RDWC fine tuning

So I'm a new grower with 4 runs completed in my diy rdwc.Im on day 40 of my next grow. The thing that I have to the most questions about are ppm and ph in flower. It seems the more I read the more I change stuff to no good result. Not saying I've had horrible harvests but I've never had a healthier run than my very 1st where I feel I didn't know as much as I know now.

Anyway, in veg my ppms usually lower and ph raise through out the week. I usually set my ph at 5.8 or close to it and let it rise to about 6.3. Temps right now are around 80 to 81 lights on and 70 to 75 lights off rh around 60s.

So my question is why after a refill my ppm are around 950ish ph around 6. After a day or two... they've drank a lot of water and the ppm have raised to say 1020. Ph more or less stays the same or raises a few points.

If my starting ppm was lower say 800 in two days the ppm would be 1100.

Are the plants telling me I need more food in my system or is it normal when water level goes down ppm raise .I just have to adjust it back to my starting ppm.

by the looks of the tip burn on pic 4, you've been overfeeding.

try going down to 600ppm and see what happens. i'll bet they drink even more and your ppms will drop

plants gradually eat less toward the end of their lives. looks to me like this is whats going on here- they are drinking more than they are eating, which generally is a signal to dilute your nutrient solution. add clean water to your system until you get 100 ppm (or .2 ec) lower than where you started and go from there
also switch to ec, ppm is bunk

rkymtnman said:

by the looks of the tip burn on pic 4, you've been overfeeding.

try going down to 600ppm and see what happens. i'll bet they drink even more and your ppms will drop

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So this round I only lollipopped so this burn could have been from weeks ago when I let the water level go too low and when I checks were at 1300 ppm.. at the time I was feeding around 850 with a full system. I'll do another res change and lower it. What if it goes up even at 600.. what could be the problem then? If the plant is leaching nutes to balance the water does that mean there isn't enough nutrients in solution?

thenasty1 said:

plants gradually eat less toward the end of their lives. looks to me like this is whats going on here- they are drinking more than they are eating, which generally is a signal to dilute your nutrient solution. add clean water to your system until you get 100 ppm (or .2 ec) lower than where you started and go from there
also switch to ec, ppm is bunk

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Yea I'm at day 40 and going to take them 60 65 days.. this stage is always tricky to me. There is only 5 plants in these pics. 2 on one side and 3 on the side of the tip burn.

rkymtnman said:

by the looks of the tip burn on pic 4, you've been overfeeding.

try going down to 600ppm and see what happens. i'll bet they drink even more and your ppms will drop

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Does the size of the plants matter because in that system it's only 3 plants.

Rdot03 said:

What if it goes up even at 600

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if it goes up at 600, then you are probably nute locked. which would need a flush of maybe 12 or 24 hours with plain water and then start back even lower than 600 and slowly go up.

i don't think you are locked right now cause your water level is dropping. generally lockout is not eating and drinking

Rdot03 said:

If the plant is leaching nutes to balance the water does that mean there isn't enough nutrients in solution?

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yeah, that's on that chart that people put up here. i don't agree with it. in my experience, if ppms go up, you are overfeeding them.

rkymtnman said:

yeah, that's on that chart that people put up here. i don't agree with it. in my experience, if ppms go up, you are overfeeding them.

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I'm adding around 10 gals every day or so, so that could explain the numbers always rising. I usually check morning to morning or morning and night. I'd at a loss... I'm just a few weeks out from harvest..

Rdot03 said:

I'm adding around 10 gals every day or so

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of water or water+nutes?

rkymtnman said:

of water or water+nutes?

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A mix.. if I see it went up 100 points I'd add more water than nutes to lower concentration

Rdot03 said:

A mix.. if I see it went up 100 points I'd add more water than nutes to lower concentration

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like i said, i'd either add a bunch of water to get it down to 600 or do a res change at 600 and post up the results tomorrow or the next day. you won't be starving them at 600 i guarantee.

rkymtnman said:

like i said, i'd either add a bunch of water to get it down to 600 or do a res change at 600 and post up the results tomorrow or the next day. you won't be starving them at 600 i guarantee.

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Ok I'll give it a shot

if water level is dropping and ppm rising its drinking more than eating just put pure water in it to lower ppm.but if the same solutions is inside more than 5 days i would do full change of nutes.

Ok quick update.. I didn't want to drop my ppm to 600 so I added 15gal of Ph'd water which dropped the ppm from 1050 to around 790.. after 24 hrs my ph dropped from 5.8 to 5.0.. so I added 10 gals. PhD to 6.4 and ppm around 1050 brought the ppm back up to 1000 and ph to 5.6 everything began to stabilize. So in wk 7 I'm around 1000 ppm and ph around 6.

The damage you see is from previous weeks but overall the bud structure looks great, and the damage is only on the top level if you drop down 2 or 3 inches in the canopy rhe leaves are green.