Low runoff ppm in coco

[Josh]

Watsup everyone
Quick question for you coco experts on here

First off, I just wanna say that I'm not having any problems whatsoever, plants look amazing. Perfect shade of green, no deficiencies and just started to throw pistils. Been stretching for about a week

So I have 2 gallon air pots with hydro halos and I water 30 seconds 3 times per day

Every few days I'll check my runoff ppm to make sure salts aren't building up, its usually only 50-100 ppm lower.
But after stretch started it's consistently reading way low

Feeding at 770 ppm or 1.15 EC, and the runoff is 480 ppm....

Any idea what's causing this?
I'm pretty good at reading plants by now so not looking to change anything, just curious what y'all think


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[GMO]

Hey dude

couple things; TDS/PPM conversions to EC have massive variation from like 0.5 x up to like 1.2x PPM to EC depending....

so talking in PPM ive read that coco wants between 150-350ppm of just Calcium to fore fill the CEC requirement of the medium and leave enough for plants to have access to.... which is where the calmag buffering usually comes into play a pre buffered medium "should" help maintain the balance of PH and CEC, but if we arent supplementing calmag when HFF the CEC seems to get washed out sooner

and then, stretch is pretty much the heaviest feeding stage of the plants life cycle. they still require high levels of base nutes to sustain the amount of growth as well as start using more P and K than previously

i think personally, you wanna get used to this dip in EC/ rise in uptake and just feed slightly higher through streych and begin to off set the NPK ratio as plant growth levels off

thats how i see it anyways dude

[Josh]

Hey dude

couple things; TDS/PPM conversions to EC have massive variation from like 0.5 x up to like 1.2x PPM to EC depending....

so talking in PPM ive read that coco wants between 150-350ppm of just Calcium to fore fill the CEC requirement of the medium and leave enough for plants to have access to.... which is where the calmag buffering usually comes into play a pre buffered medium "should" help maintain the balance of PH and CEC, but if we arent supplementing calmag when HFF the CEC seems to get washed out sooner

and then, stretch is pretty much the heaviest feeding stage of the plants life cycle. they still require high levels of base nutes to sustain the amount of growth as well as start using more P and K than previously

i think personally, you wanna get used to this dip in EC/ rise in uptake and just feed slightly higher through streych and begin to off set the NPK ratio as plant growth levels off

thats how i see it anyways dude

Thanks bro do you find the Franco's lemon cheese to be a heavy feeding strain? Can't remember if you've ran a journal on it or not

And sorry my ppm is the .7 conversion. I normally use ec just figured ppm might be more accurate
Good point though

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[2-Scoops]

Up your feed different strains different greedy gums, but it`s saying your plants are taking up plenty of ferts basically so not a big worry. Then again if plants look nice and green and happy then why up it, not that you couldn`t up it. Run off is far from accurate but a good guide as to what the plants are doing.

I think too much is made of reading run off and peeps forget to look at how happy or unhappy plants are at times. You have yourself checked your plants, which is first thing you should always do int it really. :)

[2-Scoops]

a pre buffered medium "should" help maintain the balance of PH and CEC, but if we arent supplementing calmag when HFF the CEC seems to get washed out sooner

and then, stretch is pretty much the heaviest feeding stage of the plants life cycle. they still require high levels of base nutes to sustain the amount of growth as well as start using more P and K than previously

So very true is that one GMO hence why if you gonna see proper calcium defs its generally around 3 or 4 weeks into bloom growing with coco. Summink simple as upping ferts for first 3 weeks of bloom generally prevents this happening though :)

[Josh]

a pre buffered medium "should" help maintain the balance of PH and CEC, but if we arent supplementing calmag when HFF the CEC seems to get washed out sooner

and then, stretch is pretty much the heaviest feeding stage of the plants life cycle. they still require high levels of base nutes to sustain the amount of growth as well as start using more P and K than previously

So very true is that one GMO hence why if you gonna see proper calcium defs its generally around 3 or 4 weeks into bloom growing with coco. Summink simple as upping ferts for first 3 weeks of bloom generally prevents this happening though :)

Sweet, thanks jimmi

So I did a rez change last night, set to 1.1 EC. How should I go about upping it without messing up the nute ratios?

Add some more calmag maybe? Like I said they look great but I don't want deficiencies come week 3 like you mentioned

And what do you think, 1.2 or 1.3? Thanks in advance bro

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[2-Scoops]

Should be no need for cal/mag tis just usually a case of upping ferts when flip to 12/12, ive generally got plants on 1.2 ec when i flip when they are in full veg and a fair old size, i then up it to 1.3 -1.4 for 3 or 4 weeks then i drop right back to 0.8-1.0 ec rest of grow depends how i feel and how plants look tbh does that. But don`t worry too much if you notice run off climbing when you do up it those first 3 or 4 weeks, not that should but if so it will be hardly anything, but when drop it back it will gradually drop slowly.

