Looking for more Pointers on hydroponics

im just looking for advice/pointers to make things abit easyer.

i have a 50 litre/13 gallon res and has just noticed my plants are getting abit of nitro deff i was wondering how u guys go about finding the rite amount of nutrients to add to your plants as there constantly growing , sadly my nutes just say 5mls per litre=1400ppm and thats all, no dosages ..lol. should i get a tds/ec meter?is it essential for finding the right amount of feed?

also when my water drops can i just keep adding water in with nutes premixed or do i have to fully empty the res every week ?

anyone got any easy way of emptying full a 50litre res ? adding tap water straight in is going to shock my plants cos its so cold, how do i go about that? i cant store 50litres away to sit.

o and how much should i be adding if 5mls a litre =1400ppm ? its a 2 part veg solution.

In hydro less is usually more. Start with about half of the manufactures reccomended dosage and work your way up till the plants are happy. A good TDS meter is an essential component of your hydro system as well as a good PH meter.

There are different schools of thought on adding back water. Some like me just top off with water and change the res every week. Others add back a weak nute solution and go about 2 weeks between changes. However, without a TDS meter I dont reccomend adding nutes as you wont know what your concentrations are. No TDS reading means you wont know how much your girls have fed so you wont know how much to add back.

Now, you mention you think you have a nitro def. Usually, if you are following the manufacturers dosage then you shouldnt be getting a deficiency. More than likely there is another problem which is preventing the nitrogen from being taken up, especially if you are at 1400ppm. Heck, at 1400ppm my plants start to crisp and die. The most common newbie mistake is to do more when that is usually the worst thing you can do. Cant say why you may be seeing signs of nitrogen deficiency without more info on your grow.

thanks for your input but im not at 1400 ppm , read it again

my nutes dont say dosages , on the front it says 5ml's per litre =1400ppm. my hydro guy said to start at 1ml per litres but that was 4 weeks ago so i have no idea what to add anymore

1400 is pretty extreme, but so is 280 (based on your feeding of 1/5 of recommendation). I was concerned when my TDS got to 1300 the other day, and I'm in week 7 of flowering. During veg I kept it around 800, but guys like Earl appear to keep theirs around 600 and some around here claim to have run as high as 3000 (which I don't believe). Personally I would bump it up to 3ml/liter and see how things go, it sounds like you really may just be deficient.

Are you keeping an eye on your PH? You should pick up a TDS meter, even if it's cheap (cheaper meters can take a couple of minutes to give an accurate reading.

I empty my 15 gal. res. with the 250 GPH pump I normally use for my chiller - disconnect chiller line, connect 3' length of 3/4" hose with loose end in bucket, turn on power till bucket is full, repeat. Last week I went all high-tech and purchased a "Bucket Head" shopvac from Home Depot to suck the last 1" of water out of my reservoir, it was $20 well spent.

Yes.......You should definetley invest not only in an EC meter but also a PH meter too if you want your grow to run smooth.And you can top up your Res with fresh water when the level goes down but there is no need to empty the full Res before doing so.I also use a 50 litre Res and I use 2 large buckets like the ones they use in home brewing for holding my water,ideally you should fill these and leave them to stand for 24 hours which gets rid of the chlorine and also lets the water reach room tempreture before putting it into your Res.
As for emptying your Res I just put a hose onto my pump and pump the old solution onto my garden,and I would advise you to be environmentally friendly and not to empty the solution down the toilet or bath

kk awesome guys thanks alot , yes i do have a ph meter.. my ph tends to just float from 5.1 to 6.2 so all is good there , ive been looking up ppm readings and so i know know i need to double my nutes .. and i have an old water pump laying around ill just run it from the tank out the door thanks for the idea + rep !/

pinned said:

1400 is pretty extreme, but so is 280 (based on your feeding of 1/5 of recommendation). I was concerned when my TDS got to 1300 the other day, and I'm in week 7 of flowering. During veg I kept it around 800, but guys like Earl appear to keep theirs around 600 and some around here claim to have run as high as 3000 (which I don't believe). Personally I would bump it up to 3ml/liter and see how things go, it sounds like you really may just be deficient.

Are you keeping an eye on your PH? You should pick up a TDS meter, even if it's cheap (cheaper meters can take a couple of minutes to give an accurate reading.

I empty my 15 gal. res. with the 250 GPH pump I normally use for my chiller - disconnect chiller line, connect 3' length of 3/4" hose with loose end in bucket, turn on power till bucket is full, repeat. Last week I went all high-tech and purchased a "Bucket Head" shopvac from Home Depot to suck the last 1" of water out of my reservoir, it was $20 well spent.

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3mls per litre so that would be about 700-800 ppm that sounds about rite yeah ? considering there 6-8 inches tall and i just switched to flowering yesterday and ... i was feeding them only 300 ppm. can anyone else confirm this is a decent ppm that wont burn my plants ? there small but have tight nodes.

another question guys , now i have 6 plants in my res with more plants should i add more ppm because they all eat nutes obviously ..

smallclosetgrowr said:

another question guys , now i have 6 plants in my res with more plants should i add more ppm because they all eat nutes obviously ..

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No!, your nute strength should remain the same regardless of how many plants you have. What you should do is increase the res size. For every plant you should have at least 2 gal of water. Also, in regards to PPM. It is important to note that when refering to PPM you also know what conversion scale is being used. Different manufacturers use different scales to calculate ppm and the variance can be pretty big. There are 2 types of meters that are widely used. EC -electrical conductivity and TDS - total disolved solids. Both measure the conductivity of the solution and then the TDS meter converts that reading to one of several PPM scales. If you dont know what scale is being refered to then its like saying you added 5 onto the length of a board without knowing if that means 5 inches, 5 feet or 5 meters. EC is always the same as it is simply measuring the conductivity of the solution and not doing any conversions. Most Euro growers use EC for this reason while most Americans use TDS. I tend to use EC as it presents much less confusion. So far in this thread many folks have mentioned PPM without saying what scale they are using. I believe there are about 4-5.