passive plant killer

[delta9nxs]

Quotes by OO.
“Hi D9,

“Beautiful plants man. I only hope to do half as well...”

Thank you! I think you are about to grow some very healthy plants.



“I have 2 mini PPKs going, about 3 weeks from seed. My PPKs are based on 6" black plastic soil pots. I use one pot unmodified for the plant with 3 microfiber wicks. A second pot has the bottom 1.5" removed and used to support the plant pot. I get a stand-off of ~5". The idea is that each PPK sits in a rez and I can move it around like a soil plant. In my small veg space I only have to plumb 1 rez.”

Sounds good but a pic would help me a lot.


“I tried 3 types of coco before settling on the Canna CocoGrow. The generic coco seemed to hold too much water. The Botanicare CocoGrow was 2.0 EC -yikes!- right out of the bag. The Canna was 0.2 EC. I'm using FNB with RO water and started out using 1.0 EC and 5.5 PH. I had to add 1-2 ml of PH up.”

So far i've only used the atami stuff. It's pre-charged too. I've always rinsed every medium heavily. You just can't know for sure what somebody has put in it. Why did you feel it necessary to adjust ph? 5.5 is a great starting point. 1.0 EC is probably a little low for a well rooted plant. This depends on lighting. The more powerful the lighting the stronger the nutes can be without burning the plant. A plant that has been under weak lights at a low dose can show what looks like deficiencies when placed in a high light environment without a dose adjustment.


“I am sure I have to adjust my nutes but I am astounded with how well they are growing. I have 1 femmed Arjan's Haze #3 and 1 bagseed from the first grow. There is no comparison at all.”

Great! After a while you will trust the system and relax. This is the most stress free method i've ever tried.


“That being said I have a definite nute problem. I noticed signs of a cal/mag deficiency on the lowest fan leaves. About 5 days ago I added 4ml/gal of Technaflora MagiCal. It took my EC up to 1.4. I dont think its enough as the higher fan leaves are slowly getting that uneven green look though its not too bad yet. I have not been top watering as the surface never dries out.”

When I first started with coco I had the same cec issue initially that binds up cal/mag ions. I used fnb at 750 ppm, calcium nitrate at 100 ppm, and magnesium sulfate (epsom salts) at 50 ppm. This totally stopped the displays. This is all on a .5 meter so 900 ppm or ec 1.8 in ro water. I ran this in all stages for life. If you try this mix the fnb first, epsom second, and calcinit last. Stirring well in between.


“My plan is to replace the nutes with FNB / CalMag up to 2.0 EC and raise the PH to 5.9. Some or all would be poured through the PPKs. What do you think?”

900-1000 ppm is fine for strong lights, you may have to dial it back a bit with your lights. Maybe not. I don't adjust ph until I see which way it goes. If, immediately after mixing, your ph is anywhere between 5 and 6, leave it alone for a while, then check it. I've been running mine at 5.4-5.5 with no adjusters and everything looks good.


“Also these 6" dia x 7" h pots hold about a gallon of coco. Do you think I need to transplant to larger pots? I cant afford to veg them much longer or they will finish too big.

Thanks, OO”

A gallon is a lot of volume in your space. Should be fine.

Do you have a float valve to control water level? And how much of an air gap are you running?

Later, d9

 

[delta9nxs]

Oldone, I picked up Botanicare CocoGrow a while back and it measure about 150 ppm runoff. Decided that it wasn't enough to warrant flushing. I like it quite a bit. That said, if you're getting nute issue, pick up some FloraKleen or Drip Clean and do a plain watering w/ it. This will remove salt build-up that contributes to your nute probs. I did this every 4th day in veg this run w/ ZERO issues. Maybe overkill, once per week should suffice. If you're on ro water, 5 ml CalMag should keep you straight. I've found pH not to be nearly as much of an issue as most people make it. I keep it around 5.8 (5.5-6.0). Biggest thing though, is to stay on top of salt buildup IMO.

D9, can't wait for the results of the defoliation test. I've been doing some experimenting and found using an airstone under the coco add 5-10% vigor to the plant. Haven't reached the end of the cycle, but it's clearly improved growth thru stretch. Currently using 8x8" square net pots, sidewalls not exposed. Will repeat this experiment w/ the smartpot.

hey, darthfader! back when i was a hippie in frisco "fader" was the term applied to old people or people who were over the hump of life and were on their way down. i never imagined i would become one. you must be a "fader" too.

the drip clean works well in top watered containers where the salt accumulation occurs mostly in the bottom of the container. the fact that it occurs at all is due to the repeated wetting/drying cycle most folks subject their medium to.

in a sub-irrigated system that is also pulse watered from the top there is no appreciable buildup. this is because the medium is kept in a constant state of moisture with continuous movement.

salts are continuously re-blended back into solution.

the defoliation seems to be working out for me. i just got 11.96 from one defoliated at 21 days flower.

interesting observation on the air stone. i should try one.

nice hearing from you, later on, d9

 

[delta9nxs]

Woe, Panic, Dismay!
or
Did I break Physics?

