Oh, man. Not sure how I missed this until now. Pretty awesome set-up and experiment @anon32470837 . Bookmarked.
1 Like
I have no clue - was hoping you would! 
It was only small spots on the very tips of two different roots - both of which stuck up in the air. I picked out all of it I could see plus a little extra. So far, it doesnt look like a general infection of the entire system.
I dont know what else to do other than keep an eye on it.
Thank you sir!!!
1 Like
Rather than clutter up his thread any more, I will just tag @Viva_Mexico with this post.
He posted some night time pics of some of his plants growing in an Ebb/Flood setup and the leaves looked droopy to me.
Some people suggested that thats a normal night time thing for the leaves to droop, but I have not seen that with my grows unless the plants were thirsty. Then he mentioned that he has not been feeding them at night, which kind of went along with my thoughts that they looked thirsty.
I looked back through some older pics I have and it did look like my plants had a small amount of droop at night, but nothing like what his plants looked like. I decided to take some new pics during lights out and then after lights on, to see how much droop Im getting. Turns out I have almost zero droop. The leaves do relax a bit, but its very small and hard to see, and no where near the degree in his pics.
My hydro setup runs the same exact schedule 24/7. My night time feedings are exactly the same as day time feedings. Thats just the way an auto siphon works. The water in my ebb/flood tote cycles roughly every 12 minutes, 24/7. The other two totes get a steady supply 24/7 with zero down time.
Several people have commented on my feeding schedule pointing out that most pot growers running hydro reduce or eliminate night time feedings in E/F setups. I did some searching and it looks like most folks think their plants dont drink at night or drink a lot less at night compared to day time.
So, I decided to do another test. I have been monitoring my rez water level since I started this project, but its been hit or miss as far as when I check the levels. Based on that old data, it looked to me like my plants drink pretty close to the same amount during the night as they do during the day. However, I had not been very careful/exact with the timing of the measurements.
So I just finished a 24 hour cycle and noted the water level at the start and end of the day and night cycles. Im in week 4 of 12/12.
Turns out, my plants drink exactly the same amount during lights OFF as they do during lights ON. The three plants drank right at 1 gal during each 12 hour cycle.
So that brings me back to the question - why do folks cut back on feeding at night with hydro?
If its based on the idea of plants not feeding at night, thats looking like another old wives tale of pot growing 
Seems to me that cutting back on feeding at night, when the plants still want to drink, has to hurt more than it helps - witness the wilting in @Viva_Mexico pics - or am I missing something else?
1 Like
Here are some pics from the last day night cycle. This is middle of light out, then several hours into lights on. Its very hard to see any drooping.
27 posts were split to a new topic: Can copper be safely used in hydroponics to keep roots out of drains?
Thats awesome! This will be fun, thanks!!
1 Like
Well, its becoming more and more obvious my ideas about root mass are not matching up to reality nearly as well as yours 
All three plants continue to grow at the pretty much the same rate as near as I can tell despite the large difference in root mass between the totes.
The NFT tote still has the smallest root mass. I would guess it has roughly 1/5th as many roots as the Membrane tote. I cant see down into the lava rock in the E/F tote, but that plant has put down at least three very thick roots = 1/4" or more. They are growing into the siphon and require trimming almost daily, so Im sure it also has more roots than the NFT tote.
But the NFT buds are keeping up with the Membrane buds easily now. The Membrane buds are still maybe a little larger, but its getting hard to tell the difference. The E/F buds are catching up fast though. Its largest buds are on par with the other totes, but it still has several that are smaller.
Oh crap! Ive got little flying fuckers in my root zone!
They almost look like fungus gnats, but not quite. So far, Ive only seen two, but Im sure there are more.
What do you guys think?
The good news first - the little flying fuckers were flies, not gnats. They look like drain flies. I caught two of them the first day I put the sticky sheets in the root zones, but no new ones for the last three days. Im assuming thats all over - for now at least.
Also, all three plants are still growing well, have good color, and look to be in excellent health - with one exception.
Thats the bad news - all three have nanners! I dont think thats going to impact the results of the experiment, but will have to wait and see how many buds get pollinated and go to seed. I have no idea of buds that go to seed weigh more or less than regular buds, so that may or may not effect the weigh-in.
