Drastic ppm increase over one day/ aerated roots are shriveling and dieing

System: ebb and flow
water temp: 70F
resevoir size 30gal. ph is 5.8
day one was 680 microsiemens (my meter measures in microsiemens) which i believe is relatively the same as ppm.
day two (morning) ppm is reading 1236.
Nutes: GH 3 Part (Floragro, FloraMicro, FloraBloom) at half strength
My ratio per gallon is 2-2.5-.5 (in the order listed above).

The plants are two weeks old. you can see 4-8 true leaves on them.
Possible theories of mine: The plants are showing signs of underwatering, as such, the plants could have drank a lot of water and not that many nutes when they were transplanted into the ebb and flow system yesterday. ( as such, im thinking about topping off with just tap water) my tap water is 375 ppm. HARD WATER. As such, i bought the floramicro hard water nutrient solution. This should compensate for the hard water issue, because my water has over 70 ppm of calcium. the ph of my tap water is 7.4 so in a 30 gal resevoir i had to use a lot of Gh ph down-bout a 1/4 cup if i had to guess. (i use an eye dropper to apply the ph down) I think i'm going to top off with water today. if anyone has any opinions please let me know. thanks. I think it would be good to keep my ppm at 600-800 for the 2 week old seedlings.

Problem with drastic ppm change is continueing. after diluting it to 1000 ppms it increased to 1200 after going through a water cycle, we kept it at the 1200 ppms at that point. it stayed steady for a day and has now risen to 1460. my ebb and flow system cycles twice a day for 30 minutes. once at 8am and again at 4pm. lights shut off at 12am and turn on at 6am. I do have to adjust the ph down every day from about 6.2-7.0 everyday. I keep my res ph at 5.8. the seedlings are at 2 weeks old.

How's your plant health?

Is there a possibility that you have solubles leaching into your nutrient, say from the tops of your growing medium? Wild guesses here. cn

schyler said:

Problem with drastic ppm change is continueing. after diluting it to 1000 ppms it increased to 1200 after going through a water cycle, we kept it at the 1200 ppms at that point. it stayed steady for a day and has now risen to 1460. my ebb and flow system cycles twice a day for 30 minutes. once at 8am and again at 4pm. lights shut off at 12am and turn on at 6am. I do have to adjust the ph down every day from about 6.2-7.0 everyday. I keep my res ph at 5.8. the seedlings are at 2 weeks old.

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WHOA!! 1000ppm is too much for a plant thats 2 weeks old (playing it safe is good) also if the room is too hot, the plants will take up alot more water thaan nutes, or if the water is evaporating from the res and leaving a concentrated solution, keep your res covered 70 isnt too bad as a res temp, so long as the room iteslf isnt in the 90's.

imho a plant that old would only be at about 350-400ppm, and would not even come close to 1000ppm while in veg (usually keep it under 700) hope this helps

Thanks for the replies you guys. update here... i stopped the ebb and flow system and am watering by hand until i can figure out the reason for fluctuation. i am making two different test solutions: one at 1/4 str. and the other at 1/2 in 5 gallon buckets to see if i get ppm fluctuation. 1000ppm is high but that includes my hardwater/tapwater which measures 375ppm. thus if you subtract that i have 625ppms of nutrients. I am using General Hydroponics Flora Series. When i made the first resevoire i was not patient to let the nutrients disolve and adjusted the ph immediately. i feel this may have something to do with the ppm changes. However, the ph stayed relatively the same the last few days. I am going to cover the res with a black tarp. Will that work? Could my hardwater i'm using cause ppm fluctuation. I did not let the chlorine evaporate out before mixing the solution. can this harm the plants and effect ppm change? The seedlings are a yellow/lightgreen in the center. They were underwatered before transplanting to ebb and flow and have perked up since then, however due to the high ppm fluctuation the little guys started getting nutrient burn tip. i catch my plant problems pretty quick, thus i am hand watering and feel confident the problem is being fixed. BUT MY RES PROBLEM IS NOT!!!! before putting any plants in the ebb and flow i ran my tap water through it for like a week to just clean out hoses and such, could i have caused salt build up from this, which could now be the result of my ppm change. The ppm change has slowed this last day. THe most drastic changes in ppm occur after a watering cycle. The seedlings are currently being water with 85ppm water. I also use a drip system, but i use distilled water from the store in this. I do not have any fluctuations in ppm increasing. I use floratechna recipe for success kit on this hydroponic system. Any HELP WOULD BE MUCH APPRECIATED>THANKS!

