Drifting the pH in Hempy pots

Discussion in 'Hydroponic Cultivation' started by OldSmokey, Dec 19, 2016.

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  1. OldSmokey

    OldSmokey Registered Users

    Hi All,

    After a bowl or two, I’ve been thinking about some experimenting.

    Here’s what I’ve got: Hempy pots with straight perlite, fed 3x a day (at lights on, 4 hrs later, then in another 4 hours) automatically from a tank of mixed nutes. And a quest for less nutes in the finished product.

    The plants, in the second week of flower, are currently getting fed 840 ppm at 5.9 pH and I’ve been checking my runoff water and seeing about 500 ppm and 6.1 pH coming out.

    During my quest for knowledge, I came across this chart and variations of it quite a few times:
    [​IMG]

    Based on this, it appears that I need to have a little wobble in the pH to have access to all the nutrients. I could start at 6.2 and add a little pH down every day to the nute tank so that by the end of the week, the pH was around 5.6. Hmmm. More work…

    Something Useless said in his GH 3-part nute thread: “There are a couple factors that cause your PH to drift. The most common is running the nute solution too strong or too weak. If it's too strong, your PH drops. If it's too weak the PH rises.” I understand that he was referring to nutes in a recirculated system with his statements, but isn’t a Hempy bucket basically the same on a smaller scale and timeframe?

    What if I fed with nutes that were just weak enough to intentionally cause a rise in pH from 5.6 to 6.2 in the Hempy pot over the course of 4 hours, and repeated this 3 times a day? Would this kill two birds with one stone, or just my yield?

    So have I had too many bowls? Or does this sound like a worthwhile experiment?
     
  2. blazerwill420

    blazerwill420 Fuck AUMA

    I always go with lower ppm and set ph to 5.8 and let it drift up to 6.1 that's with the luxas formula. If I start at 5.8 and 700 ppm, in about 3 days my table takes up 5 gallons of water, ph goes to 6.1 and ppm will be at around 850. I add 5 gallons of water and oh automatic ly goes to 5.8 and ppm comes down to low 700 range. I'm happy with my yields relative to the strains I grow.
     
  3. Justcheckingitout

    Justcheckingitout GK Old Timer

    is the drift in ph that useless mentioned, wasnt that specific to the GH3 formula?
     
  4. OldSmokey

    OldSmokey Registered Users

    Blazer, since my mixed nutes are sitting in a tank and not being recirculated through the pots, the pH is pretty much stuck at the level it was mixed at, for as long as the tank lasts. I'm trying to get some wiggle in the pH, without having to manually adjust it daily. I find it interesting that your plants are concentrating the nutes as they feed. Mine are making the ppms in the buckets drop by almost half, before they're fed again.

    After 5 years of growing, I'm still lost at determining what the "proper" level of nutes should be. I've used Useless' ratios and ppm numbers as my guide. But his ppm numbers seem arbitrarily high, compared to yours and quite a few other internet growers that seem to be having good results. One thing I do know: 1670 ppm will crisp the tips on the plants, but 1400 won't. But that doesn't mean that 1400 isn't way over what the plant needs.

    JCIO, I don't know for sure if his comment applies only to the GH 3-part. But since I'm back to using GH, I'm hoping it applies to me.

    It wouldn't be too hard to dilute the nutes in the tank a little bit and see how the bucket's drainage ppms and pH respond.
     
  5. nippie

    nippie preachin' and pimpin'

    the drift happens with all nutes, basically the less ppms the less stable the ph. same as you can gauge whats going on when you run tables; if you need just water or water and nutes during an add back based off ph and ppm. if you ph (ppm rising also) is going down, you add water to dilute, if it's going high, add some nutes when adding water back.

    honestly i haven't used my ppm pen in forever, it came to me at some stoned point in my life it was making me over think my problem.

    I've never trusted run off because you don't know the real make up of the nutes, or if you're flushing old salts etc out. But with your system it may be more reliable since you are watering more often you'd have less evaporation etc to worry about. I had some discussion with Useless about that years ago and he told me never to even look at it, because I would adjust the feed which would cause more harm than good
     
  6. blazerwill420

    blazerwill420 Fuck AUMA

    I quit running the useless formula only because I am lazy. I don't want to be changing ratios and the entire res every week. Plus, it was always too hot if I mixed per the formula. I always took it down to 75/80%. And I agree with Nippie about the runoff ph. Who cares, it's a bogus measurement that will fuck you up.Try the lucas formula sometime, you'll be surprised. 8ml micro and 16 ml bloom per gallon of water and if your water is above 200ppm use the hardwater micro.
     
  7. OldSmokey

    OldSmokey Registered Users

    Nippie: I had hoped to be able to figure out whether my nute concentration was about right using the same method. I'd like to reduce my use to see if the end product will taste a little better.