In other news, they are now up to drinking a little over 3 gallons of water a day. Thats one gallon + per plant per day. Seems like a lot to me. My soil grow plants didnt ever drink that much, but they were much smaller pants over all.
2 Likes
Dude, that sucks. Seeded seed will decrease oil production. I would be pissed if someone sold me hermi clones. 
Is your environment on point? Temp, RH, and light leaks? You seem to be pretty meticulous, so I assume they are all in check. 
3 Likes
Well, to be fair, I dont know for sure he sold me hermie clones. I think it may be likely, or at least possible, but I most certainly added my share of extreme stress after I got them. I dont think there is any way to tell at this point if them going hermie is due to bad clones or stress before or after I got them.
One things for sure - no more clones from Craigs List for me! Lesson learned
1 Like
Forgot about this - yeah, as far as I know all those things are pretty good. My PH/EC meter died last week and I had to send it in for repair, so Ive been kind of guess-and-by-golly on EC. I think Im still in the 1.1 to 1.5 EC range. PH is in the 6.0± ball park with drops. My room temps stay between the low to mid 70’s lights off and mid to upper 70’s lights on with only an occasional run up to 82-83 on very hot days - but we’ve only had a couple of those. Rez temps are between 71 and 72. Other than the hermies, the plants look great to me. Much better looking than in my soil grow.
Here is a recent over all shot.
5 Likes
Time for an up-date.
Its the end of week 7 of flower. The trichomes are about 50% cloudy with almost no amber showing. I still have no idea how much longer this will take. On-line descriptions of this strain say if takes anywhere from 7-9 weeks, 8 to 10 weeks or 12-14 weeks, depending on who you want to believe. All I know for sure is its not done - yet
I am for sure making seeds on most of the bud sites. I cut open one of the pods on one bud and it has seeds in it for sure. On the plus side, there is lots of frosting, so I will get something when I make the RSO.
The stupid extra clones in my stupid cheapo hempy buckets continue to look stupidly healthy despite all my neglect. I made the mistake of putting them in the kitchen under the skylight for a few hours the other day when I took a shower and then forgot them. They grew like 3" in just a few hours!!
All three clones continue to look good in the tent. I cant tell much if any difference between them now.
I have been hunting for the sweet spot as far as nute concentration for weeks. I started out pretty hi at an EC of about 2.2 - 2.3 mS. The PH and the EC were constantly rising as the plants drank, so Ive been adjusting it down with each rez change and top off. I thought I had it nailed at 1n EC of 1.3, but then all of a sudden, my PH started climbing - a lot.
That was about the time a was doing the copper test in the NFT tote to control roots, so I thought maybe that was causing the PH to go up. I removed the copper and did a rez change but it still just kept going up.
Turns out that the culprit was the NFT tote, but Im not sure why its happening now when it didnt before. I dont think it was the copper. I did some other tests and the copper never raised the PH in any ther samples, so I think its not the cause.
In any case, I can sample the water draining from the NFT tote and it is a full .1 to .2 higher in PH than the water from the other two totes or the rez. The other two totes match the rez.
I did another res change and spent extra time flushing out the root zone in the NFT tote and added extra Hydro Guard and increased the water flow to that tote. That seems to have helped a lot, but its still discharging water at a slightly higher PH than the others.
This is making me wonder if maybe different hydro techniques require different EC ranges? Maybe Im over feeding that tote while the other two are happy with higher EC levels?
Im not going to worry about it too much as nothing gets to far out of range before I can adjust it again. More importantly, the plants dont seem to be bothered.
On other fronts - Ive continued to have meter problems so Im returning my meter. The company has agreed to give me a full refund, so thats good.
I found an EC meter that I like a whole lot. Its fast, accurate, super easy to use and maintain. A huge improvement over the old mid range meter I had. The only limitation is that it wont read very low or very hi concentrations, so you can use it to test your RO water or concentrations over 3.0mS. It goes from .2 to 3.6 mS and reads to the nearest .1mS. Thats more than close enough for our purposes as far as rez concentrations go.
Im really likeing this EC meter - a lot.