Pot is 7" high
6"x1.5" sink tailpiece
fiberglass screen zip tied on end
into a 3 gal rubbermaid
~3" res level
sitting under 140 watts
80 deg F
25-30% RH
closed container, air exchanged ~ 1x/5mins

There's about 2" perlite in the pots. I'm fairly sure I got a good packing of the perlite into the tailpieces. No voids.

Assuming 6" wicking for perlite, I would expect 3" penetration into the pot.
After 8-10 hrs, moisture is only apparent right at the top of the tailpiece. No penetration into pot at all.
Is it possible that air exchange and low RH is drying the 2" of material I have in the pot faster than wicking can replenish?
No plantys in the system yet, still in the tuning phase.
Any ideas?

hey, snowgro! i have some questions.

did you have to trim the tail piece? is it off the bottom of the tub slightly?

if i understand correctly you have just 2" of perlite in the pot with nothing above it? are you going to use perlite all the way or coco or something else on top?

are you using large and chunky or regular coarse ag grade perlite?

perlite in general dries out very fast. i would amend it with something for this app. like coco. if you do amend your medium make it uniform. by this i mean no layering or stratifying. hydraulic conductivity will be more uniform.

also with more medium in the pot moisture will rise much higher. all evaporation will be forced upward through the medium, especially since you don't have holes in the side wall.

as roots develop moisture is more available in the top of the container.

this is why an adjustable level control system is important. while i adjust air gap to 3" for coco using supplemental pulse irrigation and an air pruning container you might need 1" for 100% perlite with no top feed system and no air pruning holes.

let me know how you intend to grow as far as medium and light are concerned.

d9

 

[delta9nxs]

Intersting thread nice info here. I been growing in dwc for a while now and I sometime will throw in 1 or 2 soil plants ( never goes well cuz i forget to water on time). Well I was thinking of a way to combined soil/coco with dwc.
Look at the picture and you'll see that the top pot will have soil or coco. At the bottom of the will be a piece of coco-mat or rockwool or STG to keep the medium from running out the bottom and into the dwc water. This way I can feed just organic nutrient to the soil top pot without run off but the plant will get most of its water from the roots in the dwc rez. So once you figure out how much water you need to feed to top pot you minimize run off into the dwc rez. With an organic nutrient you only have to feed once in a while or you can feed right before changing the water in the dwc rez. That way if there is run off into the rez it doesn't matter becuase you are going to change the water and can rinse the run off water from the dwc roots ( no brown slime etc..). It may be the best of both worlds organic soil taste and aroma with dwc explosive growth.

hi, skunk420! thank you and welcome aboard!

sounds workable, there are so many ways to grow in the naked city. are you going to do a thread on it?

d9

 

[delta9nxs]

i'm following a thread on another forum in which some people are going to post data from the sap analysis tools they purchased.

i'd like to see that.

d9

 

[SnowGro]

Hi D9

I am planning on 100% perlite.
The level is low now, just getting it up for testing. it's the fine type, not chunky.

Tail piece isn't trimmed at all, and at least 1/2" off the bottom. I have about a 3" air gap at the moment, easily adjustable.

After observing it all day, and your initial reaction, I believe I'm getting evap.>wicking.
Res makeup is dripping 5-10 sec/drip, I'm pretty sure it's from evap as opposed to leak. Res levels holding nicely.

I'll raise the res level and add a little more media. A day or 2 of testing is giving me good info on background evap volumes.

I have fresh RO with cal/mag available at all sites, so I'm most likely going to end up with a top-water of some sort. I've been following the discussion closely, and am sold on pulse feed in the near future. Right now I'm hell bent on a KISS system I can walk away from for 10 days and have something green when I return


Thanks again for the reassurance.

The more powerful the lighting the stronger the nutes can be without burning the plant.

+1
Don't think I've seen this described in that manner before.

 

[oldone]

Sounds good but a pic would help me a lot.

here yo go..

