If you rinse and or buffer, how do you do it and what do you use to buffer?
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I’ve tried unrinsed and rinsed. No real comparison documented but it did give peace of mind watching my water run clear as well as seeming to be a bit of an easier grow. I never did buffer but also did run into slight deficiencies. would probably be super beneficial to buffer. @DefNSmokn does some serious work in coco maybe he can give you some further insight.
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I buy the compressed bricks, that require the coco to be expanded before use. I will expand the coco in RO water with double strength PH’d calmag. After 24 hours, the coco has absorbed all the water, it should be ready from there.
I will usually follow up with a nute water rinse when i pot the coco for use afterwards, to make sure the ph is set and theres a little food for the plant already there.
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I’ve used quite a few different cheap brands and a few “good” ones. They’re all mostly nasty.
Heres what I do that might be different that others. I use a big bucket with a lot of phed water. Enough water that once the coco is broken up and soaked, it will float. When I mix my arm in it, I want to feel empty water under the floating mass. I help it break apart and soak to do this quickly. If you leave it for an hour or two and walk away good stuff will start to sink and this wont work as well. Now I can stir it up good, and let the nasty stuff sink. Then grab handfuls of floating clean coco and squeeze the water out as I put it in another bucket.
If you do that, and watch while your pouring the waste water out after, its pretty nasty whats in the bottom. Usually something like dark mud, and under that sand, and fine particles of who knows what of sometimes weird colors. Sometimes it almost looks like a small amount of powdered metal or something weird at the very bottom.
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I always rinsed out my fabric pots but never buffered… never ran in to problems and I reused coco for years
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The few times I’ve used coco, I rinse until it runs clear, then soak in water with a teaspoon per gallon of epsom salts. The magnesium is a double positive charge vs the sodium and potassium with a single positive charge. This pushes the sodium and potassium out of the coco and replaces it with magnesium. Gypsum would likely do the same thing except with calcium instead of magnesium.
This is why coco growers always need more calmag.
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I use canna coco coir
All I do is water solo to a tiny bit run off with your choice of nutrients and your good to go
Once your out of seedling stage you can water every day what ever amount needed.
I don’t buffer
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I used to soak cheap bricks in double strength calmag overnight, then rinse out the fluffy stuff trying to keep what has a coffee ground consistency. Never tried straight from the brick so I can’t say for sure how much benefit this provides.
Worth it to just get a bag of the good stuff imo.
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I stay away from cheap brick coco and dirty coco that has sticks and stems in it. Premium coco is worth its price.
I tried separating the coco in it’s 2 parts only to have very poor results. The coco must be combined to have the best results. The part that sink holds the water whereas the parts that float provided aeration.
After soaking, those bricks need to be remixed to get good results. Too much work when you can buy premium coco for a couple of extra $$$.
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I buy the cheapest bricks possible (Amazon) and soak them in a tote for like 3 or 4 hours. Then I dump the tote onto a large piece of window screen. I blast the coco through the screen with a water hose for about 30 minutes. Making sure to mix the coco around. I don’t want any coco “peat” or dirt in my mix. Then I put the coco into fabric pots and shove 2 five gallon pots in per tote. I dump 1.5 strength calmag water into the tote and cover it all. I let it soak 24 hours to buffer. Pull the pots out and let them drain on risers.
Then I mix it 50/50 with promix. Feed like coco and watch em go!
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I have always bought the loose premium buffered coco coir until last week I bought two these below. They were fairly easy to break up in the tote I used. Plain tap no buffer` fluffed up well. I just make sure and use a decent dose of Cal Mag in the tap!!! 1 teaspoon per gallon. Peace 
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Thanks everyone!
One reason why I’m going for brick over bag is because I can break the brick into small chunks and bake them in the oven to make sure there are no bugs/eggs.
Previously when I used Canna bricks I would break them up and put the chunks in the oven 8+ hours at 270°f .
I’ve heard of spring tails and worse in bagged coco AND even in bricks, but it’s easy enough to bake a brick and kill those types of pests but harder to do with a giant bag of coco.
I couldn’t get Canna bricks this time and the brick I got had no instructions… So I’ll be rinsing and buffering it assuming that it probably needs it.
Thanks for sharing your methods, I’ll be trying something based on all the advice here in less than a week.
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I have never had a problem with bugs with coco` the complete opposite actually. I am sure it can have something to do with different environments. Where I am insects avoid coco. Peace
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I’m definitely going to try this next time I use coco. both the espom salt and gypsum combo. see what happens. Thanks for this bit of info.
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This is an excellent idea, I think. When I rehydrate jiffy pellets (or bricked coco, in the past) I use boiling water and lid the container to keep the heat in, but I wished I could do better - heat wise).
How well does the baking method work? Where did you get the temperature and duration from? I might like to try it.
Edit: I’m doing it right now. The actual coco’s been over 230F for several hours now. It’s been at/over 265F for maybe a couple hours, It hit 277*F and I just recently turn the oven down from it’s set temp. The oven temp was around 340-360 Avg (I’ve been adjusting upwards over time so it’s hard to give accurate numbers for the Avg for that reason. I was just trying to get the coco temp. up). I’m using a thermoworks square dot oven thermometer.
Spring tails, and fungus gnats, absolutely. Other bugs, I wouldn’t doubt it.
Did you try it, and how did it work, if so?
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Never tried the gypsum but now when I hydrate my bricks I just add in 2g of epsom salt per gallon of water and it seems to do the trick. Probably not needed since I switched over to roots organic coco bricks. They’ve worked really well for me and are fairly cost efficient compared to others.
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