Help me design a COCO grow!

[Brain]

Here is what I have to work with: a 3x6 tray, 2 600's, PBP bloom and grow, cal mag, big and chunky perlite.

I am thinking a recirc drip system w a 60 gallon res, canna coco mixed w/ 25% perlite in 2 gallon containers. OK so far?

I need reccomendations on a pump size, a ph and ec pen, how to keep the coco in the pots, and how to keep the coco out of the res.

I'm gonna start off w/ a ph of 5.5 and work my way up to 6.0. EC will depend on the strain and stage of growth but I have a pretty good idea of where it should be.

I have been a soil grower since I started and am looking to automate things to make it easier. I have been looking into this for awhile and after reading Gratefulehead's thread I have decided to do it. Thanks.

Is there anything I'm missing

 

[Kenny Lingus]

I use a 25w submersible sump/drain-pump that can deliver 2750L/h at a height of 3m. (Low pressure I think, but enuff too push through a 120u mesh-filter and deliver water to anywhere from 1 to 60 sites 50cm above).
A nylon stocking at the return+line, use windowscreen or such in the bottom of the pots. Usually coco is drip-fed to waste, but some people manage to recycle too. (I'm trying it right now, but I cannot say I'm satisfied. (Also tried a little higher EC, like 1,6 peak, but it was way to much...-Think I'll stay from 0.7 in rooting 0.9 in veg/induced bloom and peak at about 1.4)
The coco coir is extremely efficient in delivering nutrients to the roots, so I recommend using less to gain more.

Otherwise I think your setup is fine.

PS! Read a little on coco without coco-designed fertilizers in the sticky threads on top of coco-forum three.

 

[gaiusmarius]

good advice Kenny Lingus, less is more nute wise in coco. if you want to setup a drip feeding system, you also need a good inline particle filter. drip lines will get blocked by the smallest particles of coco. so using a stocking on the end of the return hose is only the first part. the particle inline filter is the second more important part. even when not recirculating it is advisable to have a filter between the pump and the drip lines. the main thing is to make sure that the pump you get is suited to the type of drip system you chose. some are made for very strong pumps only, so be sure to get advise from the guy selling the drip setup about the pump capacity needed.

 

[Brain]

Thanks guys for the help guys.
Gauismarius - I learned to grow in soil from BOG on OG and it worked out great from the start. I'm sure I can't lose with your help as well as the the others hanging around this forum.

My goal is to keep the medicinal qaulity and to increase yeild. Keeping it medicial quality is very important and I hope the move to a more organic nute than PBP. I do not use any chemical pesticide's or boosters. I feel med patients dererve no less for medicine. I don't plan on using a dripper. I'll just use a feeder tube. I like the idea of a coco mat under the pots but I don't know if they benfit more than beilng able to move the plants around?

Here's what I'll be growing.

 

[gaiusmarius]

yes moving the plants is a big help to make the most of the light. i can't wait to see your set up in action, sounds cool. you will make amazing tasting product if you make sure to starve the plants of N towards the end and with a few days of plain water to finishup.

 

[guest3854]

Sup Brain ,
just wanted to add , make sure to airate your rez , 'specially using organics . MetaNaturals works well for us in conjunction with other nutes .

 

[Guest]

hey bro... good to see you're finally takin the plunge coco works great.

your set up sounds perfect..

pump size is kinda dependant on how many open feed lines you plan on runnin. if you're using 2 gal pots it sounds like you'll be in the 18 to 24 plant range so a 500 gph mag drive pump would work perfect.

they come with a foam filter and it's worked fine for me....no blocked lines.

recirculating works great cause you can water til your coco fully saturates at each watering with no waste.

to keep coco in the pots and out of the rez I've been using coco mat. I buy the 4x8 mat and hand cut liners for the bottom of each pot... kind of a pita but I get zero coco bits in my rez. the coco mat liner goes inside the pot so you still have the ability to move the plants around or remove them for pruning or whatever. I tried burlap cloth from home deopot but it appeard to start rotting- looked black and mushy after a while so I stopped using that. Window screen seems like it could rust

for meters I really like the bluelab truncheon for both ec and ph.. I've had a few hannas and I like the blulabs better. a ph of 5.5 to 6 works fine. if you need some ec reccomendations let me know cause I believe we're growin cuts off the same mother

coco specific nutes are NOT superior to other top brands.. not easier to use either you can do just fine with the pbp line.

