Early Resevour Change

plants are suffering a possible light case of nute burn...perhaps the light was a bit too close not sure, so i moved the light up to a lil less than 24 inches...and i need to know if

i have a scheduled resivoure change in a week and 1 day...but! i want to go ahead and run distilled water through my system overnight to try and fix my stuff.

IS IT OK TO DO A RESIVOURE CHANGE IF ITS NOT ON SCHEDULE?
if anything wouldnt it be better to do a res. change more than needed...

Basicly could doing un-needed/un-scheduled res changes hurt my plants?
Is it okay to run stright distilled water in my system for about 12 hours or will my plants suffer from not having nutes?

i am guessing old nutes are floating around in the res so if i change the res and add new nutes tomorrow...will my EC or PPM be off?

sorry for the messy presentation of this but i am rather frantic!

hmmm i am thinking of just going ahead and flushing them with distilled water over night then adding the nutes in the morning....but should i use a lil extra because of the nute lose when dumping out the old water?

screw it i did it...hope nothing bad happens :]!

sorry dude for the delay. but yes, that's fine.

you could have also tried just adding some PHed water to water down the concentration...but there's nothing wrong with what you did.

When you add nutes in the morning, don't add extra. You'll just burn the plants again. I would either use the solution you've been advised to use or even less and then gradually step it up to the recommended level.

just curious why would you hvae a resevoir change scheduled for a week and a day away? Light burn should be very easy identify. What kind of light are you using, how old are your plants?

the pH of the gallon distilled water seems to be right at yellow which looks like 6 according to my tester which is right between 5.8-6.3 so i think its all gravy!

because that would be the three week mark that foxfarm says...anyways i'm sure everything will be fine i'm gonna add a lil less than what it says :] Thanks though guys. 400watt MH and exactly 2 weeks..but they already have like 8-10 leafs

are there solutions for nute burned plants? i figure underdoing it will do less harm than overdoing it for now on...so i'm gonna go half strength for now and then keep it at 2/3 strength for the rest of the grow possibley...

You need an ec meter mate i havent gone off the measurements on the bottles for ages, i dont carefully measure anything out anymore, i just tip it in the water, then measure then add more carefully until its at the desired level. So have no idea how much i put in in relation to the instructions on the bottle

oh I see. I was just curios because most of the information I have seen encourages changing solution every week to ten days. I didn't understand it. Thanks for clearing that up. And I've tried to use that old axium, if in doubt flush it out, so I didn't understand your panic.
Sound like your plants have pretty good growth and good lighting.

I tend to agree- one could dump nutes and mix up fresh sauces every day if preferred. It certainly would not hurt anything to change up early. It'd cost a fortune in nutes, though!

I dump my nutes every 15 days. If you check your nute strength frequently, you can watch the PPM numbers drop fairly consistently through the 15 days that a batch of nutes are in the tanks. I use the PPM scale on my Truncheon meter. Right after mixing, the concentration is at about 1300-1500ppm and it drops to about 800-900ppm by day 15.

Like VV says- if in doubt, flush it out! Plants will have at least 2 weeks worth of nutrients stored, so you stand very little chance of nute deficiencies, even running on plain water for a week or two, particularly if you have fert-burned them.

i love you guys.
anyways sounds like i need me an EC/ppm meter XD!!! that is most likley my problemo... anyways they are still growing like monsters but still look a bit sad !

What is a good price or brand for an EC/ppm meter?

i have a chart that says the recomended EC levels but i have no idea about ppm...are they related?

What is a Good PPM level? i saw "Right after mixing, the concentration is at about 1300-1500ppm and it drops to about 800-900ppm by day 15. "
*is there a level of ppm i should try to maintain?

love u

The hydro shop I visit recommends the Bluelab Truncheon. Problem free and a 5 year warranty. Gives the ec reading and the ppm. A little pricey @ $150.00 but like al b said it takes all the guess work out of it. there are others available for less. This one is so easy to use and maintain. One of the few things I spent a bit of money on and I'm not sorry I did. They also have a ph meter for around $135.00

EC = electrical conductivity. It's an arbitrary number which describes how conductive the nute solution is. More nutes, the more conductive the solution. The EC number is then derived from there.

PPM = parts per million (nute salts). Tells you in parts per million the concentration of nutrient in your solution.

I don't use the EC scale, but most meters will either have both EC & PPM or will provide a conversion table in the shit sheet included with the meter.

My preferred PPM meter is NZ Hydroponics' "Truncheon." Google and ye shall find. It has no moving parts (not so much as a power switch- it automatically turns on as you put it in the solution and shuts off 5 secs after getting a stable reading, whether in water or not- great for battery life), is totally submersible/waterproof and super easy to read- just look for the blinkin' light next to the numbers on the scale. Has both EC & PPM. Not the cheapest meter, but it's also the only one you will ever have to buy. They don't break- I have been using the same one for 5+ years. Search around online for the best price in your area.

GOT to have a nute meter for hydro, just no two ways about it. However, once you get in the groove, you may find that your nute stregth comes out the same every time you mix up. Once you know how many ml's of nute solution to add to a full tank of water to get a given EC or PPM concentration, it should indeed come out the same every time.

I do start out at about 1300-1500ppm and dump the tanks when they read 800-900ppm after being topped up with plain water. You should not monkey around with trying to maintain a specific ppm over a 2-week life of a tank of sauce. It's good enough for it to just stay within a range, as mine does. Adding nutes between mixing up whole tanks of sauce is not needed and invites accidental overfertilising.

my res. right now a little less than a gallon....is that not good for 3 plants ?

anyways i'm going up to the hydro store tomm! thanks brosifs

you must be doing drip irrigation. ebb and flow takes a much larger res.

yessir. the aerogarden (its really small) but is a pretty effective awesome drip system :O! (first system i have used and i love it) i can see possible crowding problems...but i dunno

Al B. Fuct said:

I do start out at about 1300-1500ppm and dump the tanks when they read 800-900ppm after being topped up with plain water. You should not monkey around with trying to maintain a specific ppm over a 2-week life of a tank of sauce. It's good enough for it to just stay within a range, as mine does. Adding nutes between mixing up whole tanks of sauce is not needed and invites accidental overfertilising.

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I myself change my nutes every 10 days... Yet at day 1 I will add X amount (1400ppm 2.2EC Hannah) then at day beginning of day 6 a add 1/2X, which brings me close to the beginning! (check EC before adding soup) you dont want to over fert.

yeah, I change nutes every 2 weeks.

the reason we were all freaking out about you dumping the res is that means around $20-100 lost nutes to many people on here. My res is usually filled to 15 gallons. Lots of lost nutes.

mine takes like a tea spoon ;P

420penguin said:

the reason we were all freaking out about you dumping the res is that means around $20-100 lost nutes to many people on here. My res is usually filled to 15 gallons. Lots of lost nutes.

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Same here. I have 4x 125 litre (33 gal) and 1x 50 litre (13 gal) tanks. 375ml Canna Flores 'A' and 'B' in each 125L tank. 5L pairs of Canna Flores are around $80, so 375ml is $6 per tank per dump. Then there's PK-13-14 and hydrogen peroxide... I reckon each tank is worth about $10-12 in magic sauces and tapwater.

plus, the complete pain in the ass of a res change!