RedEye - I'm growing in coco. I would suggest that you read this thread: Another pH question and you can get some insight into the down side of coco.

Bottom line on the plants discussed in that thread is that they are mothers and I still grow them and I seem to have def/lockout problems almost under control - I feed the plants for a couple of weeks then pure H2O for a week then cut clones then repeat cycle. So the plants are constantly undergoing a feed/starve lifestyle anyway. The run-off pH is still around 7.6 for those plants and nothing seems to want to bring it down. For my particular purposes, the plants are growing well and making many happy clones. I usually feed/water these plants with pH 5.2 - 5.4 and it does nothing to lower the run-off pH.

For the clones, I bought what is claimed to be a better grade of coco. Even so I flushed the hell out of it with tap water - coco can have a lot of salt in it - then soaked in pH 5.7 water before use. The run-off from those plants is right around pH 6.5 - 6.9. The bag says that the pH of the coco is 6.7, so I guess the run-off is about what one should expect.

Personally, I really enjoy growing in coco. More importantly, my plants seem to enjoy it too.

Oh, another thing, Canna makes some coco-specific nutrients. As I run out of my A/N nutes' I will replace them with the Canna coco nutes. Some coco growers advised that Canna's coco-specific nutes resolved a lot of the pH issues.

There are a couple coco growers that commented on the thread I gave you. You can maybe see if any of them is actively posting on another thread and rattle their cage and see what they have to say about your question.

Hope this helps a little.

PC :smokin: