COCO + R/O = HOW MUCH CALMAG?

[greenatik]

so how much calmag? my water softener is killing my urkle and now im back with the r/o. should i be adding extra to compensate having both coco and r/o?

im at 1 tsp / gal

thanks for input!

greenatik Reviewed by greenatik on 08-15-2008. COCO + R/O = HOW MUCH CALMAG? so how much calmag? my water softener is killing my urkle and now im back with the r/o. should i be adding extra to compensate having both coco and r/o? im at 1 tsp / gal thanks for input! Rating: 5

[stinkyattic]

I'd actually go with a coco-specific nute like Canna Coco that is designed to compensate for the Ca scavenging properties of coco.
You'll want to add calmag up to about 200ppm or so; it might be worht checking out a forum that has a coco specific section and seeing where everyone else is setting their baseline EC before nutes though.

[greenatik]

hehe that's why I'm here stinky... I don't have a way to read PPM and EC. but I used the general 1 tsp / gal on my last run and everything seemed happy.. just thought I needed to compensate for having both..

[Puffzter]

In my log gave what PPMs I am getting at different % doses of reccomendations but that was with Hesi's Coco nutes.
However you can start tu nuke them quite hard at an early stage in coco compared to soil.
New soil has a lot of nutes in it + whatever you feed it so if you go hard before the soil has been a little bit drained of its own nutes you can overdo it quite easilly. Coco is an empty medium in that sence and reacts very fast to changes in feeding so it is not hard to find a good level.
You will need to keep pH within decent values though. Even more important than in soil and another thing is you can not let coco dry out. If you are handwatering like me that will mean 12-18h between watering from the 3-4th week from seeds all the way in to harvest.
Contrary to soil it is impossible to overwater but quite hazardous to let the medium dry out if it happens more than very occasionally. Salts builds up very fast and force u to flush and then build up nute levels in the coco again. Not so fun.

However coco is insanelly effective as medium to grow in. You will se growth rates above what you are used to if you used soil before but also you will have to put in more work taking care of it.

If you need good information about everything concerning coco growing check out www.icmag.com they have a dedicates coco forum that is very very good.

Good luck.

Puffzter

[greenatik]

this isnt my first time in coco, just thought having both r/o water and coco i should be using more than 1 tsp / gal to make up for ca and mg

im a member at icmag and the coco forum is one of my favorite places

ph is 5.9 and the plants seem fine getting the current calmag amount.. so Ill just stay where I'm at :smokin: