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**coconutisland** · 02-07-2015, 04:54 PM

Dedi, after the week on water, has the nutrient in the reservoir turned color on you? If it is running clear, you should go back to using nutrients according to the schedule on your mixture. I would start off with half strength of what ever the recommendation is for this point in the grow, ie. week 4, week 6, week 8... You are nearing the finish line. For instance, with my Flora Series, in week 6, there are 9 ingredients for the full spectrum on the charts, the base three being Gro, Micro and Bloom. By week 9, that drops to only 5 ingredients and the schedule calls for NO flora Gro..

Now, if your nutrient reservoir is colored, I would do one more flush of a gallon in each plant, letting that drain to waste, turn off the recirculating pump and toss everything in that reservoir. Then mix up a fresh batch. If it is pretty clean, you could forgo the flush, at this point, this flush is not going to do any harm in any event.

It is going to take you a day to get a fresh batch of nutrient settled anyway. I just use tap water and let it sit overnight, even when I am just adding water to the reservoir I make sure that water has had a day to stabilize. So, mix up some fresh nutrients, give it another day on water, then flush if you want but make sure when you flush, that you are not pumping that back into your recirculating system... Then start feeding again, slowly for the first few days, as you see, it only takes 4 or 5 days for a difference to appear... So, in 4 or 5 days, if everything is looking good, start going back to full strength. You can add nutrients in stead of water, or speed up the process, make a 5 day period a week to play catch up on the recommended schedule... as this point in time, things are changing with that mixture anyway...

I plan for all my house plants, and right now I have well over 100 when you add all the new veggies for spring. I do not mix nutrients during the week, just to keep myself from going insane with feeding schedules... Then I feed on the weekends, flush, new nutrients, additives for some peppers to make them hotter, or tomato's to make them sweeter... Or when they get transplanted to the ground from a container... does not matter, everything gets food on the weekends, noting gets 'food' during the week... That same principle applies to my hydro as well as my potted plants...

**Blaze4daze** · 02-07-2015, 11:57 PM

Looks like they made it thru, Dedi,

Good job.

**coconutisland** · 02-08-2015, 03:49 AM

Hey Dedi, they are looking better, here is a link to the schedule I use for Flora Series, this is 'expert recirculating' or drain to waste. http://generalhydroponics.com/site/i...expert_simple/

You will find all the feeding schedules for GH products here: http://generalhydroponics.com/site/i...ding_schedule/

I try to stay under the aggressive side of things and keep the veg running with a mix that is roughly week 4... pretty even amounts of all 3 core ingredients, gro, micro and bloom. When I am ready to transition and bloom, I change where that plant is located so it starts on a new diet, more like week 8. After they start to ripen, I start to get lighter on everything but bloom and some sugars/carbs... then just water... then the last week they get a pint a day or so, enough to keep from wilting is all...

**Dedi** · 02-08-2015, 10:55 PM

Originally posted by coconutisland View Post

Hey Dedi, they are looking better, here is a link to the schedule I use for Flora Series, this is 'expert recirculating' or drain to waste. http://generalhydroponics.com/site/i...expert_simple/

You will find all the feeding schedules for GH products here: http://generalhydroponics.com/site/i...ding_schedule/

I try to stay under the aggressive side of things and keep the veg running with a mix that is roughly week 4... pretty even amounts of all 3 core ingredients, gro, micro and bloom. When I am ready to transition and bloom, I change where that plant is located so it starts on a new diet, more like week 8. After they start to ripen, I start to get lighter on everything but bloom and some sugars/carbs... then just water... then the last week they get a pint a day or so, enough to keep from wilting is all...

ok, when I tested with ph drops its a light yellow and I decided to check with strips I had and it showed ph was 7.0 I know I need meter but cant get 1 at this time so should I ph down or up? don't want to add to res. if its wrong, think yellow is on the high side of ph . just looked at general hydro ph test bottle on amazon and it showed yellow as being 6.0 ph that's perfect isn't it ?

