Diary White Rhino & Friends. Fall 2021 Grow.

[exploziv]

I would not use any input that has any chance of being contaminated on cannabis. The plant sucks everything in like a sponge. Its commonly used as envoirment cleanup crop for lead and heavy metals. So yeah, be careful what you expose it to, cause you are then concentrating those in your plants.

Also, phosporic acid is great as ph down. Much better than citric.

 

[PCBuds]

Also, phosporic acid is great as ph down. Much better than citric.

What about Hydrochloric Acid?

It's cheap and readily available.

Or would adding Chlorine to the water be bad?

 

[exploziv]

Yep, its not good, even if it should evaporate quite easily. It can be damaging even at low ppm. Phosphoric acid is cheap and readly available for the food and beverage industry, so that is usually what most get.

 

[f-e]

I just remembered..
Canna offer two types of down. One Nitric, one Phosphoric. In coco, you switch between them, as you move from grow to bloom. I think they call nitric Grow Acid.

Nitric fully dissociates in water, and goes off turning calcium carbonates into calcium nitrates, having burnt off the carbon part, making co2 bubbles. Or so says my layman chemistry, anyway. This is how the calcium in the tap becomes available. The plant takes the N with the Ca hitching a ride.
Phosphoric doesn't fully dissociate. About half of it does. Becoming available to burn off the carbon, but the product calcium phosphate is not useful. The half that stays as acid, unable to work on the carbonates, is how we have both acid and carbonates present in higher quantities than using Nitric. This means, more buffering. More resistance to change. Nitric can't stay in solution with the carbonates, it can't help itself.. it burns them off until either it's exhausted or the carbon is.

Once I know how much nitric I need, I like to put it in first. Water then nitric, and wait a while. I usually drop about 80% of my dose in. Then the last 20%, last. Simply because I might get it wrong from day to day. Water quality isn't consistent here.

This difference in the acids might explain the back n forth of conversation regarding tap calcium's availability. Nitric/Phosphoric/soils...

Citric was nothing but a disaster for me. I lower the pH one day, then the next it is higher than when I started. It's insane..

I have no idea about any others. I didn't take chemistry.


I think we are limited to 12% nitric now. Both nitric and hydrogen peroxide fell under strict control a few years back. They are used in bomb making. I stocked up first, with stuff that smokes when you take the lid off. I kinda wish I hadn't lol


If you take your tap down to about 6.4 with nitric, then you have about 50ppm of carbonates and your other 250 is calnit. This needs checking though, as it's been a while..
250 calnit is a lot. You will need to use both acids. P to a certain pH then N to finish. Sharing the work, to give a more suitable 125ppm calnit. Then you can add about 50ppm Mg. It's low in canna coco feeds, so should be alright.

This is getting a bit complicated for an online chat..

 

[PCBuds]

You might want to consider an RO filter.

This is what I have...

I've used it every day for about a year now and make 10-20 liters a day.

My tap water reads 117 PPM, and my RO water is still reading only 4 PPM.

 

[aliceklar]

I just remembered..
Canna offer two types of down. One Nitric, one Phosphoric. In coco, you switch between them, as you move from grow to bloom. I think they call nitric Grow Acid.

Nitric fully dissociates in water, and goes off turning calcium carbonates into calcium nitrates, having burnt off the carbon part, making co2 bubbles. Or so says my layman chemistry, anyway. This is how the calcium in the tap becomes available. The plant takes the N with the Ca hitching a ride.
Phosphoric doesn't fully dissociate. About half of it does. Becoming available to burn off the carbon, but the product calcium phosphate is not useful. The half that stays as acid, unable to work on the carbonates, is how we have both acid and carbonates present in higher quantities than using Nitric. This means, more buffering. More resistance to change. Nitric can't stay in solution with the carbonates, it can't help itself.. it burns them off until either it's exhausted or the carbon is.

Once I know how much nitric I need, I like to put it in first. Water then nitric, and wait a while. I usually drop about 80% of my dose in. Then the last 20%, last. Simply because I might get it wrong from day to day. Water quality isn't consistent here.

This difference in the acids might explain the back n forth of conversation regarding tap calcium's availability. Nitric/Phosphoric/soils...

Citric was nothing but a disaster for me. I lower the pH one day, then the next it is higher than when I started. It's insane..

I have no idea about any others. I didn't take chemistry.

