Must spread rep. around before giving it to YS again! - Way to bring chemistry to the masses. Great info and thanks for dropping some real gems here on IC, I love this learning stuff.NS
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Flushing: Clearex or Water
- Thread starter budelight
- Start date
Krebs Cycle -> http://youtu.be/A1DjTM1qnPM
Sucanat -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucanat
Cheers!!
Budelight
Sucanat -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucanat
Cheers!!
Budelight
Y
YosemiteSam
My tap water is around a pH of close to 8. Adding 4 ml per gallon of this does not effect it that much.
If I was running a medium without any cec I would adjust pH. In a media with a cec I do not worry about pH at this point...there is enough buffering going on that you aren't going to drop the pH of the media itself anyways.
Plus...credit to OzGrower, not me.
Clearex has no benefit over plain tap water.
I ran a side-by-side test leaching salts from 6" rockwool blocks in two ebb-n-flow reservoirs and tested the final EC of the leached water in each res. Clearex had leached maybe 3% more mineral salt than plain tap water and at a 3% difference, I don't feel comfortable saying Clearex did anything at all. Out of the many bottles of snake oil sold at a hydro store, Botanicare's Clearex is probably the biggest scam of them all.
I ran a side-by-side test leaching salts from 6" rockwool blocks in two ebb-n-flow reservoirs and tested the final EC of the leached water in each res. Clearex had leached maybe 3% more mineral salt than plain tap water and at a 3% difference, I don't feel comfortable saying Clearex did anything at all. Out of the many bottles of snake oil sold at a hydro store, Botanicare's Clearex is probably the biggest scam of them all.
Perfect Homebrewer
This is exactly the type of answer we are looking for.
How long did you leach for? Do you know the ph/EC of the tap water you used?
Cheers & K+++
Budelight
I posted this test at another forum, pasted below:
Does Clearex work?
The experiment:
I have 2 identical setups with 6 plants in each tray. The plants in each tray are the same age, however, the trays contain different strains and are being fed with different nutrients at different feeding levels.
The AK47 in this journal is getting DynaGro nutes at 850ppm (.7 scale) and the Dumpster tray is getting GH nutes at 1100ppm. GH is a saltier formula and given the same feeding levels, the EC of my ‘leached’ water is always higher when feeding with GH nutes as compared to DynaGro nutes (measured many times in previous grows).
In this experiment, my AK47 tray being fed with DG nutes will be flushed with Clearex at 10mls/gallon and the Dumpster tray will be flushed with water-only. It would stand to reason that if Clearex did make a difference, the EC of the leached water from the AK47 tray would be equal or greater than that of the Dumpster tray.
On the other hand, if clearex made no difference at all, the EC of the leached water from the Dumpster tray would be greater than that of the DG tray since GH is a saltier formula and is being fed at higher levels.
Let’s get started
Both trays were given a base of around 250ppm (half RO and half tap water). The AK47 tray was given 10mls/gallon of clearex while the Dumpster tray was left alone.
Starting point for the AK47 tray (receiving Clearex):
Starting point for the Dumpster tray (receiving just water):
Both trays were flooded for 2 hours and at 3 separate times during the flood, I hand-poured res water over the blocks multiple times to leach salts from the top of the blocks.
The Conclusion:
The ppm of the Dumpster reservoir that was leached with water-only was 850ppm. The ppm of the AK47 reservoir that was leached with Clearex was 690ppm.
In the past when leaching these two trays, I’d normally expect about a 200ppm difference between the two and considering the difference is only 160ppm, that tells me that the effectiveness of Clearex over water is negligible, at best.
I will not be purchasing this garbage ever again.
Final PPM for the AK47 tray:
Final PPM for the Dumpster tray:
SpayceRayce
Member
Water. But I did start adding molasses to dwc couple weeks before chop, fresh dollop with every res change (weekly). Difference between properly flushed weed and harsh nute laden weed is like night and day. Ever smoked a big bowl of smoooth herb, and had naught but a wisp of white ash left in the bowl? A good flush - not just for toilets anymore.
I don't think the question is to flush or not to flush, it's the chronic issue of doing things incorrectly from the beginning (ie. overfeeding). Healthy plants that were fed correctly are never 'nute-laden'.
SpayceRayce
Member
Properly flushed was my intended emphasis, independent of method, sorry you missed that. Fed correctly is different equation again, bearing in mind that max yield feeding is different than max quality feed. Pushing nutes to end of grow can increase haul, but the flush (and having smaller yield) is a profit/loss cultivating consideration, no?
