I finally bought a TDS meter for my hydro. The water is 530ppm from the tap. I know I need 900ppm for veg. I added the recommended dose for aggressive feeding (FF grow big) at 4 teaspoons/ gallon. The reading is now 1980ppm with the ferts added to the solution, now this has worked fine but am I heading for trouble? Distilled water is not an option for me. Would the hydro corn (geolite, grow rocks) contribute to this number being so high? I'm just trying to sort this all out, any help is appreciated. (Edited by Joint Effort at 10:50 am on June 20, 2003)
J.E., first, subtract the ppm of your plain water from the ppm of mixed solution. SO 1980-530= 1450 ppm. Thats the actual fert ppm. Most of the time, the labels on the product recommend maximum doses. Does the label on th nutes say 900 ppm recommended for the stage of growth you are in, or is that just your guess? See, different Nutrients require differrent ppm values. You can't 900 ppm is the standard ppm for veg growth. FOr example, the SUpernatural Brand ferts recommend 700-1200 ppm depending on where you are at in the veg or flower cycle. But, G.H. go upwards of 1500-2000 ppm recommended. (might ask Ranger to double check those numbers) The G.H. isn't as strong, so you can have a higher ppm reading. Make sense? The hydrocorn wouldn't contribute to increased ppm unless there were nutes in the rocks that were not washed away after the last use. Then the residual would wash into the ressy and increase the ppm.
Oh yea, 530 ppm for tap water is really high. Thats a lot of calcium. Ideally your water should be 250 ppm or less. 250 ppm is ideal calcium. Less than 250 ppm you add calcium. But anyway, yuo can get a water filter set-up from Sears. Its just a plastic canister with a cellulose mellanonin filter. That will help reduce your natural water ppm readings. You could probably get all you need to set it up in line with your water source for about $50-100.
Thanks for clearing that up for me Useless. This TDS meter and ppm stuff is a new game for me. The area around here has alot of limestone so that would explain the Ca. The chlorine is so high that it smells like bleach coming from the faucet, but I can take care of the chlorine with aquarium De-chlor, seems to work. I'll check into a filter anyway and see if I can get ranger to respond too. Thanks again for your help. Take care, JE.