I think we are limited to 12% nitric now. Both nitric and hydrogen peroxide fell under strict control a few years back. They are used in bomb making. I stocked up first, with stuff that smokes when you take the lid off. I kinda wish I hadn't lol

If you take your tap down to about 6.4 with nitric, then you have about 50ppm of carbonates and your other 250 is calnit. This needs checking though, as it's been a while..
250 calnit is a lot. You will need to use both acids. P to a certain pH then N to finish. Sharing the work, to give a more suitable 125ppm calnit. Then you can add about 50ppm Mg. It's low in canna coco feeds, so should be alright.

This is getting a bit complicated for an online chat..

Thanks f-e thats pretty cool. Same thing is happening with citric acid for me - pH slowly rises over a few days - and I'd been wondering what was going on, what the HOC₂ had changed into, and what it had reacted with (guessing the fuckton of calcium carbonate). My chemistry is poor - tho this is a good way to learn ... Have found some nitric pH down. So will have options. Thanks for the chemistry lesson!

Repotted the last 4 seedlings today, in 50/50 perlite compost mix (red pots). Happy with the green new growth on the rescue plants in pure perlite & coco/perlite, but the ones in the original compost are just slowly dying, compost not draining or drying. I'll try to save the Medical Mass. Its a reliable CBD plant and a sweet smoke, and was my last seed. The others in that top left corner, I'm probably going to compost tomorrow.

 

[aliceklar]

Culled one of the White Rhinos, one Purple bud, one BSGxJ and one BSGxA. The attempted flushings had failed - they had just stopped growing totally whilst the compost stayed sodden. Will try to salvage the Medical Mass (fem, RQS) and the Blueberry (reg, MSNL) by washing the roots clean and repotting into small pots of 100% perlite. All the MMWR & MMJ have perked up after their repotting.

 

[f-e]

You might want to consider an RO filter.

This is what I have...





I've used it every day for about a year now and make 10-20 liters a day.

My tap water reads 117 PPM, and my RO water is still reading only 4 PPM.

We can get things like this from UK for about £40
The supplied membrane expects about 80psi which is a bit useless. I had a 100gpd unit taking about 3 hours to fill a bucket.
I got on to a supplier about the 50psi membranes they didn't stock. No reply, but their stock changed. I now have a 150gpd membrane (the biggest that fits such a housing) and it does 1 Liter in 7 minutes. About 3 times faster than the wrongly specified 100G, but.. It was about £25 just for the membrane.

The membrane rated at 50psi still has a maximum pressure way beyond what could be found at the tap. Not industrially high, but you could still use a booster pump if you wanted.

It's still only 50gpd not 150gpd, but that's a lot better. I have not checked my actual water pressure.


I should get some pics up. I have it meat hooked over the baths edge, though it's not leaked. All automated, with a bypass to mix in a volume of tap.

 

[PCBuds]

My filter takes about 40 minutes to make 15 liters, but I have no idea what my water pressure is.

It wastes 2 liters of water for every liter of water that it makes, and that bugs me, so I use the waste water to fill my toilet tank. Lol

The kit is a 3 stage filter, with a sediment filter, a carbon filter for VOC's and the membrane filter for everything else.

The carbon filter isn't that great because I can smell chlorine in the filtered water, but that's not a big deal, I just let it degass.

I think that in aliceklar's case, with the high calcium carbonate content, the filter should work fine and not need to be replaced too often.

As far as I understand it, the calcium carbonate should pass through all three filters easily and end up in the waste water (unless it precipitates out of the water and plugs one of the filters up?)

The filters need replacing when one of the stages plugs up and water flow reduces to a trickle, or the membrane starts to leak and your output filtered water PPM starts to increase.

One guy mentioned in a review that his water had a really high sediment level and the sediment filter plugged up, so he plugged it in backwards and blew the crap out of the filter.

The kit comes with everything you need to hook it up, but a lot of it didn't work with my plumbing, so I had to buy a bunch of plumbing connections.

Then the on/off valve crapped out and wouldn't shut off so I had to buy a new valve.
The original valve was junk.
The proper brass replacement was $27.

 

[PCBuds]

I found my instructions...

And of course,.. Turdidity is the number of turds in your water, measured in Number of Turds per standard Unit measure.
The standard is 10 turds or more, but my filter can only handle 1 turd.
My filter may not be adequate. Lol

 

[aliceklar]

f-e & PCBuds - thank you for the water filtering advice. That is cheaper than I had expected, but I think I'm going to try low-tech first and install a water butt. I only grow during the cold wet months (thats a lot of them here lol) and we get a lot of rainwater. I need a water butt anyway as I grow tomatoes and chillies in big pots in the garden. If I am using (free) rainwater as my baseline, then I can just add tap as my pH up (adding in some useful minerals) - and wont have to deal with the crazy pH buffering from all the calcium carbonate. And then I'll need the calmag

In other news, the perlite rescue plants (apart from the Purple Bud, still looking wonky - shame, I really like the high off that one... hope it pulls through) are green and vigorous - with some new shoots following their recent topping that look good for cloning. It has been a ride!

