Hello coco growers. I’m wondering how does everyone who grows in coco coir dilute they’re nutes to hit target ppm/ec? On the coco for cannabis website, it says to mix nutes full strength, and dilute with cal/mag water. The reason behind this, is because the nute companies expect you to mix full strength, and dilute to target ec, so the plants receive the proper NER, or nutrient element ratio. They say Not doing so could cause deficiencies. They say to Dilute with calmag water, as to not upset the cal/mag cation exchange. What’s everyones take on this? Sure would save a lot of time and money to just mix enough nutes to hit target ppm/ec, but I don’t want to run into issues by not providing the proper dosage. What do the OG coco growers say?
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When I was running hydro (coco crutons), I would do top offs with RO water with added calmag and silica. After a while I started just using my (hard) tap water.
The problem with coco is it will bind more readily with calcium and magnesium, locking it up and releasing potassium and sodium in its place.
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I use masterblend. I mix it up at full or half strength and then add water to hit my target EC.
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No offense meant to you at all but this is a drunken reason. The ratios are the same out of the bottle regardless how much you dilute or not, 1ml/10ml/1lt/10gal all the same npk ratio out of that one bottle.
If you mix 100ml into 1gal and dilute with 9 more gallons, that is literally the same thing as if you just put 10ml into that 1gal first and left it at that.
It sounds more like the actual reason to dilute like that is so you use up all the nutes making strong concentrates which will likely go bad before you can finish them so you have to buy more nutes 
Now topping off with calmag water totally makes sense and can get behind that. Calcium and Magnesium are used heavily in general, especially under leds, so adding calmag water back will keep that in balance, and you know it’s the proper ratio or close to it. Plus with coco doing its cation exchange between calcium and potassium.
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I was also under the impression that the same NER was available to the plants regardless of how much was diluted. The coco for cannabis website states differently. I’m just trying to figure out if that’s right or what. It also seems he means something different by NER. Not so much as what ratio a 20-20-20 all purpose is for example, but something along the lines of “if not mixed to full strength, the plants don’t get the full nutritional value.” Hope I’m making sense.
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Yeah that can make sense, you’d want to make sure your feeding at the correct PPM for that plant at that time. Otherwise you get deficiencies, but you don’t HAVE to make it strong and then dilute it to hit what you want. After a few tries mixing it you’ll know much ppm 1ml raises ‘x’ amount of water. Usually you’d start the plant fairly low, somewhere around 250-300ppm and work up slowly from there as she grows.
What nutes are you using or planning to use exactly?
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I think the ratio only changes due to hardness of water. I have very soft water, so I don’t do anything special. But if you have 300ppm water, then the ratio does change, because the substance you’re diluting with has a lot of minerals as well.
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I have been using the maxi series for the past two years now. Tried the various mega crop brands for a run or so, but wasn’t performing as well as the maxi. It’s definitely not the best ratios for veg, or bloom, and has way to much K in it to be really good for coco. Tried Jack’s all purpose to try and keep my mom’s in check, but started getting K issues almost overnight. Could have been from the old coco releasing K though. Going to be ordering some cal-nit, and try and run that with the Jack’s soon, plus a few other things. The Jack’s + cal-nit definitely has a way better ratio for veg. Not sure what I will do about bloom.
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Right now my tap is about .380, or about 180 ppm. In winter it’s usually 150-155 ppm. Have been thinking about going back to Ro during the summer months.
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0.4ec is standard base line for water
Above that it is getting harder and below that it’s getting softer
If your worried then just add RO to summer tap to get it down to winter ppm , but I wouldn’t be too worried about it : )
The difference between your summer and winter tap is minimal
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Gotcha. Yeah I prefer the maxibloom to megacrop myself. I just picked up the mega crop 2-part that is basically jacks but I haven’t gotten to try it much yet. I did have to grab the Maxigro though to do veg or I had major deficiencies.