So far i've only used the atami stuff. It's pre-charged too. I've always rinsed every medium heavily. You just can't know for sure what somebody has put in it. Why did you feel it necessary to adjust ph? 5.5 is a great starting point. 1.0 EC is probably a little low for a well rooted plant. This depends on lighting. The more powerful the lighting the stronger the nutes can be without burning the plant. A plant that has been under weak lights at a low dose can show what looks like deficiencies when placed in a high light environment without a dose adjustment.

I have a very small supply of RO water and didnt want to rinse the CocoGrow. By chance I found the Canna. A PH chart I found here on IC shows 5.5 Ph a little low and could lock out some nutes. I have 110W PLLs in 1.8 sqft veg room. Here is a deficiency shot:

Do you have a float valve to control water level? And how much of an air gap are you running?

Float valves on the way...about a 2" gap right now...

Thanks,
OO

 

[delta9nxs]

Hi D9

I am planning on 100% perlite.
The level is low now, just getting it up for testing. it's the fine type, not chunky.

Tail piece isn't trimmed at all, and at least 1/2" off the bottom. I have about a 3" air gap at the moment, easily adjustable.

After observing it all day, and your initial reaction, I believe I'm getting evap.>wicking.
Res makeup is dripping 5-10 sec/drip, I'm pretty sure it's from evap as opposed to leak. Res levels holding nicely.

I'll raise the res level and add a little more media. A day or 2 of testing is giving me good info on background evap volumes.

I have fresh RO with cal/mag available at all sites, so I'm most likely going to end up with a top-water of some sort. I've been following the discussion closely, and am sold on pulse feed in the near future. Right now I'm hell bent on a KISS system I can walk away from for 10 days and have something green when I return


Thanks again for the reassurance.



+1
Don't think I've seen this described in that manner before.

yes, decrease the gap to 1" or less to start with. then read the plants for symptoms of over watering. perlite is not internally porous and so contains no water within each piece. this is why it floats. all water is retained in the surface pores only. perlite needs to be amended or used with an almost continuous top feed. it doesn't need much volume. just enough to keep the pathway wet.

with perlite just a small amount of coco or vermiculite (min 10%) will mitigate the drying tendency.

d9

 

[delta9nxs]

OO, i'm having a little difficulty with understanding your set up. In the pic you show one container with a plant in it on top of another cut off container.

Is all of your medium in the top pot? If so, given the pot dimensions you gave of 6” diameter and 7” height, the cut off lower container has to have at least a 4-5” air gap. It looks like the aluminum saucer has about 2” of water in it.

You then have 3 wicks extending downward from the plant container, through an approx 4-5” gap, into 2” of water?

You must be top watering and letting the wicks function as a drain to remove the pwt. This could work fine but you would not need the float valve.

Confused.

About ph. Coco has a ph of 6.1-6.2. this can have an effect overall medium ph. Flora nova bloom has buffers that tend to drive ph up also. 5.5 will not cause deficiencies, the charts depict what the authors feel is an ideal range for each element. There is no way to achieve the ideal range for all elements simultaneously. It's a compromise situation. Using fnb and coco your ph will rise from there anyway.

Your plant is showing magnesium and calcium deficiencies caused by the coco exchanging ions with your nutes. More cal-mag.

Well, I hope this helps. later

 

[oldone]

sorry for the confusion. My PPKs normally sit in a rez with 3" nute depth. I took it out of the rez for the pic. I dont top water at all.

I want to use the canna RO/coco nutes eventually, but I should use up all the FNB first. It wasn't cheap. I'll get a shot of the plants when I switch them to the flower side and there is more room.

Thanks for the PH info. I know its elsewhere in this thread but its a little daunting to find...669 replies and counting.

See ya,
OO

 

[delta9nxs]

sorry for the confusion. My PPKs normally sit in a rez with 3" nute depth. I took it out of the rez for the pic. I dont top water at all.

I want to use the canna RO/coco nutes eventually, but I should use up all the FNB first. It wasn't cheap. I'll get a shot of the plants when I switch them to the flower side and there is more room.

Thanks for the PH info. I know its elsewhere in this thread but its a little daunting to find...669 replies and counting.

See ya,
OO

i gotcha now! clear picture! thank you! i can be slow on the uptake sometimes.

d9

 

[Darth Fader]

LOL I'm no spring chicken that's for sure, but I've got a way to go before I'll be retiring. When I came to California, the kids would always talk about "getting faded" (wasted). I thought it was kinda funny. Guess I was looking for clever/funny screen name. And being a Star Wars fan ... well seemed humorous at the time. I need to find a good avatar!