TO MR GANGJA: Plant health: yellowing/light green in center of plant. can see over 8 true leaves forming. one specimen has browning spotting/bloching on it's true leaves and growth has stunted. Do not see no foliage growth. Other plants all look the same though with yellowing in center and some (about half) have little brown tips, which just started. All except one are still continuing to grow.

I did some chlorine research on the effects it has on plants, and found that heavy concentrations of evaporated chlorine can cause brown/bleached plant tips in early stages along with too much dissolved chlorine in the water solutions. the plants will be fine. But my life is going to be much more difficult if i can't get the ebb and flow resevoire to stay the same.

MY ppm tests are as follows: 680ppm then 2 water cycles go through and i measure it again to get a reading of 1260ppm. dilute with tap/hardwater til it reads 1000ppm after next water cycle it goes up to 1060, another water cycle and it increased to 1260. at this point i let it stay to see how the plants would react. the plants were reacting fine for 2 days. then it raised to 1400 ppms i added about 15 gallons of 85ppm water, (not my hard tap water). this brought it back down to 1100ppms. around this point i saw brown leaf tips on the 2 week old plants. At this point the ppm's have started to increase a lot slower. From 1100 they went to 1160 in a day. then 1260 the next. at this point i turned the ebb and flow to drain only and have been watering with just 85ppm soft water. I will continue this for about 4 days and then start in with a 1/4 strength solution. I am using gh flora series 3 part nutrients. FYI - I did not wait a couple of hours to let nutrients dissolve in resevoire before changing the ph.

posting pictures tonight everyone i know we can solve this problem together. thanks for the help

my room temps btw are between 73F-80F, pretty constant at 78F throughout the day though. Res temp in the 45gal res is between 66-70, with an average of 68 now. pretty fucking happy with that.

Allright, read some shit that's blowing my mind. http://www.smart-fertilizer.com/articles/electrical-conductivity ... that is the site i found my information. My EC meter measures in microseimens(uS), which means i need to convert to ppms. I do this by multiplying my microseimens by .64. IF that is correct then 1200uS X .64 = 768 ppms. NExt thing i found out is that my ec meter is most likely calibrated to 25 degrees Celsius, which equals 77 degrees farenheit. No water resevoir should be 77 degrees farenheit. Further research told me that ec can change 2-3 percent for everyone one degree celsius. So i calculated my res temp of 70 degrees Farenheit into 21.11111 degrees ceslsius. THis is a difference of 4 degrees celsius. which means my ec meter could be 2X4=8 percent to 3X4=12 percent. An average of 10 percent you could say. If that is also the case then, 768ppms X .10 = 76.8ppms. 768ppm - 76.8ppms = 691.2ppms. I am in the process of calibrating my ec meter to 70degree Farenheit water. so that conversion can be taken away here shorty, however. i should not be getting "brown tips" and yellowing in the center due to this amount of ppms. I'm starting to think my hardwater is effecting shit more than i thought it would. Reverse osmosis might be necessary.

After much much research i have solved the solution. ALthough a combination of things the biggest factor was my hard water i'm using. I got it tested and found that the sodium content was excessive to say the least. As such, i found that sodium with compete with potassium thus causing brown leaf tips and furhter problems if i were to progress it. Nutrients are based on pure water so it is much better to use pure water rather than tap water if you want a better crop. Because of my hardwater nutrients were competing against eachother and locking certain ions out. thanks for all the help. if anyone has an issue like this i might be able to help.

update on the ec conversions. hanna ppm charts uses a .5 conversion from ec, eutech ppm charts uses a .64 conversion from ec and lastly, Truncheon ppm charts uses a .7 conversion from ec. THIS IS GOOD INFO TO KNOW!