New to COCO, wanna help?

Hydro4life

Hydro4life

Well-Known Member
Great thread diggs!!
Dont mean to gatecrash your thread but just wana ask JD a quick question.... (seen alot of his posts and is very knowledgeable)

Hey JD, just trialling coco for the 1st time, im roughly 3 weeks into flower and am using ph perfect. I havent checked runoff at all throughout the grow and water to roughly 20% runoff. Plants are healthy. No deficiencies. But just becoming slightly over fed. Im just going to cut back ppm for a bit. Is it crucial to monitor runoff ppm in coco? or is watering/feeding to 20% runoff and reading plants ok??? Will coco build up salts like in dwc? Cheers man.
 
diggs99

diggs99

Well-Known Member
Hydro4life said:
Great thread diggs!!
Dont mean to gatecrash your thread but just wana ask JD a quick question.... (seen alot of his posts and is very knowledgeable)

Hey JD, just trialling coco for the 1st time, im roughly 3 weeks into flower and am using ph perfect. I havent checked runoff at all throughout the grow and water to roughly 20% runoff. Plants are healthy. No deficiencies. But just becoming slightly over fed. Im just going to cut back ppm for a bit. Is it crucial to monitor runoff ppm in coco? or is watering/feeding to 20% runoff and reading plants ok??? Will coco build up salts like in dwc? Cheers man.
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Bro this is everyone's thread, the more questions and answers we get, the better it is, its filled with so much good info regarding coco and the guys in here sharing experience and knowledge are second to none.

Glad to have ya
 
icetech

icetech

Well-Known Member
Just curious since this is turning into a general COCO thread... I'm doing my first coco myself and my babies so far are way too bright green, going to try a little higher PH (was at 5.5) but i don't water to runoff and my coco seems to take 4-5 days to dry up much and i worry bout overwatering or root rot.. with soil i was watering pretty much daily.. these are in 5gallon smart pots with fans going and 60% RH.. what kind of watering schedule would you think would be normal?

P.S. my new plants are in my journal if anyone has ideas, they aren't bad yellow yet, but lighter than i would like.
 
diggs99

diggs99

Well-Known Member
Ya man 5.5 is def too low. Not sure if that's your issue tho

I mix my nutes and ph at 5.8 and let the solution drift up to 6.2 before I adjust it again.

def something not right tho, soil should never have to be watered more frequently than coco, unless huge plants or really small pots?

What are your temps ?
 
icetech

icetech

Well-Known Member
diggs99 said:
Ya man 5.5 is def too low. Not sure if that's your issue tho

I mix my nutes and ph at 5.8 and let the solution drift up to 6.2 before I adjust it again.

def something not right tho, soil should never have to be watered more frequently than coco, unless huge plants or really small pots?

What are your temps ?
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The small plants are at 72 degrees 62%rh

The big plants being watered so much i think came down to me not giving enough quantity of water per watering and it just became a habit which i'm sure cost me a lot of yeild lesson learned. just wasn't sure how often i should water in coco mainly.
 
Hydro4life

Hydro4life

Well-Known Member
icetech said:
The small plants are at 72 degrees 62%rh

The big plants being watered so much i think came down to me not giving enough quantity of water per watering and it just became a habit which i'm sure cost me a lot of yeild lesson learned. just wasn't sure how often i should water in coco mainly.
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This is my 1st coco grow also, so am no expert with it. And correct me if im wrong guys, but i would imagine the size of your pot to the size of your plant would play a role but adding perlite would dry the coco out faster, bringing more oxygen to the roots. The more perliite you add to your coco the more often you would have to feed/water.
Would be more work with more frequent watering but i imagine with more oxygen and more nutes, it would give you more hydro type results than soil type results!??
 
diggs99

diggs99

Well-Known Member
icetech said:
The small plants are at 72 degrees 62%rh

The big plants being watered so much i think came down to me not giving enough quantity of water per watering and it just became a habit which i'm sure cost me a lot of yeild lesson learned. just wasn't sure how often i should water in coco mainly.
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What kind of lights are you growing with?

