my only qestion I have is what are the ppms for your trays? Right through eg clones=0ppm tray one=***ppm,tray two=***ppm,tray three=***ppm,tray four=***ppm?? Oh and how low do you think any one could run the nutes on the mothers??
Just to reiterate YOU ARE THE MAN!!
Thanks for the praise.
All my flowering plants run at 1000ppm. Mother plants run at about 1200; they're under 24/7 light and don't mind the stronger nutes. I spoze they could run at about 800, tho.
* Chlorinated municipal tap water is fine for hydroponics. Fancy water filtration systems are completely unnecessary. Chlorine, in the amounts applied by muni water treatment plants, is completely harmless to plants and people. High TDS readings from 'hard' water are caused primarily by dissolved minerals like Ca and Mg, both of which are necessary micronutrients. Any water suitable for drinking is excellent for hydroponics. The only reason one would ever have to ever use expensive RO or filtration systems is if one is sourcing water from a local bore/well, where water may contain high levels of salinity or sulfur. In 25 years of growing dope, I've never once seen tapwater from a municipal system cause problems in a hydroponic grow op.
does this apply for outdoor soil as well.
if so this paragraph is going to save me a lot of money and time.
Yep, outdoor plants will do fine with muni tapwater. My veg garden does fine with tapwater during those times when there hasn't been enough rain.
al thanks alot for answering everyones questions. i have some questions for you if you dont mind. theres alot but ive been trying to figure this stuff out for months so im hoping you can help me out
im running an ebb and flow system using 4'' squared rockwool cubes and i have a serious fungus gnats problem that i cant get rid of. what would you do to get rid of them for good or at least make it so there not powerful enough to effect a crop? im thinking its a great idea to start spreading Diatomaceous Earth on top of each cube
Get some yellow sticky card traps; they will trap enough of the adults that it will put a dent in their reproductive cycle.
can gnatrol be combined with h202 in the res? that would be a great duo to get rid of fungus gnats
From what I can find out about Gnatrol, it's an organic-based goo. If so, it's not compatible with H2O2. H2O2 doesn't have any effect on gnats beyond killing fungus & thus eliminating their food source.
can i run h202 with rock supercharge root tonic? im not sure whats in it but its a similar product to home & gardens root excelerator
theres a person similar to you on another forum that i go to for advice and i consider him almost an expert when it comes to nutrients and growing in general. he told me that it was ok to combine hygrozyme and h202 because he says theres nothing alive to kill in hygrozyme. i read earlier in this thread that you said they cant be combined. what are your thought on this and are you 100% sure there not compatible?
Hygrozyme is an enzymatic agent. Enzymes are proteins. H2O2 will break down proteins- they're organic matter.
im noticing alot of green algea in my res and its totally uncovered. since im using a water chiller can i cover the res to get rid of the algea?
Block the light getting to your rez. When you change nute solns, clean the tank with a 10% bleach/90% water solution with a few drops of dish soap added as a wetting agent.
do you use a water chiller or just run the h202 without it? what is your res temp?
and probably the most important question of all. i cant figure out for the life of me when i should be uping my nutes in flower. i do sea of green with no veg. is there a way to figure out when to up nutes by looking at what the ppm in the res is doing? ive never finished a crop without some tip burn 3-4 weeks in. ive heard alot of people say that if the ppm goes up when res gets depleated then your overfeeding and if the ppm goes down as res gets depleated then you have to up nutes. they say you want the ppm to stay the same as the res goes down. this didnt make sense to me because they were talking about without topping off. ive never had my ppm not go up as the res goes down ever. i cant start my plants with more than 300 ppm or else i get tip burn but i dont know how to tell when to increase nutes after that. and trust me i cant start my plants at 1000ppm like you, i think its cause it depends on the type of nutes your using and im using advanced nutrients. what are your thoughts on this?
The concentration in the tank over the life of a batch of nutes varies by a couple of factors; what nutes the plants eat and the ratio of water to nutrients in the tank. Water exits via transpiration through the plants and through direct evaporation from the tank & media. If your tank is too small for the number of plants you're running, the ppm will tend to rise over the several days after you mix a fresh batch. What's happening is the ratio of water:nutes is changing as a result of water used by the plants and lost through evaporation. The plants are not eating the nutes as fast as they can can consume water, increasing the concentration of nutes in solution. I've found that about 5L of tank volume per plant, using a 1000ppm concentration, is about ideal. The plants will eat nutes as a similar comparative rate to their water usage and thus, the ppm will stay pretty close to 1000ppm, even as the tank level drops.
1000 isn't terribly strong, but it's enough to supply all that the plant will demand. That's why I can get away with running all tanks at 1000, even the one for the newest clones. Bear in mind that clones are mature plants from the get-go- you've just given the plant a new root system in the cloning process. I would not hit a SEEDLING with 1000, but clones do just fine.