Nute Question Please Help!

hey guys im using an ebb n flow right now and im gonna start nuts in a week or so i put regular distilled water in my res 10 gal and tested it the readin showed up 58ppm and tested it again and it was 61ppm now i thought regular water in 0ppm

should i just start out with like 250 ppm

why is it 58ppm already with no nutes?

fosset water is not 0 ppm, distilled/RO water is usually 0-1ppm.

if you used distilled and have this ppm, either it's bad distilled water (not distilled), or im going to say you didnt rinse of your hydroton pebbles before you used them and have clay powder in your water now.

I did rinse them and i also rinsed the res today I also put distilled water in a little tupaware and tested it and got 256ppm so i think my meter is off i ordered calibration solution i still see some build up from the hydroton in my tray but i rinsed the hell out of it should i get all that residue off the tray the water in the red is clear

I would think that distilled water with no impurities or dissolved minerals would read zero ppm. What does your meter say for your plain tapwater?

Minerals dissolved in normal tapwater will show up on a ppm meter as any impurity increases the electrical conductivity of water. Depends on your locality and their source of water- areas which get their water mainly from wells or bores may have 'hard' water with a lot of dissolved minerals.

I run my tanks at about 1300-1500ppm. 58ppm by comparison is 'noise,' fairly insignificant compared to the amount of dissolved mineral salts in a properly mixed tank of nutes.

My plain tapwater reads about 125-200ppm. I haven't got any distilled water handy to see what my Truncheon meter thinks of that, but when I get my dehumidifier going again, I'll have a look.

yeah its regular distilled water i just bought the calibration solution so im gonna wait to calibrate the meter then try how long do you think i should wait before i put the nutes in

You can start giving your plants nutes as soon as they have roots. Some ppl advocate ramping up the nute strength slowly, but I don't bother. Soon as my cuttings set root, I chuck them in the flowering area on 1300ppm flowering nutes or put them in the veg area to become new mother plants, where they are getting veg nutes at about 1000-1300ppm.

And while we're on the topic, distilled water isn't necessary for your op. You can use plain ol' ordinary tap water.

Be prepared for your ppm & pH measurements of common tap water to wander a little bit (won't be much, may even be within the error range of your meter) as water quality changes and as water utility treatments change. Utils which depend on reservoir, river or lake water will add a little more chlorine than usual after heavy rains as a bunch of shit (literally) is washed out of catchments into reservoirs.

Whatever high-tech growing stuff you get up to, remember that cannabis is a WEED. It doesn't really need a lot of coddling and babying with complicated or expensive techniques. RO & distilled water are all well and good, but really not necessary for a grow op. There's nothing in tap water that's going to hurt your plants, chlorination included.

my tap water is aroun 100-200 ppm right out the tap.I started my new clones in veg at 850-900 ppm and will go to 1200 on week 2.

my regular 10 gal res is showin 200ppm right now my plants are 1 week old and growing their 2nd leaves should i add nuts and what ppm this is my first grow any help would be awesome

Be sure you have calibrated your meter using a known value test solution before launching into playing with nutrient mixes.

For very young plants just grown from seed, I'd give them a mix of about 800ppm (which includes the residual mineral salts reading you are getting from your plain water) for a few weeks before bumping them up to 1300-1500ppm.

Mix your nutes into the tank water (keeping two or three part nutrients separated until they are mixed into tank water- stir tanks thoroughly before adding the second/third part of the nutrient mixes), then check pH. pH should run at about 5.5-5.8 +/- 0.2. There's a good chance that your pH will be higher rather than lower. When adjusting pH for vegging plants, use a nitric acid based 'pH Down' adjustment solution. This will break down into nitrogen, which your vegging plants will love. When adjusting pH for flowering plants, use a phosphoric acid based 'pH Down' adjustment solution. Flowering plants will like the added phosphorus. You probably won't need any 'pH Up' adjuster but it's handy to have if you have accidentally overcorrected the pH too far down. Beats dumping a tank and starting over.

Remember, when adjusting pH, you will be adding relatively tiny amounts of pH adjuster solutions, on the order of about 20ml in a 100L tank.

bit more detail....

In terms of exactly how much nutrient to add to the tank water, it's better to start with a weak solution and add more nutes to bring the ppm to the level it should be at. You can't take nutrients out if you mix a tank too strong. All you can do is dump part of the tank and add water until the ppm comes down to where you need it to be. Wasteful and expensive!

I use Canna 2-part nutrients. My standard mix is 375ml "part A" and 375ml "part B" in a 100L reservoir. Should yield a tank at 1300-1500ppm depending upon residual mineral salt content of the make-up water.