**Dedi** · 02-10-2015, 12:00 AM

ok, got milwaukee ph600 ph tester and hm ec tester combo hopes this helps with any problems in the future.havent seen anybody on for a little, so if coconutisland comes on check previous comments. should have it in 5 days

**Katzie_Wolf71** · 02-10-2015, 12:51 AM

I use the same ph tester, and i think anything between 6.0 and 6.5 is in the sweet spot for pH. I use 6.5 for my 2 girls that i have growing but i am in soil.

**coconutisland** · 02-10-2015, 02:03 PM

Don't be alarmed if things are out of whack for a couple of days, as you go from pure water and back to nutrients. The plants are sucking up the nutrients and that's what throws it off after a few hours. Top off now with fresh nutrient, tested to 6.0, add that and give the whole mix a day to settle, then test the whole reservoir again. As long as the plants are looking better, you should be ok now... Let THEM tell you what they need.... I do not even test my PH after I am up and running... Just remember, your plants are going to like less or lower PH more so than high PH... Also, more so in the early stages, later in life, they have more ability to consume anything you throw at them, like your plants are doing now... But I would give it a top off of fresh nutrient and see if it starts to stabilize before I did anything else. Honestly, the guys who 'mentored' me on hydro, tested maybe 3 times a year? As long as the plants were looking good, why mess with it? Once you get your system down, you will find that hydro is more like a plug and play system... I just added some CalMagic for the first time in over a year, into a reservoir that has been untested for anything in over 60 days? Just topping with fresh settled water (which is normally around 7 and neutral, humans drink water in that range, apple juice is about 3, coffee around 5.5, bleach is 12)

**coconutisland** · 02-10-2015, 03:48 PM

Something to remember, as I am thinking about this, in the flower stage, ohh, really more like a two week schedule, so every 10 to 14 days, flush and replace the whole mixture... Now, I am not doing that, but I am not running 5 or 8 reservoirs at a time, so I can manipulate what I add to that mix for a month in flower, then as I mentioned, drop of few things, like the Gro component, cut down on the Micro and double up on the Bloom, add or up the 'nectar' or what ever sugar I am using. Right now I am using a grape flavor. No real need to introduce that until after the transition in my mind... When I was running up to 30 or more clones in veg, I would keep a pitcher to dip in the nutrient and pour it over the gro blocks (rockwool) though the week, adding 5 gallons of fresh water at a time, no testing... then every 20 gallons or so, 5 to 8 days? 10 to 20 gallons of fresh nutrient mixture. after a flush. If the reservoir was low, we would flush into it, but often times it was too full to take the amount of 30 gallons of flushing, so, flush went to waste, but the reservoir, just got topped off with fresh nutrients... again, no testing, just mix and pour... That location, the pure water was around 6.5... The reservoir was a plastic tote, maybe 40 gallons max... For that setup, the flower room had a stand alone tub, same size around 40 gallons, for each light... one cheap little 160 gallon an hour pump to feed 6 to 9 plants. Under 1000 watt hoods... Same system for the flower, in terms of delivery and topping off with fresh water, only difference being that the pumps went on a timer, 10 minutes to an hour... then about 10 to 14 days, flush and change the nutrients... I am not really dealing with that part of the indoor gro as I can take plants outside here in Colorado... for the winter months, I just suffer with smaller plants for a few months, lower yield, but I can gro some large transplants to put outside in the summer... I am planning on 3 in the ground and 3 in hydro in the back yard for the summer... Everything else will be small clones and just biding their time... I may get 3 crops from outdoors, one early, one late, one long (the three that go in the ground)

One of the added benefits of the rockwool, is the low weight of the substrate... Moving a 5 foot tall plant in a 5 gallon bucket filled with dirt, is a chore. Moving a 6 inch block of wool, not so much... I gro the stuf to EASE the pain, not cause more! Any way, that way it is easy for me to move them into a blackout room, right now a shelf in my bathroom that runs all along one wall. enough room there for 6 plants in one row, but no lights or hydro, just the dark shelf... Any time I want to flower a plant, I just stick it there for 12 hours a day... Right now, I have 4 that are going in there at night, 1 is on week 4 of flower, one on week 2, then 2 that just started to transition this week... I was using the closet off my gro (veg) room for this last year, but right now I have a Miracle gro hydro experiment going on in there... I was trying to use the same nutrients as my MMJ for Tomato's, not sure if it was the 24/7 lights, the spectrum or what, but I managed to burn all the roots and those plants failed (the tomato's) So I am trying out a MG tomato food for a batch, see if that makes a difference ?? So far, so good, but only with some extra MMJ plants... have to grow a few more tomato's to try again with them... And as all the advice you will read, tells you, I quickly took the last of my tomato's and stuck them in dirt, about 5 made it and are growing in my windows under natural light... I have another 8 started that are just 2 inch tall seedlings to try out the MG... Some of those will move into the closet on MG and those MMJ plants will move on, either outside or just flowered in the main veg room with trips to the bathroom... My outdoor temps are still averaging only about 50's for a high, much to soon to go outside. Though this weekend was 75 and I was working on my garden beds...