See, this is where cannabis growers have it backwards. Pushing plants with 'max yield feeding' doesn't maximize yield. Meeting the plant's nutritional needs until the end without overfeeding is how one maximizes yield and if one pays attention to the plant and their medium, there isn't a need to flush.
In one of your posts above, you mention adding molasses into your DWC setup around the time most would 'flush'. Honest question here but what do you think you're accomplishing by doing this? Molasses is 75% carbohydrate and plants have a limited ability to pull up sugars though their roots (probably because the plant makes it's own during photosynthesis). Molasses also has a very small mineral content and at the rate of a 'dollop' per res, you're adding maybe 5ppm of useful food for the plant. Molasses feeds microbes in the dirt, I'm just curious as to what you think it's doing in hydro.
Bingo...the only time a flush is needed is when the plants have been fed too heavy to begin with...
SpayceRayce
Member
Step back - you are starting your own thread, and pushin the wrong guy to do it. Flush the fuck outta your weed or not, could care less. Clearex, water, urine, menstrual blood, bleach. Stick it up your grandmas coochie. The OP asked, I answered, and I choose to end your little sidebar. Buh-bye.
great info. i noticed the sweet from botanicare comes in three 'flavors' wonder if they actually make a difference
definitely going to try this.
i prefer the "original" berry
folks will hemm and hawn about "i dont want my buds to be fruity or taste like berries". thats cool. they wont.
they will smell and look like they are in hd. your resin content will go up. bag appeal. but the best part is even when you give it to the plants in veg, youre helping give them a more complete "diet" so to speak and they will be healthier.
id tried the citrus and its nto the same as the berry. the formula is different the results werrent the same for me.
the raw is supposed to be "flavor" free but idk.... sometimes the magic chain of things cant be fucked with you know?
i like to "cycle" my use of carbs/sugars.... kinda like how you are supposed to do steriods to get maximum benefit hahaha
give em a little durring veg then give em a little mroe each week in flower starting at 5ml/g until weeks 6 then its 15ml 20 ml wk 7 wk 8 is no "food" so i then hit them with 50ml/g sweet... last week is pure water phd so the plants can use up their stored energies and what not... but thats in coco too....
another thought with using Clearex is they say to have 80-90% run off to achieve results.
Not sure I want to put my plants through that torture...
Not sure I want to put my plants through that torture...
I never knew people used molasses or any other sugars in hydro , seems like it would encourage moulds and other deseases for little probable gain , it certainly works well in soil.
If i use it late in flower i get an unwelcome nitrogen boost two days after that encourages fresh growth and the odd male flower with the usual suspects , stop halfway through flower and all is good.
When i ran hydro had subjectively better results useing nutes watered down to about 20% of normal , than with plain pH,ed water or any of the sugar based flushing products available five years ago.
Lowman
Member
And you know the ingredients based on what? I thought it was sugar water as well...till I tasted it. Nothin sweet about it at all. Left a tart taste in my mouth for quite awhile.
thanks for the 411 homebrewer backing me up with the label info.
i read the back of the bottle years ago lowman.
i learnt to read. you should try it lol
id give it a smell for shits and giggles but a taste.... im not dumb enough to try to taste it to guess whats in it...
i read the back of the bottle years ago lowman.
i learnt to read. you should try it lol
id give it a smell for shits and giggles but a taste.... im not dumb enough to try to taste it to guess whats in it...
dizzlekush
Member
For cannabis you are correct. for hydroponic tomotoes, this snake oil would actually show some benefits believe it or not. Flushing agents are essentially there to ease the osmotic pressure that can be caused by using a hypotonic solution(solution with very low/no impermeable solutes). there are actually crops that have issues with hypotonic solutions where due to osmotic pressure the plants absorb too much water which overcomes turgor pressure and can lead to cell bursting and softening of plant tissue, such as soft skin in tomatoes. Flushing agents solve this problem by increasing the impermeable solute content in water with sugars and other solutes that roots dont absorb, (thats right, roots don't absorb the sugars,) and therefore relieving osmotic pressure. Cannabis is not one of these hypotonic sensitive crops, although there might be more water content in cannabis crops that are treated with hypoptonic solutions before harvest than those that dont, which may increase drying time slightly.
Basically normal filtered water will remove just as much salts from the medium as water with flushing agents, however the flushing agents allow the plant to experience less stress that would be caused by drastic changes in EC, osmotic pressure, & cell bursting.
That works out as a tea spoon of inexpensive sugars in a litre of water , sounds a bit of a rip off and would make my own for pence.
Learnt to drop nutes to 20% with toms and peppers to avoid splitting and other issues , it transferred well to canna and was common practice before flushig agents were contrived or promoted.
If it tastes sharp its probably vitamin c , ascorbic acid is often added but not always listed.