 

[Brain]

Steel- Thanks for stopping by. I'll look into Meta in the future but I wanna use what I have. I got the PBP when I thought it was organic like it says it is.

Forty- I have a real solid game plan so far thanks to you. I think one feed line per pot should do it. What do you think? You gave me some ec levels before I saved them to a word doc. before my pms were turned off for not having 50 posts. Talk to you later...

 

[humble1]

does the strain have a name, brain?
is its purple temp, nute, or genetic specific?
i'm starting my own 2 gal drip show and would like to know.

 

[Guest]

I'm quite sure that you never go soil again.
Sounds good & promising,
I'm just waitin' you to start.

 

[Brain]

Well, the drip system will be installed soon. How should I go about topping off the res? Should I add water /nutes or just straight water? I plan to change it out every 2 weeks.

 

[Rosy Cheeks]

Since you're running PBP (which is an almost all organic nutrient), you can't really measure EC in the same way as you measure salt-based nutrients. Unless your growroom is climate controlled, temperature fluctuations will cause your plants to drink more or less, and the nutrient concentration will vary depending on it.

Taking notes and observing closely the reaction of your plants is your best way to determine nutrient strenght.

You can top off any way you like it, but you generally top of with nutrients if your nutrient solution is too weak and the plants deplete your solution (of nutrients), and with water if the solution is too strong (then the plants will assimilate more water than nutrients and the nutrient concentration increases).

My goal is to keep the medicinal qaulity and to increase yeild. Keeping it medicial quality is very important and I hope the move to a more organic nute than PBP. I do not use any chemical pesticide's or boosters. I feel med patients dererve no less for medicine.

I hope you're not under the impression that organic nutrients somehow give better 'medicinal' quality to your weed than salt-based nutrients do, because there are NO WHATSOEVER scientific facts that supports such a notion.

This is the old Chemical vs Organic debate once more, and this is perhaps not the place for it. Just concider this:

What do you mean by 'medicinal'? The only difference I can imagine between 'medicinal' and 'non-medicinal' weed would be if the 'medicinal' weed would contain something that 'non-medicinal' weed does not contain, or vice versa.

Organically grown weed does not contain any additional substance that salt-based grown weed does not contain, or vice versa. The 'medicinal' quality of Cannabis depends primarily on genetics, and the psychoactive effect can also be influenced by the flowering time, which shorter or longer will influence the THC/CBD/CBN ratios in the resin.

Concentrate on those two things in order to get the kind of psychoactive effect that you desire.

There is also a difference between chemical and organic pesticides, and chemical (salt-based) and organic nutrients.

The only difference between chemical and organic nutrients is that the chemical nutrient comes in a salt-based 'pure' form that is immediately uptakeable to the plant, while the organic nutrient is trapped in a organic molecule that needs to be broken down by the plant before assimilating it. In general, a purely salt-based nutrient contains no organic substances that deteriorates, so the shelf-life is close to indefinite - if stored right.
The organic nutrient is of course decomposable - which means that the nutrient manufacturer needs to add conservatives, in order to give the organic nutrient a decent shelf-life. It is also more difficult to stabilize the ph in an organic nutrient (since it decomposes, chemical reactions takes place that affects the ph), which is generally done with chemical buffers.

Conclusion: organic nutrients generally contains more 'chemicals' than salt-based nutrients (but then again, in the world of chemistry, every substance is a chemical substance, so "chemical" doesn't mean a thing).

The difference between chemical and organic pesticides is that an organic pesticide is produced naturally by another plant (such as pyrethrines or neem) and do not contain the same active substances as the synthetic pesticides (while the N-P-K in a salt-based nutrient is exactly the same chemical substances as the N-P-K in an organic nutrient).

 

[NPK]

Sounds like you have the makings of a nice setup, Brain. One thing I would add though: change your reservoir every week rather than every two weeks. It's my understanding that nitrogen gets used up in about six days, and you want the plants to have fresh nutrients, anyway.

Also, you might consider ditching the chunky perlite. I've been using various mixes of coco since I started growing with the stuff about eight months ago, from perlite/coco to chunky coco mixed coir, and hands down, my best results have come from straight coir. Plus, it's easier to re-use or recycle the straight stuff as opposed to that mixed with perlite.