**coconutisland** · 02-10-2015, 04:23 PM

Just to show what I am working with, some pictures of the grow room:

IMG00406.jpg

This is the setup for a hydro pot that can be moved without damaging the roots. I place the 6 inch gro cube in the roughly 2 gallon nursery pot. On the bottom, I take a slice off a used 6 inch gro cube, to make a matt that comes up to the size of the holes on the bottom edge of the black nursery pot, maybe an inch? Then I add about a cup of perlite to cover any gaps, but I use that mat to block off the drain holes. Then place a gro cube that I want to move around on top of that. the parts look like this:

IMG00403.jpg

Installed an running, looks like this, and only weigh's as much as the water in the block?

IMG00404.jpg

**Katzie_Wolf71** · 02-10-2015, 06:15 PM

For soil i use my pH meter to get pH of the water when its time to water and use it for my nutrient solution before feeding. And to check the run-off at times also.

**Dedi** · 02-10-2015, 07:33 PM

thanks coconutisland for all the good info you've given me, guess I was runnin scared after the last mess. this is my first grow in hydro and under led. always grew outside but now its impossible with some of my neighbors. in Pa. the gov. signed for medical use only to include oils and something else so its going to b a while before we get to anything better. talking about ph this has been my big problem since I started hydro. when I first started these plants I was only using grow and micro didn't use bloom at all and I was thinking of just using micro and bloom for flowering would this have worked? then I read and saw feeding schedules and saw they used all 3. I think this is what messed me up. when I grew outside as u said its a totally different thing then inside and im finding it out real quick just how different it is. ill do what u said and go from there. by the way I like your grow area and wish I had that much room to grow in. my room is small, its in my laundry room. don't have any other room or space to do it. got 4 days till I get my meters hope the plants last that long to use them. once again thanks for the info, at this stage im thinking ill need all the help I can get. also u said to top off with nutreints. I guess u mean mixing them in a gallon jug. so should I mix for just 1 gallon or for 5? in the jug. these plants are drinking about a gal. of water a day. oh by the way the roots in my res. are filling the container up. its just a 5 gal so should I get another air stone and my water pump pushes 400 gal a hour is this to much?

**stanleyjoe53** · 02-12-2015, 04:47 AM

Hello, I own 10 acres in Colorado. I'm planning to apply for a grower and sellers license. I'm seeking partners knowledgeable in all aspects of growing and was hoping you might point me in the right direction to find such partners.
thank you.

**Katzie_Wolf71** · 02-12-2015, 07:53 AM

Oh i am sure if you spread the word there you'll have no problems on getting all sorts of help there stanleyjoe. Welcome to the site.

**Blaze4daze** · 02-12-2015, 01:43 PM

Welcome to the forum, stanleyjoe.

How long have you owned property in Colorado? If your still (planning) to apply for a cultivation license, you have a long ways to go before you will actually need people to help out. That state should be full of knowledgeable folks that can help out when your ready. Best of Luck with it.

**HotPomelo** · 02-12-2015, 02:23 PM

Hey everyone,

Long time lurker first time joiner.

I've been doing some reading but haven't found an answer yet on this.

I'm going to construct a grow box and was wondering if this will suffice.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...avel_trunk.JPG

I have 3 and could spare one. My question is, will this get too hot (I'll hook up exhaust and run a computer fan inside).

Thanks and you guys provide top notch info in great format that's easily digestible.

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