Adding cal/mag won`t do squat to bring CEC back normal once it gone its abilities to keep coco buffered at correct ph is thrown you wont get it back cus CEC fills with other ions before plants takes them up this is a constant thing going down between CEC factory and plant, basically it keeps exchanging cations as its depleted it takes them in and plant uses those, they are known as ions if positive charged and i think anions for negative charged but different ellements of ferts different charges, problem with calcium is it`s its double charged lets say lol and Ca++ so used up quicker, but once coco`s buffering abilities are thrown out you may notice ph out in run off too and tis hard to get back cus CEC its just like a factory using what`s their hence why cal/mag is prolly no good, but AnB is more than enough anyhow and has all this in for plant.

Tis another reason why flushing pots through for no reason what so ever does your grow no good it will throw ph out of medium but if you can keep that ph of medium cock on through the grow you`ll get better results than adding boosts and shit like that. Another note is once its thrown and you find ph of your medium out in run off so long as you keep medium wet with correct ph of ferts you giving then you should be good all the way to end still. Remember your not exactly feeding plant but your feeding medium which in turn feeds plant ions and anions to turn into food/sugars/carbs which it stores in leaves to use as food as and when it`s needs be. Well im pretty sure that`s how it works anyhow if i remember rightly. Plant also uses sunlight/any light to turn water and co2 into food as well which is stored again leafs in form of carbs/glucose

[Josh]

Should be no need for cal/mag tis just usually a case of upping ferts when flip to 12/12, ive generally got plants on 1.2 ec when i flip when they are in full veg and a fair old size, i then up it to 1.3 -1.4 for 3 or 4 weeks then i drop right back to 0.8-1.0 ec rest of grow depends how i feel and how plants look tbh does that. But don`t worry too much if you notice run off climbing when you do up it those first 3 or 4 weeks, not that should but if so it will be hardly anything, but when drop it back it will gradually drop slowly.

Adding cal/mag won`t do squat to bring CEC back normal once it gone its abilities to keep coco buffered at correct ph is thrown you wont get it back cus CEC fills with other ions before plants takes them up this is a constant thing going down between CEC factory and plant, basically it keeps exchanging cations as its depleted it takes them in and plant uses those, they are known as ions if positive charged and i think anions for negative charged but different ellements of ferts different charges, problem with calcium is it`s its double charged lets say lol and Ca++ so used up quicker, but once coco`s buffering abilities are thrown out you may notice ph out in run off too and tis hard to get back cus CEC its just like a factory using what`s their hence why cal/mag is prolly no good, but AnB is more than enough anyhow and has all this in for plant.

Tis another reason why flushing pots through for no reason what so ever does your grow no good it will throw ph out of medium but if you can keep that ph of medium cock on through the grow you`ll get better results than adding boosts and shit like that. Another note is once its thrown and you find ph of your medium out in run off so long as you keep medium wet with correct ph of ferts you giving then you should be good all the way to end still. Remember your not exactly feeding plant but your feeding medium which in turn feeds plant ions and anions to turn into food/sugars/carbs which it stores in leaves to use as food as and when it`s needs be. Well im pretty sure that`s how it works anyhow if i remember rightly. Plant also uses sunlight/any light to turn water and co2 into food as well which is stored again leafs in form of carbs/glucose

Ok...... So I guess I'll just wait until next rez change to up ferts a bit. Lol

I was talking about just adding some calmag to raise the EC Jimmy, you kind of lost me on that post I'm a little wary of just dumping in base nutes, for some reason gh says to mix them in order only. Calmagmicrogrowbloom

The coco I used was nothing fancy but I rinsed then buffered it really well for 16 hours before planting my clones. I'll get a couple lights off pics in here along with some numbers shortly

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[Josh]

Ok so going in is 1.1 EC, coming out is .9

Ph going in is 6.2, coming out at 5.8



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[2-Scoops]

Nowt up with those plants, they shine like real beauties mate top stuff. Ive grown 20 years and just sling whatever im using at the time and pick up first at hand and i always have done, straight into my tank of water, ive never had any detrimental effects in doing so. Dont sweat adding a bit of base ferts if you want its not gonna cause a problem, possibly lower ph slightly but if your just raising it 0.1 - 02 i would think its not gonna effect it too much worth pissing around with again. Oh I tell a lie the Aussie guy i learnt how to grow in coco from told me right way to do your ferts is add base ferts first and additives afterwards, i think i may have done that for a bit till i got lazy`ier. AnB should have more than enough of everything in for the plants needs, so instead of trying to fix things with this, that and t`other it`s usually a simple fix is a case of just upping base ferts a bit.

What was the coco you used and where from and also how much was it ? and at what EC did you soak it in with cal/mag ? I`m all about cheap Josh yet for some reason i always tend to still buy canna pro +