I used to use a salad spinner on the rockwool after soaking. Was great at getting them bone dry but not compressing them.
But I no longer use rockwool
Next time start them in the cubes in a humidome thing and wait until thereās a good mat of roots at the bottom of the cubes before transfer into hydroton. Minimizes the time you need to top feed and consequentially soaking your cubes.
Interested to see how this goes. Feed seems high. I fed 600ppm to 4 footers last grow and they didnāt once look underfed aside from at harvest and nearing harvest but that was voluntary
I agree with @SquirtleSquad here. Your numbers look way high to me.
The plant will start to grow like crazy a few days after the roots reach the nutes, but take it easy with the nutes concentration, too much nutes does not make the pla t grow faster, the oposite, it can even kill them.
Thanks guys @SquirtleSquad the salad spinner is a great idea and I think Iāll invest in a prop chamber for the next grow. @sk1 still no roots out of the net lid yet. Pretty big pot for the little plant tho. Lowered the water level in the bucket even with the bottom of the net lid to give the roots something to reach towards. Had it about 2-3ā above the bottom beforeā¦ As for the nutes I was going off a general hydroponics chart given to me from the hydro store.
Typo in the last post but I have a 5 gallon system and gave nutes as if it is a 4 gallonā¦ sorry for the confusion. Also my tds pen doesnāt do decimals for some reason. Itās reading 850ppm which is ok, but the ec reads as 1850 and Iām guessing thatās 1.85?
Hereās the chart they gave me. Would yāall suggest I half the dose? Or continue feeding as if itās 4 gallons instead of 5?
Well EC can be microsiemens or millisiemens per cm. So your meter is doing microsiemens. So 1450 microsiemens is 1.45 millisiemens.
Way too much for my plants and garden. Maybe yours is different. I always err on the side of caution and feed lightly. Plants will tell you if they need more or less and early on Iād rather lose the cotyledon versus the roots.
Observed some leaf turning and pointing up mostly at the tips. Thinking a mag deficiency so I added a few mills of cal-magā¦ hope that will help. Also saw some roots finally starting to poke out half way down the net pot so I raised the water level in the bucket to 1/3 of the way up the net pot. Sure is growing tho!
Completely changed water and nutes today. Have to watch ph as itās climbing up some. Roots are growing like crazy! Plant looks good and healthy. Just gonna keep doing much of the same as far as adjustments and nutes goā¦
Over the last couple days I noticed it going up from 1.8 to almost 2.0ec so today I emptied and refilled. Mixed 15ml silicate, 15ml micro and 20ml grow with 5ml bloomā¦ itās sitting at 1.5ec now. Ph was at 7.5 so I dropped down to 5.9-6.0
Looking forward to the next couple weeks again. Foliage looks green as can be!
My Ec is currently 1.4, have dropped down from 1.6
An easy way to understand your Ec (electrical conductivity) ballance, is looking at your plant like a āmagnetā
All itās atoms have a small charge, posetive or negative and all combined makes up a final ānumberā letās call it Plant Ec.
Now your reservior is also a āmagnetā and the more nutrients you pour into your res. The higher the electrical conductivity become in your res, the bigger the magnetic pull getās. Now the nutrients will travel to the biggest magnet, if your res have a higher electrical conductivity, then the plant it will āsuckā the nutrients out of the plant, rather then the plant is uptaining the nutrients.
Now itās called osmosis and reverse osmosis in plants, the āmagnetā stuff is just to make it easy to understand.
I would try and lower the Ec to 0.9, and see if that wonāt speed up things.
Temps and everything else looks good!
Try and find my thread The Hack Shack and other tall tales, in the advanced forum, there I am doing almost daily updates, with Ec and pH values listed.
Thanks for the comment peeps, much appreciated!
Itās hard doing a first hydro grow with all the precautions and babysitting needed. But itās been fun watching this grow and tbh im surprised itās still alive tooā¦
Today the ec is 1.3 and 700ppm which Iām guessing from @Palindrome and @Fisch posted means that the plant is using the nutes and not locking up The plant looks to be doing really good and Iām looking forward to the next stages of growth
you will be suprised I also used too high EC at my grows and lot of things went bad. Now I use EC 1,5 at max flower stage and plants are looking amazing and better then ever. I went with EC 1,8 max at growing stage week four and further then I lowered the EC when flipped to flower. In conclusion, everytime I used Ec 2,0 or higher things got badā¦ good luck
Added a humidifier in the room today that I got off amazon. Hopefully that will help the plant absorb the nutrients better. RH in the tent after a couple hours is already at 35% up from 20%
Should also help with the static shocks every time I go to open the tent zipper