72f seems low for lights on temps.

At the moment im growing under HPS, i try to maintain 77f-80f and 55%-70%rh depending on what stage they are.

Under Leds , growers are getting up into mid 80s. with similar rh numbers
 
icetech

icetech

Well-Known Member
diggs99 said:
What kind of lights are you growing with?

72f seems low for lights on temps.

At the moment im growing under HPS, i try to maintain 77f-80f and 55%-70%rh depending on what stage they are.

Under Leds , growers are getting up into mid 80s. with similar rh numbers
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I use LED's but i keep my tents in the basement which is 63-65 normally. since i only grow a few plants i didnt' want to end up with a huge setup with AC and all that going which if i setup upstairs i would need to during the summer. i figured over 70 would be ok. unless i'm wrong which is always possible:)
 
JohnDee

JohnDee

Well-Known Member
Good morning Guys,
DJM over on ICMag tests his coco runoff weekly and has enough understanding to use that data to determine what strength he feeds for the next week. If runoff is over 100ppm beyond the fertigation solution...then nutes are lowered a bit. For me...this is an ideal to strive for...but not there yet..

I'm going to try a little protocol change soon. In an effort to move toward multiple feedings...I'm going to include a second watering that includes anything extra...silica or trace elements for example. Main nutrient feed will be just nutes and calmag. Second feeding will be a bit smaller and hand mixed as needed. Goal is stable main res with no chemical conflicts.

@Hydro4life So you got your questions answered?
Cheers,
JD
 
icetech

icetech

Well-Known Member
ok.. so went and did more research and it seems yeah. my PH is way low and (after seeing a great video from lex's world) it seems nitrogen is one of the main things that hates low PH.. I under-estimated how important PH is.. time to get better, thanks guys :)
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
icetech said:
I use LED's but i keep my tents in the basement which is 63-65 normally. since i only grow a few plants i didnt' want to end up with a huge setup with AC and all that going which if i setup upstairs i would need to during the summer. i figured over 70 would be ok. unless i'm wrong which is always possible:)
Click to expand...
You want to be aiming for temps in 80s
Every nutrient uptake chart i have ever seen shows Nitrogne has the widest band as far as ph and uptake.
Interested to see where you heard otherwise if you can provide a link.
 
diggs99

diggs99

Well-Known Member
icetech said:
ok.. so went and did more research and it seems yeah. my PH is way low and (after seeing a great video from lex's world) it seems nitrogen is one of the main things that hates low PH.. I under-estimated how important PH is.. time to get better, thanks guys :)
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Right on bud, ph is very important in coco for sure. Way more than soil and all it's buffers

I would honestly try getting the temps up aswell.

Best of luck with it.
 
icetech

icetech

Well-Known Member
coreywebster said:
You want to be aiming for temps in 80s
Every nutrient uptake chart i have ever seen shows Nitrogne has the widest band as far as ph and uptake.
Interested to see where you heard otherwise if you can provide a link.
Click to expand...

At 1:30 it has a chart.. i was aiming for 5.. which is just under nitrogen.. either way i was WAY low.. glad i found out kind of early :)
 
Hydro4life

Hydro4life

Well-Known Member
Heya JD!
Yes you answered my questions before i even asked them. Youre good! :lol:
I did a little research before giving coco a go and have also heard once runoff is over 100 ppm more than what youve been feeding then cut back for a couple of feedings. Maybe im just being lazy but do you personally think its necessary if you can read the plants fairly well? Would coco react fairly quickly like in hydro to changes in feed? Or would the over 100 ppm theory be to stay one step ahead as plants grown in coco wont react as quickly? Sorry for all the questions JD, i just think if im on the right track with my thinking then coco could become my new best friend!?
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
icetech said:

At 1:30 it has a chart.. i was aiming for 5.. which is just under nitrogen.. either way i was WAY low.. glad i found out kind of early :)
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Ah yeah i have seen that exact chart before.

Problem is there are other charts which contradict it and each other.





Keep yours 5.8 or over and allow a bit of drift and you should be all good.
 
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