My other meter needed to have the probe replaced at least once a year, plus the cost of KCL storage solution, and calibration solutions. That was going to cost me around $100/year minimum.
I bought a cheapo PH meter which is working more or less, but I still need to find a decent, cheap PH meter. The reviews for the better meters are not that good when compared to the cheep ones though. The common thread - which is my complaint - is the cost of supplies and probes goign bad and not staying calibrated.
2 Likes
Bluelabs, good choice. They are well reviewed. I have their PH and EC probes (not the truncheon). Work well.
0.1-0.2 doesn’t “seem” to be a huge discrepancy to me. But, how fast is it changing?
Could be that the plants in the NFT are taking up different nutrient ratios at this stage in their life-cycle?
Or, any chance that there is an infection in there somewhere? Whether good stuff or bad stuff? Oh, re-read, it appears you’re injecting hydroguard.
Or, perhaps your copper test is still running in the plants? 
Hmmmm.
I just spent the last several hours looking closely at various PH meters and I dont like any of them.
The reviews on the Apera meter I have were just as good and maybe even a hair better than for the BlueLab.
The bad reviews for the Apera and BlueLab PH meters are very similar. They mostly have to do with unstable, variable, drifting readings and probes that dont last and will not hold calibration or wont calibrate at all. Those are my exact issues with the three Apera meters I have tried.
It mostly seems to be a probe issue with both brands and both have the pretty much the same problems. The majority of reviews are good, but about 20% have major issues - just like mine.
What I dont like is that the probes are only good for maybe a year at most, so that makes them $$ consumable items. Plus you have to spend a good bit on calibration and storage solutions on top of that.
Both brands have less expensive pen types, but they dont have replaceable probes, and have the same bad review issues. That makes them throw away after a year or so at most for anywhere from $40 and up.
The BlueLab I like the best (best reviews) is $143 and the replacement probe is $47. The Apera that looks like the best deal is $78 with a $34 probe, so its a lot cheaper, but has more reported issues.
I have 3 of the cheapo pens, but you almost have to calibrate them every time you use one, and they are not good for a wide range. If I calibrate one to around PH 5.5, its off a bunch at PH6.5. One day you have to turn the screw left to calibrate it and the next day you have to turn it right twice as far to get the same exact reading in the same calibration solution.
I wish they had a PH meter like the truncheon style EC meter I just got. It reads almost instantly, stays calibrated (they claim it will never need calibration) and there is almost no maintenance. It has very good reviews and I can see why. Its not going to work for everyone, but for me its perfect.
Ive only got a week or two left on this grow I think, so Im going to tough it out with the cheapo pens. AS long as I can stay somewhere vaguely in the neighborhood of PH 6, I will be fine. Its going to be too hot for me to grow this summer, so I will wait till this fall and look at meters again. Maybe someone will come up with something new
1 Like
It may not sound like much if the water was static in the root zone, but its not. Thats the drop in PH after the nute water just passes through that tote. The flow rate is roughly 15 oz / minute or about 7 gals/hr in that tote. Thats the volume that is passing through about 1 sq ft of fabric that is maybe 3/8" thick with roots in the bottom of the tote. So the PH is coming in a say 5.8 and coming out at 5.6 to 5.7 after it travels about 1 ft through the root zone. Looking at it that way, it seems pretty drastic to me.
I just did another rez change and this time I let the plain water circulate for a while at a PH of 6.8 before adding nutes or PHing down again. I also dropped the EC down to 900uS (450PPM on the .5 scale) this time. Thats the lowest Ive gone so far. I’ll monitor EC and PH and see how they do. Hopefully both will now be stable. That seems like an awefuly low EC, but Im near the end of flower, so maybe they dont need as much feed? We will see…
On the copper - it has been out for a week at least, but I wonder if maybe it did some damage to the roots? I cant think of any way to test that though.
1 Like
So pretty much instantaneous. Some salt build-up somewhere, then? Did the EC of the effluent change significantly, too?
If the copper was causing PH fluctuations earlier, perhaps there are still some moderately soluble copper salts hanging around in the system somewhere.
1 Like
AArrgghh! I didnt think to check if the EC changed!! I will do that and let you know.
1 Like