Aeroponic Nutrients

Hello

I have been a long time grower using flood and drain buckets and flood and drain table to veg

I have recently changed over to aeroponics for my additional growing area, and unsure of a few things

I'm growing with advanced nutrients and always follow their calculater for my reservoirs and never had a problem

However, with aeroponics, the plants seem to be not able to take as much strength nutrients. Is this normal? i mean it will be good if i can save money and use less nutrients but just wondering if there is an issue with my system or if people just have to run a lower ppm and ec when growing with aero

i have tried searching this site but the search system is so hard to search for just a specific thing

Stinkbud, a guy around here who has some pretty famous aero designs runs his nutes
VERY high, in upwards of 2500ppm, but I have also personally run a much lower nute (about 1300 tops)
setting in my own aero systems with great results as well. I have heard that different systems
and styles of growing can effect the amount of nutes the plants like, but have no long term
experience with flood tables myself.

I think it comes down to you listening to what your plants want. If they begin to show signs of
burn, then lower the nutes, if they seem to be thriving you can either push them a bit more until
they show signs of burning, or just ride out the lower regiment. I hate burning my plants because
there is some recovery time in the process so I always run lower to be sure this doesn't happen, this
also lets me cut cost on my nutes since I'm using less which is a nice perk.

Thanks, i appreciate the reply

I have been messing around with the levels of nutes, didnt know if this was a normal thing though of how they were taking the nutes a little stronger than what the ppm/ec was. Which is good since less money spent on nutes as long as they still come out good as good as usual.

I will have to do some looking into "stinkbud" i saw his tutorials and construction of his systems, just nothing on his actual nutrient uses

You can set your nutes to a know level, say 600 ppm for example. Write down the figure. Check the reservoir again in 12 hours (lights on for 12 hours). Did the ppms go up or down? That will be the clue to determining how much the plant wants. If the ppms dropped, that means the plant is taking in more nutrient than water. This means we have an opportunity to increase the nutrients, say to 800 for example, and see how the plant handles that number. If the ppms actually went up, it means 600 ppm was too much. The plant took in more water than nutrients, causing the nutrient mix ratio, thus the ppms, to increase. In that case, you just add more water and bump the ppms down to say, 400, and adjust from there. The end goal is for the plant to take in an equal amount of water and nutrients. When you achieved that magic number, your ppm readings will remain static.

That magic number will change as the plant ages. It is important to manage ppms daily and take readings. You'll find that if you hit the magic number, you will not have to make PH up or down adjustments.

Thank you for that advice, This is a great idea and i will have to try this out for the next few days and find a sweet spot like you mentioned