir. Halfway through it could be that the plant has used 7% of both the N and P but only 10% of the K, meaning you have a good abundance of K in that 1/2 reservoir. If you simply top back up with water and nutes, for example the LUCAS formular, then unknown to you you could then dned up with a full tank which now has a huge abundance of unwanted K and a lower than last time amount of N and P due to the abundance of K, in order to have the required levels of N and P, you'd need to bump up the PPM a fair bit, but it's all rather complicated to do as we have no idea on what the composition of the res is halfway through. People have showhn that it is perfectly possible to just top up as you go along, but i personally play it safe and just give them a new batch of water and nutes each week.

Click to expand...

i follow you i drain all my water out bar about 2"- 3" of water left in the bottom an then fill with fresh water nute soup, i dont add more nutes to half empty tanks
i understand that the plants in veg are going to use more n then k or vice versa thus not knowing which amounts of npk are left, i was told it best to keep just a little of water in the bottom just to keep good colonies if any in there obviously if there is probs drain whole lot scrub an refill love this site ya learn so much.