Restraining myself from watering the recently repotted MMxWR F2s and MMxJohaar F1s. Dont think they are quite ready yet.

 

[zif]

I found my instructions...

Thanks for posting that! It's helpful to see they spec it for water under 5 grains per gallon. Tap here is 12+ gpg....

 

[zif]

f-e & PCBuds - thank you for the water filtering advice. That is cheaper than I had expected, but I think I'm going to try low-tech first and install a water butt. I only grow during the cold wet months (thats a lot of them here lol) and we get a lot of rainwater. I need a water butt anyway as I grow tomatoes and chillies in big pots in the garden. If I am using (free) rainwater as my baseline, then I can just add tap as my pH up (adding in some useful minerals) - and wont have to deal with the crazy pH buffering from all the calcium carbonate. And then I'll need the calmag

I do the same, but with the dehumidifier condensate. My tap's at about 150ppm CaCO, and does much better cut with mineral-free water.

Your plants are looking so much happier! Nice progress turning them around - I bet even the purple will pull through.

 

[aliceklar]

I do the same, but with the dehumidifier condensate. My tap's at about 150ppm CaCO, and does much better cut with mineral-free water.
Your plants are looking so much happier! Nice progress turning them around - I bet even the purple will pull through.

Cheers zif. Am relieved that the primary colour in veg is no longer yellow. Was worried about losing all three batches of seedlings. Still time

Feel like the important bits of the environment are getting tuned in now, and trying to keep the right things in a healthy range. Am on top of pH, using 5.5 or slightly lower on the perlite and coco plants - which goes up to 6.5 on runoff. 2ml Canna A, 2ml Canna B, 1ml maxicrop, 1ml Epsom salt solution. Have been collecting some rainwater and have just started cutting the tapwater 50/50, which gives 173ppm as a base. Am watering more moderately (apart from the perlite rescue plants which get twice daily soakings). Am starting to understand nutes, and how different plants needs can be in different mediums. And am paying more attention to temperature - trying to keep it stable around 25C, and not below 23. Have reprogrammed the extraction fan to cycle briefly during periods when I'm not around, and generally keeping the cupboard door closed more often (tho I like to look at my plants, yknow?). Raised the lights 10cm as the plants were getting within 30cm and I thought I could see some signs of bleaching on the new growth on MW3. 2 x sf1000 led quantam boards in veg, 20/4, turned down to 70%. 1 of the same in the smaller flower space (100%). Need to get a little cloning station set up. the AKxMMWRs are going to be done soon and I'm aiming to have some cuttings ready to sex.

 

[aliceklar]

No idea what that is. Thought it might be spidermite from a distance, but its not webs nor pinprick leaf damage, more like crackling of the green matter of the leaf, or a dried coating over the leaf. Maybe residue from foliar spray w seaweed? Hope not mould.

 

[exploziv]

I had something similar when I had the mg deffs and I gave them lots of epsom salt foliars sprays. You can use a wet sponge to take it off. Clean sponge and come again at it to take all of if its really salts from foliars. If its mold it will come back fast. But I don't think its mold.

 

[Mars Hydro Led]

Good luck for these little ones.

 

[aliceklar]

Closeup w usb microscope on top and underside of one of the worst affected leaves. Wiping with a damp cloth doesnt seem to do much - although there is some dry material on the top surface of the leaves, the discolouration is internal. Carefully checked a couple of leaves that show the deformation and discolouration - no sign of bugs.

Also root-washed Blueberry #7 and the Medical Mass (fem) plants, and repotted into 100% perlite. Flushed at 5.5 pH with .5ml maxicrop and .5ml calmag. So thats the last of the crappy Melcourt Sylvagrow compost gone. Temps staying stable between 23 and 27C. Everything growing nicely.

 

[PCBuds]

The backside looks normal to me.

This is one of my leaves...

My plant isn't normal though, so this may not be a good reference. Lol

 

[exploziv]

Undersides look normal, and front I have no other guess than some concentrated foliar or the drops + light from it burned the plants, and maybe even cristalised there. Did u had a chance to see if the surface stuff that goes away looks like fine cristals? Dis you give them too concentrated epsom feed, maybe?
Other than this try at guessing, I have no ideea what it could be.