Electro Conductivity? Salts? PPM? pH?

[Heady NUGs]

Can someone explain the electro conductivity part of my water meter. How to use it and what it measures?

Tap ppm is 330 and pH is 9-10. After adding Dyna Gro, the ppm is 930 and the pH is 6-6.3. This seems to be in the correct range, yet the margins and leaftips are turning yellow. Why am I not getting dark green leaves?


Thanks for any help

 

[scegy]

probably becouse your ph is too high, young seedlings need ph of ~5.3-5.8
6.0 --> works better in bloom
check your cal-mag leves in ur nutes, there maybe too much of it, your tap ppms are pretty high

 

[Jesusbuiltmygro]

Dyna grow eh. I'd recommend next time you get nutrients go for a simple and highly supported nutrient like General Hydroponics 3 part chemical fert. It's the old line of GH nutes, they are cheap and perfectly effective as proven by many many growers. More importantly since more people use them you would get better help when asking questions regarding their use.

Also you will want to post more info when asking a question in the infirmary. Many a detail lacking post will be more or less ignored because the people best in the situation to help you rarely want to inconvenience themselves by asking you to for all the details they would want to rationally look at the problem.

I think there is even a format they recommend using, like a template you fill out when asking your questions, because as simple of a question as it may seem to you, for someone trying to imagine and guess your exactly situation it's quite hard.

For instance a key part of information you left out which makes your question unanswerable is how old are you plants.

As you might imagine young plants need less fertilizer and as your realizing PPM is just a measurement of how nutrients you have in the water. It uses conductivity of the minerals in the water. The more minerals the more conductivity. That why distilled water from the grocery store has a very low PPM AND as you approach 0 PPM water actually stops conducting electricity all together. The only reason water is a conductor is because of the minerals in it.

Your water will come out of the tap or such with a PPM. If you use filtered water it should be lower, distilled or reverse osmosis is some of the lowest PPM you can get. The PH of store bought water will also almost always be 7-7.5

Are you sure you PH meter or test kit is accurate. It could be you use too high PPM for this early stage of the plant, but without knowing how large or how long it's grown or what size pot it is in, it is impossible to tell. I just mention the PH because you say your PH was 9-10, which is way high. If you tap water is coming out with a PH that high I'd recommend switching to store bought water. Your nutrients are PH buffered to lower the PH of the water because almost all water is alkaline/high PH. So when you throw them in they lower the PH. A PH of 6 should easily be good enough the range is around 5.5-7.5 and the PH in most grows will shift over time sort of naturally allowing nutrients uptake at all PH ranges. So, if you don't know some nutrients are only available at a certain PH range. When the PH is too high or low some nutrients will be locked out and unavailable to the plant regardless of how much nutrients you dump in there because you are out of your PH range.

IF the yellowing happened right after you just increased the nutes then it's probably nutrient burn. Flush out or if the plants are old enough a little burn won't kill them, but a safer range is between 400-700 for younger plants and this is mostly dependent on the root system not just the size of the plant. If you have a tiny root system you should stay lighter on nutes than if you have a mass of hungry tangled roots.

Take good care of your root system, if it grows slime or some brown/yellow stuff you need to flush, maybe add some h202 and I personally find the single most effective thing to do when bacteria strikes your root system is to spray the roots down with a spray bottle with a light h202 solution. You dont even need the h202 it is the spraying action that is more important as it physically removes the slime layer which is otherwise more or less impossible to do. Spray bottles on roots are also good for untangling them.

You should find a grow diary or such with similar resources to yourself and follow the guide precisely or hydro could be a pretty rough learn curve for you. It's easy, but you gotta know the background and rules. Unlike soil, underwater and over watering are not the only two major problems in hydroponics. You have water temps to deal with, PPM adjustments, PH adjustments, bacteria infection growing in the water, lack of oxygen from high water temps (which also leads to the bacteria infections). If you have a good work ethic this is no problem, just flush your rez every 2 weeks or so. The water will get a swampy smell to it, but by then you've waited too long and likely damaged the roots some. Some nutrients discolor your roots, but otherwise they should be as bright white as possible. Once you have a good root mass a good yield is usually pretty easy to get. I also recommend Pro-Silicate in hydro as it strengthens the stalk and stems, resists heat damage and wilting and resists mildew, fungus and some insects. Plus it CAN boost growth some. I have a DWC Plant run almost completely dry, wilt over so it was laying and I simply added water to the rez and within a couple hours the plant just stood up on it's own and looked like nothing had happened. Without pro-silicate I don't think it would have made it through that so easily.

Anyway, there is some info, you should also read Big Tokes Water Chemistry thread though it may be a bit too advanced for you right until you have SOME of the basics down.

 

[Heady NUGs]

Sorry I left out details, I was trying to think of more things to add.

Actually the plants are in two stages, in two separate Multi-flow hydro systems. The buckets are 2.5 gallon, filled with hydroton. The first garden is 25 plants, 4 weeks into bloom, the plants are Sensi Star, and the complete plant is bright golden-yellow, except for the buds. Guess I could take a picture, but I am kinda embarassed. I have never seen a whole plant turn a color like this before, it's very strange.

Its kind of a long story, the plants were doing fine until I got brown algae and some root rot right at the begining of bloom. Used Physan 20 to kill the algae in the system, but afterwards, the plants started looking ill.

The second 25 plants have been growing in veg, from clones for 3 weeks. They are about a foot tall, growing OK, but the growth should be faster, and the plants should be darker green, looks like they are having some of the nitrogen locked out. Slight yellowing in the margins and a bit at the very tip of the leaves.