My buddy only grows in coco and he seems to heavily favor the canna coco A+B to anything else. Just obviously doesn’t favor the price 
Believe he does a+b from 3ml/gal at the start to 11ml/gal at height of flower and 1-3ml/gal calmag the same way and I think that’s it. May need to add some epsom salt depending.
Your water is basically the same as mine, checked a recent water report to see how much is calcium carbonate and how much is magnesium? Mine’s like 70/30 cal/mag. I usually have to add like 1/8 tsp/gal of epsom salt on top of whatever calmag product I’m using
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Mine is like 0.05 to 0.1 out the tap, so what works for me may not work for you.
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That seems like some pretty pure water. Guess you have to add Ca and Mg to your base water?
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So what would be a final consensus, mix to full strength then dilute, or just add less nutes to the same amount of water?
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Yea, it’s the softest water of anywhere I’ve ever lived. I don’t add any Ca or Mg, but I do often struggle with Ca deficiencies. For me it’s just 36/24/12g Peters 5-11-26, calnitrate and epsom into 10gal of water. Or swap epsom for magnesium nitrate in veg. Then I just dilute to my target EC.
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I prefer to adjust the nutes and/or starting water volume to get the near perfect EC when all is mixed properly. It takes some practice to get it right.
This is how I understand it. I could be wrong.
Adding RO to dilute does not change the NER. Zero ppm RO.
But it’s not ok chemically to use RO.
Adding calmag water to dilute changes the NER because it contains Ca Mg and usually a lil N.
I track that crap in my custom cake mix. Lol
This recipe is for 3 gallons.
But I actually fill my bucket with 4 gallons of RO… to get a lower final EC, no change to NER. 
Same with PH. I also know from practice, the amount of silica to add up front, to end up with near perfect PH after all mixed. (Affects NER…silica and K)
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personally, I’ve fine tuned my feeding schedule and go based on that. I expect a rough range for each feeding but I mainly use EC as a means to know if the solution is too hot for a smaller plant or not.
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I use jacks hydro without the added magnesium sulfate. All the dry nutes I use are measured in grams per gallon so if you know how much water is in your reservoir you just have to scale it out and toss it in order. I first put 0.2 grams per gal of silicon dioxide (recyclesil) then 3.6g jacks hydro and 2.4 calcium nitrate. I have left out the epsom for this entire grow and haven’t really noticed any difference.
Most of my problems in coco have been caused by not irrigating often enough. I had much worse problems with megacrop but if you don’t water them multiple times per day during flowering they tend to get salt buildup and you can see by measuring the runoff EC, which will tend to get much higher if allowed to dry out too much. I hand water 3x a day and even that is not enough.
If your EC level in the res is higher than you want it to be just add plain water to dilute, putting cal mag in the wrong order could cause precipitation issues but I’m no expert.
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The cal/mag is pre diluted. 5ml to a gal of Ro. That way there is no chance of precipitation. I followed directions on the coco for cannabis website, where they say to Dilute to target ec with cal/mag water, as to not upset the cation balance. I think my issues are the same as yours this run. Hand watering coco in small pots, at least 2 times a day. Was super busy during the first few weeks of flowering and let the coco get a little to dry. I’m usually on top of it, but this run I got a little behind on my watering schedule, and got salt build up.
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I haven’t yet run into problems just using plain tap water to dilute (if I even need to) lets say I accidentally added 4g per gal of jacks instead of 3.6. My ec would be slightly higher probably 1.6 or 1.7 instead of 1.4-1.5 but I don’t see why adding plain water is a bad thing. Wouldn’t adding water until the ec goes back down to 1.4 just bring the reservoir back to the nutrient element ratios that it normally is at? and adding cal-mag water give extra Ca and Mg when it might not be needed? My calcium is already at 120 or so ppm I feel like adding more might throw things off. If I accidentally add too much that would be more than a full dose of Ca so I would think I’d want to dilute it to bring the Ca levels back down.
I’m just thinking out loud here, I’m still pretty new to this coco stuff so likely have no idea wtf I’m talking about. I really enjoyed reading that website though definitely a great resource.
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