What Do You Think? With A Couple Questions

Hello everyone out there. I was just posting some pics for some who have helped me through this grow and just to get a general idea of what everyone thought about the plants and set up. I'm pretty proud of these little babies.





Front 8 strawberry cough. Back 8 Og Kush.

Sorry for quality and size. The light messes with the camera, and I was a little to lazy to re size.

Set up is as Follows:

4x4 Tray Ebb and flow
40 Gal Res
1000w MH (with a 1000w HPS for flower, when that comes around)
Air pump with two air stones in res
Circulating pump inside res to keep water flowing at all times
Flora Duo A&B with Floralicious
AC controlled (temps go from 70-75)
Res temp in the 70's
Humidity from 45-55%

Quick question about ph. Can adding to much PH down to the res be a problem for the plants, and is it normal for the Ph to spike from a 5.3 to a 6.3 in a day? Also what is ideal PH for the plants for optimum nutrient uptake? Also sorry to be a bother again with another question. We water 4 times a day, every 6 hours. Is that enough for how big the plants are or should we add more? The plants are drinking a lot of water right now to the point were its actually draining the res. Any and all help/suggestions are very much appreciated and taken to consideration. Thank you ahead of time.

View attachment 1675318

one question down...

great start...nice and clean!

I like how your grow is looking m8! +rep

i think they loook nice!

Thank you for that chart that helps a lot.

Anyone else out there that can answer my questions? Please and thank you?

How big should you let them get before flowering for optimal yield?!

What kind of water are you using?

ok well not going to be able to give you any pointers on watering schedule's unless you tell us what your growing in (RW, hydroton, etc etc...) if using straight RW cubes in the tray your schedule sounds fine, i run my veg room at 24/0 with floros and RW in the tray and it works good i also put rapid rooter trays underneath my rockwools (in between the tray and the cube) to help break the water tension and lets the cubes drain much faster and the roots can come out the bottom of the cube with no problem, for the ph, what do you have your nutes at?? if it is at a low ppm or ec this could be why your ph spikes as the nutrients in the water help to buffer the ph. thats what i got just off the top of my head lol.

Using rockwool as the medium 6" cubes. The nutrients are only at 1/4 strength right now, so low ppm. Why would the nutrients be the problem with the ph spike? something like plants sucking up the nutrients and only leaving the water behind?

yeah i think the ppm is what is throwing off the ph.... when we had a ppm (borrowed one form a friend) we were able to keep the ph ALOT more steady! ..... and i think it would just be ppm .... meaning the ratios are off between the water and nutes?

Your ppm is probably causing the ph spike because it is so low. Say your ppm is 1500, ideally it should steadily drop to about 600-700 by the end of the week when you are ready for rez change/top off. I'm assuming your ppm is so low, and your plants are so large, that they are eating all available food quite quickly. Considering the higher the ppm, the lower the ph, you obviously can deduce that it is an inverse relationship and as your plants eat, the ph slowly goes back up. Definitely give them some more food, even full strength. You will be amazed at the results. Btw, as your system gets established and your plants go into flower, your ph will stabilize and stop swinging around as well.

^^^^agreed^^^^
now a ph swing is not bad in veg i like it actually (nothing extreme though) if you take a look at the ph chart on page 1 you can see more nutes are readily available at different ph ranges, what i like to do is set ph low (5.5) when res is first changed/filled with new solution then i keep a eye on it as i dont like a major swing usually less than 1 point but in the end of the week i like it to be around 6.2-6.3 as there are other nutrients more available at this point.

during the veg cycle what should the ppm be at? we had it in the 600-700 range (1/4 strength). should it be higher up in the 1000-1200 range for veg then 1400-1600 for flower? so that means the ppm would drop very low due to the plants taking nutrients up and the fast/high ph spike? and leaving little to no nutrients left in the reservoir? I have heard using full strength nutrients is not good, that it will just nutrient burn the crap out of the plants. Would it be ok to use 1/2 or even 3/4 strength? or 1/2 for the rest of the veg cycle and then 3/4 for flower? so do you just add more nutrients to the res without a change when the ppm drops? or wait till the end of week and add everything then? also drgreen should the ph go from 5.5 to 6.3 over a weeks time or a daily thing?

anyone got any more suggestions?