Reservoir water has started to smell, I think things are going to turn bad quickly

[gaiusmarius]

i have never used peroxide in my irrigation system, seems to me you are not helping the coco when you do that as its full of living organisms that benefit your plants, by killing them all off you make things harder for your plants. i would let the pots get dry, stop watering for a day or 2, clean and refill the tank with fresh water, add zym product. part of the reason coco works so well is its full of beneficial s. they are part of what makes coco such a nice medium to grow in.

try and describe the smell? does the medium smell too?

 

[Red October]

First flush I did on my last grow the stuff smelled like a manure pit.

so bad man, I did a bit of digging into the Coco now to give a sniff and the smell seems to have gone but that's also only the first 10cm. I'll load them up tomorrow with some microbes and then see how it smells the day after.

 

[Red October]

i have never used peroxide in my irrigation system, seems to me you are not helping the coco when you do that as its full of living organisms that benefit your plants, by killing them all off you make things harder for your plants. i would let the pots get dry, stop watering for a day or 2, clean and refill the tank with fresh water, add zym product. part of the reason coco works so well is its full of beneficial s. they are part of what makes coco such a nice medium to grow in.

try and describe the smell? does the medium smell too?

Yeah that was my understanding too, but I think I screwed up on a few fronts that led to this. I was only circulating the water and not aerating it, I stopped adding the beneficial microbes as I thought once they had been added they would be able to keep a colony going and I started flooding twice a day as that was the bad advice I was following from reading up on Coco watering requirements

The smell was definitely sulphides, like rotten egg, not the good kind of decomposing smell that I'm used to from soil. I'll be adding back the good microbes again and I'm hoping the flush with peroxide will deplete the bad microbes enough so that the good ones can take over easier, I'm just very surprised how good the plants have looked throughout this whole episode, looking at other people's threads with similar smell issues their plants look like they've been through the wars and with mine I don't have a single leaf showing any type of deficiency or damage, this is my first go with Coco

 

[gaiusmarius]

the coco should quickly re colonize thats true, but i wonder if you really need to use peroxide. seems to me your plants look quite happy, maybe a little hungry, but thats mostly a good thing, with most strains anyway. i really would just let that coco mix dry out for a few days, this will clear up the smell.

its tempting some times to do things with additives etc, but mostly its a matter of some imbalance. the plants will be fine as long as you don't wait too long with watering. they might actually perk up a bit. you don't want to give more nutrient solutions then the plant can useat any given stage. to be honest, mixing coco with perlit makes it more complicated to grow in then using it pure. never been a fan of mixing the two, unless its part of a soil mixture.

 

[Red October]

I've been very wary of pushing the nutes up too fast, only this week did I get the water to 1.3 EC and watching for any clawing from the leaves, the two destroyer plants have some very slight clawing but the other varieties seem to be fine so will be an increase again after the next flush with the microbes, they could be looking hungry as I'm struggling to maintain pH, my ph seems to consistently creep up and I still need to implement corrective measures but hopefully I will get there, I'm happy to try out some plants with full Coco and some with the 50/50 mix to see what works best on the table, I'm very new to this style of growing and figured the perlite would help with aeration even if I did over saturate the substrate. I fully agree this was due to an imbalance but it was caused by me I like keeping things as simple as possible and with this being the first test run I'm still surprised how easy it's been.

 

[gaiusmarius]

I've been very wary of pushing the nutes up too fast, only this week did I get the water to 1.3 EC and watching for any clawing from the leaves, the two destroyer plants have some very slight clawing but the other varieties seem to be fine so will be an increase again after the next flush with the microbes, they could be looking hungry as I'm struggling to maintain pH, my ph seems to consistently creep up and I still need to implement corrective measures but hopefully I will get there, I'm happy to try out some plants with full Coco and some with the 50/50 mix to see what works best on the table, I'm very new to this style of growing and figured the perlite would help with aeration even if I did over saturate the substrate. I fully agree this was due to an imbalance but it was caused by me I like keeping things as simple as possible and with this being the first test run I'm still surprised how easy it's been.

i don't think its ec level, its nutrient availability. either from the swamp like conditions in the medium or ph, or both. no need to up the nutrient level yet imo. keep correcting the ph to keep it somewhere between 5.5 and 6.2

pure coco is magical, you literally can not over water it as long as the water can run off. im sure you can work it out with the mix too, just sharing what i have experienced in many threads where people mixed coco with perlit. you do have good examples of it too though, so im not saying its not possible, but you do have quite a number of folks having issues using that mix.

 

[Red October]

Thanks for that man, and I do agree. My ph goes up to between 6.5 and 6.8 if I leave it, I'm also going to hold back in the watering and start doing it when I can feel by container weight when it's necessary, it's what I felt I should have been doing but again there's so just conflicting info online it makes it difficult if you've never been through the process.

