I was putting it down to our tap water being a bit sh*t bro. It comes out at between 8.6 & 8.8 and i have seen 9 a few times. I let it sit for 2 days before using it and it usually drops to between 7.6 & 7.8. Think i’ll get an RO unit with a remin cartridge at some point, they are getting quite cheap these days. Our tap water has almost no calcium or magnesium but still has an ec of 0.2. Probably a load of unusable stuff in there to keep the ph high. They do that to reduce corrosion in the water system apparently.
You would expect an alkali to calcify though and still require as much maintenance. Would it not make sense to try get it out neutral lol. RO might be the way. Then you can go full stick with the AN. Plants seek to take more under led anyway?
lol the water authoritys move in mysterious and apparently unaccountable ways eh bro. They dump in Aluminium Sulphate (Alum) along with Chlorine, if your lucky. If your unlucky they will use Chloramine which takes 3 weeks or more to dissipate
I’m also finding increased uptake with led’s bro. Closest i have seen to full on sunlight for growth rate too. I remember a plant that went from 8 inches to over 3 feet in 18 days outside during a heatwave
I use RO water only. It works better than tap water but not perfectly. But it.definetly holds the pH much better I water every two days and pH raise is only 0.2 - 0,3. From 5,7 to 6,0.
Thanks mate it’s nice to have your input. I’m not new to hydroponics but this is my first go with coco. As far as i can tell you can use it like peat compost letting it almost dry out between feeds or you can flood it daily when plants are big enough to use enough of it. Hydroponics in a fairly stable organic medium eh, think i’ll try a hempy bucket or 2 alongside the airpots for a comparison. Need to get some pearlite for the bottom of the buckets though, works better apparently
Well I never let my Coco dry out I Just water every two days and the Coco is wet for 10 weeks I dont even Have any perlite or hydroton on the bottom. I always had but I forgot to buy any so I didnt use it and they grow Just as good as without But I Have a White grid Under them so they dont sit on the flat ground
Are you doing hempy buckets or plain pots? Hempy is now using a layer of pearlite in the bottom (res) area to just above the drain hole, then coco. Sounds like a good way to avoid over saturation of the coco in the buckets eh. I’m tempted
Made a better intake fan for her wee auto tent today, the old one was surprisingly noisy late at night. I used a Noctua-NF-S12B-redux-700 cos it’s the quietest fan i could find.I had to cut the corners off it though so it’s warranty is now kaput
Showing signs on her blackberry auto and one of my satori regs of ph issues so they all got a good flush with an ec of 1 and i didn’t adjust the ph this time even though it was still 6.6-6.7 after adding the nutes. I’m going on faith in the sensi ph perfect to do what the makers claim cos the conventional approach just isn’t working
The 2 red/blue x1 strips turned up today (many thanks @anon58740919) so i got them fitted now and doing their thing. Plants while improved still have curled leaves, they look similar to plants in dirt that have just been watered. Not sure if this is because of previous ph issues or just a coco related thing.
They were fed again yesterday with an ec of 0.9, that should be ok but i might try lowering it a little next time to around 0.8.
Check the roots coming from the bottom of your pots bro. They fill pots so much faster in Coco. So much faster. I tend to get the floppy leaf edges when the flow through the pots isn’t too good due to binding. Other than that bro they are looking well. Make sure you get at least 20% run off from each pot too in Coco. (MAKE SURE) AN leaves a salty deposit if not and that will cause lockout pH issues. You may aswell run solstrips UK bro your rigs the bollocks…again
Hey @Albannach nice looking plants you have there, canopy is quite level too…
And killer rig too mate…
I didn’t think your grow pics/log would’ve been on this thread, i thought it was just your led building thread lol…
Happy growing ,
Gaz
Cheers Cola but i recon your doing ok and that guy Baudelaire seems to like you bro, well he speaks to you anyway lol. I always feed them to runoff, i don’t measure it but it’s probably been at least 20%. I’ll switch them to 12/12 tomorrow for 3 days then back to 18hr day so i can identify the males and veg the females for a week or so longer
Thanks pal i’m trying to keep all my stuff in one place, for now anyway. Forum mods don’t usually like it when members create multiple posts, especially recent members. Also i’m no diary keeper, the only things i do with regularity is get up and get stoned
The plants still arn’t looking too happy, ph issues not resolved so i’m thinking those AN nutes don’t work well with our tap water. I had a hunt and found an almost full bottle of ionic grow, about 1 year old but it looks ok so a big flush with 0.7 ec (inc 0.5ml/l calmag) ph 5.8. Got a runoff ec of 0.65 at 5.9 so it’s not been overfeeding to blame eh. I’ll take some pics tomorrow. A
I still hoping i can recover them ok but those AN nutes just dont seem to suit our tap water here.
I sneaked a few pics of the missis wee auto tent to show the damage there. The blackberry auto (middle) got flushed with ionic yesterday and is already picking up.
I changed up her outlet duct from 4" to 5" today to help reduce the roar from it when running hard.
Some pics of a control unit i made yesterday, it’s actually for a pals winery but it could easily control a decent sized grow.
The extra relay allows up to 30A of heating load and the inbuilt relay can handle up to a 20A ventilation load.
Fancy shaped wiring and everything you crack me up bro. Nice work btw. Again btw. Btw
lol cheers bro, there is a couple of 30A terminal block busbars still to fit in there for the returns and earths which are all common. I’ll do that when i install the thing. I started out with good intentions with the wiring but it took longer than i thought it would as usual and by the time i did the heavy 4mm stuff i had kind of lost patience. I just wanted it to be functional and finished