What would be better?

[pm_BigBud]

If I changed my res. every other week or Just add whats needed, lets say a gallon of water treated with nutes and what not every two weeks. I'm asking because I don't have a lot of room and just adding whats needed would work so much better for me. I was thinkin once I'm done vegging i'll still have to change the whole res. anyway, so I can change the nutes, but i'll do that when the time comes.

[Zandor]

Well good luck with your grow, I hope it works out for you.

You will get some yield but the amount will not be what you expect for your effort and the money you spent. The quality will be ok but again not what you would expect from a good quality proper grow.

Happy growing.

[pm_BigBud]

so should I changed my res. every other week or Just add whats needed. because I want to do whats best. Thanks.

[GodBud]

Its littered all over the board. Change rez every 7 to 10 days!

Peace

[pm_BigBud]

thanks

[deftdrummer]

better rule of thumb: change when it needs to be changed! How do you know when it needs to be changed?

-is it starting to smell funky? say perhaps like a stagnant pond
- is there significant buildup on the side of the res chamber?
- do you see chunks or a film like layer at all on the top of the water?
- has the color gone from light or semi transparent to murky and dark?
- does pH fluctuate wildly from day to day?

If you have 1 or any number of these symptoms then it is probably a good idea to change the nutrients. I think it is always better to change early than change late or chance it at all. Your plants will thank you. Sorry if effort is not what you want to put into it but if ease of growing was your intent then soil would have been a better choice cause hydro is high maintenance.

[Zandor]

better rule of thumb: change when it needs to be changed! How do you know when it needs to be changed?

-is it starting to smell funky? say perhaps like a stagnant pond
- is there significant buildup on the side of the res chamber?
- do you see chunks or a film like layer at all on the top of the water?
- has the color gone from light or semi transparent to murky and dark?
- does pH fluctuate wildly from day to day?

If you have 1 or any number of these symptoms then it is probably a good idea to change the nutrients. I think it is always better to change early than change late or chance it at all. Your plants will thank you. Sorry if effort is not what you want to put into it but if ease of growing was your intent then soil would have been a better choice cause hydro is high maintenance.

Sorry to disagree deftdrummer but that does not hold true for most plants.

You are not counting for the nutrients the plant needs for the given cycle of life the plant is in at that time. There are only (X) number of available nutrients in the water. Once they are used up there is no more. When you ad back nutrients what do you ad?

N? P? K?

What has the plant used and what is left behind? What is a third order mineral (that is minerals discarded by the plant that combine with other minerals to make a third compound and even a forth compound. 99% of the time they are in such small amounts the plant can easy disregard them. But if you don't change you nutrients on a timly basis then they compound and will become a problem (commonly referred to as toxic salt build up)

Yes a rule of thumb is one thing but when it comes to hydroponics and the cycle of life for the plant then follow the plant not the calendar.

[lmdesade]

It may be better to change the res every 7-10 days but in a lot of cases people have to keep in mind that this was setup for safety and to kind of cause people to buy more nutes. If you have a tds/Ec meter, topoff with water and watch the plants. Your veg cycle won't be very long in most cases. I only change my res once. I've done this with hundreds of different types of plants without any problems. Yet, in flowering I am only flowering for 7-8 weeks. If you did this in longer flowering strain, you might be in trouble.

[alwayssleepdeprived]

I'm curious as to why you can't change your res? is it the expense of nutes or just the ordeal of moving the res and dumping it?

I'd have to say I'm on the fence between deftdrummer and zandor on this one...

I do see the point that if you monitor the res closely enough you should be able to go "longer" between res changes but that doesn't mean forever...for instance if you give just the right amount of nutes and have a really swank meter that can tell you concentrations of a bunch of different individual ppms you would be golden for a long time up to a month or 2 probably but I don't know anyone with the cash for a meter and setup like that (cause if you did you wouldn't be posting in this forum) so like zandor said the easiest thing is to change out before levels become toxic...I also have to side with zandor that the more res changes you perform atleast with all other things being equal the healthier and larger yield you will notice within reason...I can't see any benefit to changing more than once a week just like I don't see the reason to go longer than 2 weeks...with the exception of the first res change because young plants need less food and spit less toxins into the res so you should be able to get a longer acceptable res time the younger/smaller your plants are obviously making sure you don't notice smells or colors like deftdrummer mentioned

If it's the nute cost just buy a powdered nute to save money those work out to be cheaper and if it's physically moving the res to change it just by a pump that you can use to pump the stuff into another bucket...even if it takes a few fills of the bucket so it's comfy to carry it shouldn't take that long...besides than you could put a cleaning solution ( weak peroxide and water ) run through the res *look around for postings people have mentioned the strengths to use*...this will help treat the roots and clean the res and after a few minutes of running that you can just pump it out and then dump in your new nutes

good luck PM bigbud