    Blazer: I did notice the strength of Useless' mix the first time I made up some veg nutes. It was almost twice as strong. The flower ratios seemed closer. But that was when 1400 ppm seemed like a proper amount. 8 of micro and 16 of bloom sounds like it would be a pretty strong mixture. What ppms do you see when you mix it full strength?

    Sounds like it would be better to play with the pH in the nute tank. I might try mixing for the low end at the beginning of the week and adding a bit of pH up midweek. Or the other way around using pH down. The mixed nute's pH seems to drift upwards by itself, but only about .1 in a week. Maybe better to start low and go up?
     
  8. blazerwill420

    blazerwill420 Fuck AUMA

    I don't mix it at full strength to start, my res is 25 gallons and I start with 8/16 for 20 gallons and this puts me in the low 700 range. I start from there and adjust for whatever strain I am growing because they are all different imo. I am doing 1000ppm with my candyland in the table right now to see if it can take it, so far so good. That would fry the shit out of my cheese krush.
     
  9. OldSmokey

    OldSmokey Registered Users

    Blazer, you mentioned feeding your candyland 1000 ppm to see if it could take it. If it could, would you continue to raise the ppm until you saw a problem, then back off a little? How are you assessing whether she can take it?

    The reason I ask is because that was what I was doing for a long time. Seemed like I was just making bud that was full of nutes, although the plants seemed to grow decently. This latest grow has got me rethinking things a lot. I'm surprised that my plants look as good as they do with what I'd consider to be "diet nutes". In the past, they'd be getting around 1350 (.7)ppm about now, not 800. Perhaps those ppm levels in Useless' GH 3-part thread were a bad influence.
     
  10. blazerwill420

    blazerwill420 Fuck AUMA

    I play around with the ppm to try and find that strains sweet spot, but yes, I nute until I see a problem then start backing off. You will get buds full of nutes until you get it dialed in. I just had to add 125 ml of gh calimagic to my res because the candyland were having serious cal/mag issues. And as to the useless formula, I always found the ppm to be on the high side relative to the strains I grow. Try the lucas formula one run, you'll be surprised. My 25 gallon res, it starts at about 800 ppm if I go full strength lucas formula.
     
  11. OldSmokey

    OldSmokey Registered Users

    Have you ever tried backing the nutes way down until you observed a problem, then giving them just a little more? It sounds like once the plant has enough nutes, the excess just accumulates in the plant and doesn't help the growth rate.

    The first time I mixed Useless' veg nutes it came out to around 1700 ppm. Yeah it's hot. But it's not really a problem, unless actually applied to a plant. I just carefully mix up a 1/2 gallon bottle of the nutes with the ml/gallon numbers he gives and then I measure the ppm.

    Like this: My test bottle's ppm are 1700, and I want 1000. 1000/1700=.588 Multiply the .588 by each of the ml/gallon Useless numbers (and any supplement ml/gallon numbers that affect ppms) and the final ppm is real close. I use this with RO water, but I imagine that it would work if the starting ppm of the tap water was taken into account. I got real tired of making batches of nutes that required a lot of dilution or worse, having to add a little bit of each to try to get stronger nutes.

    My "bad influence" comment was about the ppm levels that he suggests for the various weeks, not his ratios. Based on the happy comments in the thread, I figured they'd be right for me, but it didn't work out that way.

    I might give Lucas a try next time. Looks like it would have less nitrogen at the end of flower than the Useless sched, which might be a good thing.
     
  12. blazerwill420

    blazerwill420 Fuck AUMA

    That was how I finally dialed in my cheese krush, by starting at 500ppm and going up till I saw an issue. The candyland did good in the table with the ck at 700-750 so I started this table at 800 ppm and raised it to 1000ppm. I started having issues at around 900ppm but it was from cal/mag. when I added the calimagic they perked right up.
     
  13. OldSmokey

    OldSmokey Registered Users

    What would have happened had you kept the 500 ppm on the cheese krush and not increased? I guess what I'm wondering is, if I go down in ppm, would I start to see deficiencies or would the growth just slow. As you increased ppms did you see any change in the plants below 900 ppm?
     
  14. blazerwill420

    blazerwill420 Fuck AUMA

    You'll probably nitrogen deficiencies that low, that was what I saw. You'll see them green up and start growing right if you have everything dialed.
     
  15. blazerwill420

    blazerwill420 Fuck AUMA

  16. OldSmokey

    OldSmokey Registered Users

    That's an awesome flowchart! Looks like it says I need a little more nitrogen or a little more of everything.

    I'm just starting to get a little bit of leaf yellowing below the screen, but wasn't real sure if it was due to not enough light. Last time I cleaned that area out, but since I was going to try some defoliation this time, I didn't clean it all out down there. Sunday will be deleafing day.

    I appreciate your help, Blazer. So do the girls.
     
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  17. blazerwill420

    blazerwill420 Fuck AUMA

  18. ResinRubber

    ResinRubber Civilly disobedient/Mod

    I'm confused, and stoned. Might have to look at this later/
     

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