AK-47 in E&F - rockwool/clay medium (First Grow Log)

[Weedhound]

50ml h202 into how much water? And what was the strength of the h202? Unfortunately your tap water sucks big time and the only way to figure it out I think is to try something else and see how the plants do.

[bertoxxulous]

50ml of 3% H202 into 34gallons. I had originally put 30gallons of tap. then in the last day I've added 1 gallon DI and 3 gallons tap to try and bring the ppm back down. The one thing I'd like to throw into consideration is that, when I did this with my clones I just trashed, the ppm wasn't climing up so fast.

[Divestoned]

hydroton is dirty as hell,and is probably causing the brown sand.
With flood and drain you'll always have to battle your res.
I find that if my plant's are drinking water faster than they are drinking nute's (ppm raising) lowering the ppm will often stabilize it.

Dive:stoned:

[bertoxxulous]

Here are some pictures of what i'm talking about with some clones that I just trashed a few days ago.

Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3

[MichiganAero]

Ive had that in my E&F system before.... i "think" its from not washing the hydroton well enough... But i could be mistaken... The next time i used my ebb and flow system i went above and beyond when cleaning the hydroton and it didnt happen again...

The good news.. its just inert clay.. so it wont hurt anything.. and, depending on your pump filter, it wont even pick it back up.. which is why it tends to accumulate on the "drain" side of my res.


Good luck!

[bertoxxulous]

Well, considering that it is from the hydroton, is there any chance it could be raising my ppm so fast? I added another 2 gallons if brita filtered water to my reservoir last night which brought me from 5.3ph to 5.7ph and [email protected] to [email protected]. These plants are still small and the water has only been in the reservoir for not quite three days so far so I know its not evaporating that fast AND my temperature in the tent has been between 68-72 for at least two days.

The plants are still showing signs of growth with their 3rd set of true leaves starting to grow but I think the possible light/heat stress may have stunted their growth.

[Divestoned]

Maybe drop the ppm down to 400 and see if it stabilize's at all.when my ppm is too high,it raise's fast,when it's just right it's fairly stable.the plant's take in water AND nute's so if they're drinkin water,faster than nute...you get that raising PPM.


Dive:stoned:

[bertoxxulous]

@Divestoned - I think I may do that either today or tommorow. I plan on pumping about 10-15 gallons out, filling again with brita water and then adjusting to around 400ppm. I was just afraid my plants may not be getting enouph nutes because I'd be at [email protected] Ionic grow and [email protected] CalMag.

Also, I think I'm seeing a trend here. When I take my measurements at 5pm, that is when the lights kick on, and thats usually when I get more normal readings like yesterday at 5pm I was at 5.7ph and [email protected] but this morning at 8am which is 20 minutes after the last watering before the lights shut off at 11am I was at 5.3ph and 590ppm. What I'm seeing is that my readings in the morning after the last watering are tending to be like this but when I check everything at 5pm its back to a more normal reading. I will confirm this later today when I take my reading at 5pm again. Stay tuned lol.

[bertoxxulous]

Well my little theory was wrong. The only real trend is the ph drops and the ppm goes up pretty significantly. I've added so far about 7-8 gallons of water to keep the ppm down and this morning at 8am (4/09/2009) I was at [email protected] and 5.7ph after adding 1 gallon of brita water.

[subzero]

Is there limescale in your kettle? If yes you have hard water and should be using ionic hard water grow at the mo and forget the cal mag. if not use ionic soft water and forget the cal mag. ionic likes ph around 6 and i have never needed to add anything else. The sediment is from the hydroton being not washed properly. if the ph is rising and the ec is dropping that is what you want. It means the plant is feeding and disposing waste back into the water. if the ph is dropping and the ec is rising they arent feeding and the water is evaporating. Run the ionic at 3ml per liter to start. If you havent yet had a successful grow in the tent there is a good chance that if it is pvc it is poisoning your plants, this recently happened to me and i couldnt f"in believe it. The 3% h202 from the drugstore has other stuff in it to stablize it that plants dont peticularly like. get some oxy plus and dilute it down before adding it to the system. did you treat the rockwool with ph5.5 water before adding the plants? if not this can cause problems as well. Rockwool will hold water for ages so let it dry out between waterings until you root system can cope. you shouldn't use the britta either, i have never heard anything positive about them for this application use straight tap, let the chlorine evaporate off the ionic should do the rest. I'm in the uk and dont know how many watts a t5 mh??? or a t5 hps??? (I thought t5s were flourescent tubes???) puts out but, 400w absoulte max for small plants. mix up the spectrum a bit, more blue than red for veg. Ionic is a very good one part and when everything else is right you shouldnt need to add anything else except a bit of ph down now and then.

hope this helps :thumbsup:

Subzero.