 

[Fixer]

Get Azos & Mycos WP and treat as directed. Your sub-strait and res should smell like freshly turned soil. If you establish a healthy biome of beneficial bacteria and fungus you'll keep the bad microbes at bay.

 

[Switcher56]

Thanks for that man, and I do agree. My ph goes up to between 6.5 and 6.8 if I leave it, I'm also going to hold back in the watering and start doing it when I can feel by container weight when it's necessary, it's what I felt I should have been doing but again there's so just conflicting info online it makes it difficult if you've never been through the process.

That's high for coco! What is it normally?

 

[Red October]

That's high for coco! What is it normally?

Around 7.3 through the filter but the tap water is around the same, I get it down to 5.6 with just the nutes and then have to correct it daily, if I don't after 2 days it's up to the 6.5 mark

 

[gaiusmarius]

Around 7.3 through the filter but the tap water is around the same, I get it down to 5.6 with just the nutes and then have to correct it daily, if I don't after 2 days it's up to the 6.5 mark

a bit of ph fluctuation is ok, but really not above 6.3 as it makes the nutrient uptake less efficient. but the uptake efficiency level changes by ph from nutrient to nutrient, so letting it move from 5.5 to 6.3 before you adjust it back down will be fine. even in a pure coco set up you get some ph drift in the tank, depending on the tank size too, the more water the less fluctuations.

 

[Red October]

Just for anyone that might read this thread, the runoff today smelt alot better today but still has some stink to it, loaded up the water with microbes and did the flush, after about 2 hours when I removed the container with the runoff water I couldn't detect any smell anymore so hopefully the good guys will win this battle

Going to let the roots dry out a bit now for 48 hours and will do another flush with microbes and report back.

 

[gaiusmarius]

Just for anyone that might read this thread, the runoff today smelt alot better today but still has some stink to it, loaded up the water with microbes and did the flush, after about 2 hours when I removed the container with the runoff water I couldn't detect any smell anymore so hopefully the good guys will win this battle

Going to let the roots dry out a bit now for 48 hours and will do another flush with microbes and report back.

good news, sounds like you're on the right track.

 

[Red October]

I think so too, I can actually smell the plants in the room and from the exhaust again.

 

[Red October]

Smell has pretty much completely gone, and I'm surprised at how the plants reacted to the less water I even left it for a full 72 hours and they seem to be bulking up quicker now. There's so much misinformation everywhere online with people giving advice on watering schedules with Coco, the higher temp hid lights may require the more consistent watering but with the cooler led lights it's just overkill from what I'm seeing here, thanks again everyone for your input.

 

[gaiusmarius]

Smell has pretty much completely gone, and I'm surprised at how the plants reacted to the less water I even left it for a full 72 hours and they seem to be bulking up quicker now. There's so much misinformation everywhere online with people giving advice on watering schedules with Coco, the higher temp hid lights may require the more consistent watering but with the cooler led lights it's just overkill from what I'm seeing here, thanks again everyone for your input.

lol, i told you they would like it, but you can't do this many times either, but every few weeks there is no harm at all and they seem to like it once in a while, specially in automated multiple daily watering set ups.

they make more stronger roots too if you let the medium dry out once in a while, just not to the point where the plants show drooping of course.

 

[Three Berries]

Any one use charcoal filtering?

 

[f-e]

lol, i told you they would like it, but you can't do this many times either, but every few weeks there is no harm at all and they seem to like it once in a while, specially in automated multiple daily watering set ups.

they make more stronger roots too if you let the medium dry out once in a while, just not to the point where the plants show drooping of course.

A bit of stress makes them get a hurry on. You can then put everything back in place and benefit from the fact they are compelled to hurry up. Well.. for a few days at least.

We are due a crop steering thread. What I just said is really out of date. True, but very basic. So much more went on here. The deeper penetration of air, changing the eco systems balance, and the steering towards growth of root. Leading to the boost in blooming.
There seems to be some effective use of these strategies now. With new terms (to us) creeping in to describe what's happening. Leading advanced growers to form strategies that swing (steer) the plants back in forth. It really needs more coverage.

 

[Red October]

lol, i told you they would like it, but you can't do this many times either, but every few weeks there is no harm at all and they seem to like it once in a while, specially in automated multiple daily watering set ups.

they make more stronger roots too if you let the medium dry out once in a while, just not to the point where the plants show drooping of course.

I was waiting the whole time for them to droop with the heavy watering cycles but their leaves where always praising Jah, these are good lessons to learn when starting out with a new type of medium, this whole setup is just to test the parameters out for this system and to see how viable it was for me and so far it's been very pain free, I'll actually be able to go on holiday for a week if I wanted

 

[unnamedmike]

To avoid overwatering, im adding x amount of nutrient solution daily. If a plant is drinking 200ml daily, im watering 200ml. No run off, no waterlogged plants, no lazy roots or lack of oxigen(bad smell, anaerobic guys)
i dont add organic stuff to the tank, only fertilicers and some bennis