And finally: your herb looks dank!! Can't wait to see your results in coco!

 

[Guest]

Water at least once a day till you get about a 10%-20% runoff. I've had excellent results watering only once a day and I did it by hand, lol. This grow will be circulating drip with only one watering a day. NEVER let the coco dry out!

NPK pegged it. Straight coir is the way to go. No need for perlite.

pH advice was good. Mine stays at 5.8 or thereabouts.

Right on Rosy Cheeks. It's all molecules, lmfao.

forty grit, coco specific nutes are in fact superior to non-coco specific nutes when growing in coco. When someone says coco specific nutes they're not talking about Canna Coco nutes SPECIFICALLY. Nutrient lines, at least the top brands, normally have a coco specific line and a soil line. The coco specific line of nutes is definitely the choice ya wanna make. forty grit, you may have already known this and I apologize if that's the case but it sounded like you were saying Canna brand nutes weren't superior to the other brands and that may or may not be true but it's not what we mean when we say coco specific nutes. Nutrients made specifically for growing in coco will almost always give better results than nutrients made for soil grows.

Good luck Brain!

Peace

 

[Brain]

Mojo-Forty gets amazing results from non coco specific nutes so I think he knows what he's doing. I think others have found the same.

I have babies in beer cups looking awesome. Root growth is out of this world and they look bigger every day which is something I haven't seen with GDP, a notoriously slow vegger. I'm giving them 3/4 strength PBP and 1/2 cal mag once a day.

I'm looking into mixing coco chips in with the canna coco to let it drain better for 2-3 feeding a day when they are in flower. Are the chips as good as perlie and accomplishing this?

 

[420cali]

if you where shootin for 4 foot trees form the top of the pot how big of a pot would you use if you where useing strait canna coco?

i run 9 per table in 10gal soil pots but it way to much soil...

 

[Brain]

I'm bumping the the nutes up to full strength this week. The girls are growing great. I will be switching to flora nova when I run out of PBP. That might not be until next run. I'm gonna mix the canna coco with 20% coco chips. I hope they airrate like advertised. They do seem kinda spongy dry. Still a few weeks until I set up my drip system and make other room modifications and improvements to help cool it down. Plants will be ready to flip when the room is. I'm excited, I keep reading lots of first time coco users rave about the speed and ease of coco and I am happy to be one of them.

 

[Brain]

Well 2 months later and things couldn't be better. Except for much more stretch than I planned on the girls are doing great. They haven't looked unhealthy fo 1 second. Comming from soil I'd say growth rate is at least twice as fast, above and below the surface.

One amazing thing I have discovered is that coco makes a great rooting medium. I tried one for an experiment w/o any gel and it rooted in about a week. I then tried SFV OG which was rooting with a 10% success rate and I went 3 for 3 in coco. No humidity dome no nothing. I just put them under some plants in veg. I may ditch the aero cloner. It's just too easy! I'll throw some harvest pics up in a few weeks. Thanks for the help everybody.

 

[truecannabliss]

So pleased coco is going well for you, the plants growth rate and root growth really is amazing....kinda hard to explain to people just how fast things move compared to soil grown plants.
I look forward to seeing more from you.
Peace

 

[20kw dreams]

Rosy Cheeks - I'm not an organic grower, and I do agree with you for the most part with the Organic vs Salts argument, BUT I just wanted to point out that plants do uptake and transport organic molecules, contrary to popular belief. If you don't believe me, just think hormone.

420Cali - I'm running 8" Boss blocks, which are a little less then 2 gal of coco, and my plants are huge and yieldy. Prob just wasting your time filling up those huge pots.

Brain - IMO don't bother with drippers, use the little 1/8" spaghetti lines, and use 2 in each pot. I think they are better for recirc, but prob not for drain to waste. They don't clog all that easy at all. I just wrap my pump in a paint strainer and they hardly ever clog. It's always good to have 2 in there though in case one does clog.

Check to see if your veg fert has Ammoniacal Nitrogen in it. Ammonia is a cation, so it helps flush out the coco of excess K, but it makes your plants stretch more vs Nitrate Nitrogen. I noticed I got a gang of stretch from AN's Monkey Juice grow, and low and behold, it was all ammonia. I switched out for Sensi+CalMg in veg and stretch was greatly reduced.