 

[delta9nxs]

I have discovered that I have made a mistake in calculating the jack's/calcium nitrate ratio.
Looking at the elemental ppm shown below for jack's you'll see that the elements add up to 630 ppm. There is no filler in the mix.

I took their 130 oz's per 1000 gals and and converted to grams per gallon. Ran six tests and came up with nearly 630 ppm every time.

So I was correct here.

Next I took the 86 oz's of calcium nitrate and converted it to grams per gallon, ran 6 tests and it came to 420 ppm or thereabouts.

In their instruction #3 below they say that this dose provides 150 ppm total nitrogen and 116 ppm calcium. They are talking about 150 ppm nitrogen including the 50 ppm nitrogen in the base formula.

I interpreted this to mean 216 ppm total calcium nitrate needs to be added. Bringing the total nutrient strength to 846 ppm.

This turns out to be wrong as there is some kind of carrier or filler in the calcium nitrate.

To obtain the extra 100 ppm nitrogen and the 116 ppm calcium you must add 420 ppm calcium nitrate.

I had erroneously calculated the ratio of jack's to calcium nitrate at 1/.34.

The proper ratio is 1/.67.

At this ratio 630/420 ppm you will get 1050 ppm or ec 2.1, which is what their instructions say you should get.

I felt this was a higher strength than I needed so I took their 630 ppm jack's x .72 and got 453.6 and the 420 ppm calcium nitrate x .72 and got 302.4. rounded them to 450/300 to get 750 ppm, which is what i'm using now. This still maintains the 1/.67 ratio.

So you can achieve any strength you need by using this ratio.

The funny thing about this is that I have been running it at the wrong ratio since 3/15 and still have grown some nice plants. It's going to be interesting to see what happens now.


“Follow these steps to obtain a precipitate free solution
1. Dissolve 130 ounces of 5-12-26 Hydroponic in 1000 gallons of final feed solution. You will obtain the
following elemental PPM concentrations:
Element N P K Mg SO4 Fe Mn Zn Cu B Mo
PPM 50 52 215 63 246 3 .50 .15 .15 .50 .10
2. Dissolve any additional Epsom Salts desired into the above 1000 gallon solution before proceeding. For
most crops 50 PPM Magnesium is an adequate level in solution. To increase your Magnesium levels
dissolve 10 ounces of Epsom Salts in 1000 gallons of final feed solution to obtain 7.5 PPM additional
Magnesium.
3. Dissolve 86 ounces of Calcium Nitrate into the above 1000 gallon solution to obtain a total nutrient
concentration of 150 PPM Nitrogen and 116 PPM Calcium.
E.C at 100 ppm N = 2.10 Limit of Solubility= 3 lb/gal.”

 

[petemoss]

delete

 

[petemoss]

Hi d9,
Thanks for the correction on how much calcinit to add. So 420 ppm instead of 216 ppm to get a total 1050 ppm. I've been using the Jack's on my mothers and vegging clones and see much faster and healthier growth than with h3ad's 0-6-9 or Lucas 0-5-10 I was using. I think you've really come up with a great basic coco feed and hope others will note your results and try Jack's. Great stuff!

 

[*mistress*]

cal nit 15%n-19%ca
@ 1/2 tsp/gal (2.5g)
...n-99 ppms...
...ca-125...

 

[Carl Carlson]

I've been running the Peters + Calcium Nitrate at 2 gram per gallon and 1.25 grams per gallon for an EC of 1.2 for drain to waste coir. No deficiencies. No toxicities. No tip burning... Great stuff cheap!

 

[delta9nxs]

hey, pete! even though i screwed up on the dose it still grew nice plants. now that i've made the correction the vegging plants look like they're speeding up a little. great stuff! the stability is incredible. i'm still operating without major change outs.

 

[delta9nxs]

cal nit 15%n-19%ca
@ 1/2 tsp/gal (2.5g)
...n-99 ppms...
...ca-125...

hi, yep, 86 oz's per 1000 gallons is 2.44 grams per gal. this hits around 420 ppm but gets you the 100ppm additional nitrate and the 116 ppm calcium.

 

[delta9nxs]

I've been running the Peters + Calcium Nitrate at 2 gram per gallon and 1.25 grams per gallon for an EC of 1.2 for drain to waste coir. No deficiencies. No toxicities. No tip burning... Great stuff cheap!

hey, carl, did you notice the ratio of peter's to calcinit you are using is 1/.63. there is probably very little difference between the jack's and peter's. the most notable one is the magnesium. i've been dropping ec also. currently trying 1.5.