Thanks alot for the helpful reply Jesusbuiltmygrow. It's not really my first time with hydro, I have had 9 perfect gardens before this problem. I was thinking it may have had something to do with me moving and the water being different. The roots were slimey, there wasn't enough oxygen in the water and the buckets were not draining completely, its fixed now and I did use some H2O2 on them, new bright-white roots are now showing up on the blooming plants, but I fear it may be too late now that only 5 weeks of bloom remain. I had considered using GH products, but it looked like there was alot of complicated mixing, maybe I am wrong, I will look into it more. My meter is a 3-in-1 Milwaukee. It should be calibrated perfectly, it was fine the last time I had checked, but I will check it again to make sure.

Oh, also, we have 25 plants in dirt. They are in 1 gallon grow bags and were watered with the veg hydroponic water. They too seem to have the same symptoms as the 25 plants in the veg. hydro stage. Guess we really need to hook up the reverse osmosis system this weekend, but that is another pain, I forgot where all of the hoses go! Damn the luck! Thanks everyone, IC MAG is the shit!

 

[Heady NUGs]

probably becouse your ph is too high, young seedlings need ph of ~5.3-5.8
6.0 --> works better in bloom
check your cal-mag leves in ur nutes, there maybe too much of it, your tap ppms are pretty high

Thanks! I had always heard the pH should be between 5.8-6.3, I had no idea that it should be lower for seedlings.

 

[Brother_Monk]

Thanks! I had always heard the pH should be between 5.8-6.3, I had no idea that it should be lower for seedlings.

That Ph range will completely work just fine for your seedlings. The problem is you don't need that much nutrients for the first 2 weeks of growth. 5.3-5.8 is optimal for absobing nitrogen, but seedlings need so little...the above range will work fine. Now that you are in 3rd week for the little ones...1/4 - 1/3 strength nutes suggested. 500-600 ppm.

As for the others half way through bloom...seems you have it sorted after the slime/algae issue. You are just gunna haftoo limp it out till the end and chalk it to experience. Yield will suffer considerably...but you should end up with something to smoke at least.

 

[Heady NUGs]

You are exactly right Brother Monk. Learned my lesson, thanks for the input everyone.


Was reading this magazine called "Weed World #68" and a fella was saying that he ran his nutrient at an EC level of 1 for veg, and 1.4 for bloom. Can someone explain what he meant, and if that is a good base reading to go by?

Thank ya much!

 

[scegy]

hey nugs
what the guy was talking about was probably a SOG grow or very small plants i presume, since the EC was only 1.0 in veg that means that the plants were small when they switched to 12/12 light

bigger plants uptake more nutrients, so if that fella had BIG plants, his EC's would probably reach EC 2.0 or more....

so EC tells you how much the plant needs in a word of nutrients and water....values have nothing to do with rules, everything is relative

you should see and learn on your own how the plants react at different ECs, ofcourse reading some basics about it helps a lot

for instance: i start my clones in EC of 1.0 and i veg them for SCROG untill they reach ~EC 1.4 - 1.7,
then when i change the nutes to bloom formula i start with an EC of 1.2 so that i can see later on if EC drops or raises and then i can decide either to add nutes or only water....and i don't burn the plants since i give them a little weaker bloom formula from the start...better to underfeed then to burn...takes longer to recover

 

[Heady NUGs]

Thanks for the advice, it's much appreciated scegy. The guy in the magazine was talking about a resovoir system, but didn't mention the size of the plants. He also mentioned that you can see what the plants are using with the EC meter. Is that not true with a ppm meter. It seems the EC goes down and the PPM goes up in the week or two before res flush.

Someone was saying that the EC measaures the minerals in the water, so it doesn't measure the NPK or does it? It just seems that alot of the European growers rely on the EC scale, and American growers use the PPM scale.

A person mentioned that there are also two pH scales and that manufacturers use differing scales...is that true?

Thanks green brothers and sis's

 

[Heady NUGs]

Oh, found the Milwaukee meter at the bottom of a 55 gallon drum of water. Took the 9 volt battery out, and let it dry under the HID's and it works fine....LOL. I'd hope that a water meter would be water-proof...and it is!


Good Farmin'

 

[scegy]

well it's like this with ppms and EC's....like meters and yard, punds and kilograms... etc.

all conductivity meters work the same, ppm meters have the convertors to convert EC readings to ppm readings; EC meters show you the actual conductivity unit microsiemens / cm2....that's all the magic

you have 0.4-0.7 conversions EC to ppm, depends on where you live and where does ur ppm/ec meter originate from(america, europe, asia....russia, uzbekistan...wtw


ppm stands for parts per million, which stands for MILIgrams per/kg or mg/L

bottom line, it's all the same as long as you know where your plants and ECs or ppms really are

it's true, conductivity meters measure mineral ion concentration, more concentrated more conductive for electricity.....more mineral nutrients---higer EC/ppm reading
NPK readings are done seperatly, you have a N -meter, P -meter...they come in paper slices in aquarium stores, like the ones for pH reading(color chart from red to blue)...ofcourse there are digital ones...but u don't wanna go there

bout the ph scales....i wouldn't worry about that, use a certified pH buffer solution to calibrate ur pH meter(once or twice in a grow...depends on how you take care of ur meter)....so you shouldn't worry about that really

stick to you and your messed up plants!

p.s. treating your pH meter like that leads to problems, i almost messed up my grow this time because my pH meter finally let me down and showed me way too low readings...what i got was cal, mag, zn ... all kind of deficiencies in VEG, when you know that once they start going they don't stop that easily...so ph is actually a major factor in growing..not to be followed by the book, but in the sense of what it says there....ph of 7 is jing and jang in the ion world, in the organic world, in your body...everywhere you look you see pH of 7 ofcourse there are exceptions, but Mj loves the middle roads