Nutrients Help Me Create Custom Soil Mix for Biotabs

[Proph]

yes, I think the soil was way too high to begin with. I doubt 1-2 Biotabs which aint even activated fully yet have caused this.
I apologize for the confusion and yes i was planning for 2nd grow, whilst trying to fix my 1st effort. I am maybe creating too many threads.

From what i have read Biotabs rarely burn plants and are not salt based, so the plant takes up what and when it needs to. So maybe a flush isnt a bad thing? There is only 1 biotab in 4 pots and 2 in the last 2 anyway.

https://www.autoflower.org/threads/...orthern-cheese-haze.75034/page-2#post-2218583

Ahhh.. Ok. I looked through that thread.. Yeah.. You've got a learning curve to adjust to, but we will all try to help you get there.. The problem is that you need to pick a growing style.. You need to figure out how you want to grow, and at the same time learn... Do you want the hands off approach (which is what it seems) or do you want the hands on approach? Super soils, autopots, biotabs, ect, fall under the hands off approach. You won't need to do much using these methods, but you won't learn much either.

If you bought a super soil, you dont need bio tabs.. The soil is already "super", lol. It should have everything the plant needs from seed to harvest. All you have to do is add plain water. Adding bio tabs to super soil is like giving superman, the powers of Batman as well. You only need one. Doesn't really matter which, they both do the same thing.. But both together will without a doubt, caused problems at some point. Every plant is different. No to plants are the same. Not in any way. Some plants can deal with heavy feeds and hot soils.. Others, not so much.. That's why you have plants showing burn, and some that don't. But they all have that dark green, overfed color to them already. It's not to late to transplant them.. If you have more super soil left, you can transplant them into that, just minus the bio tabs. Also 3000 ppm for a super soil with seedlings in it may not be all that bad.. I didn't know it was a pre mixed super soil. So basically, that run off is all nutes.. Because the plant/root system isn't big enough to start using all of that food yet. That number will decrease as the roots fill up the pot. Right now it's all soil.

So basically, you need to choose between bio tabs and super soil. One or the other.. Not both.. Super soil should be water only from seed to harvest.. Bio Tabs need to start in a base mix with no nutes.. You added bio tabs to a complete super soil mix, packed full of nutes. Just keep in mind, that both ways limit your learning and ability to correct issues when they pop up.

 

[Proph]

Ohh, and when I say coco, I mean coco coir. Pre washed, buffered, bagged coco coir, lol. I don't use the bricks that you have to prep.

 

[Olderfart]

>3000PPM seems silly high to me. First, make sure that your EC/PPM meter is on the setting that you think it is. If your meter was inadvertently set to EC, the actual ppm of runoff will be far lower than 3000, likely about half that. I have made this mistake...

If your soil is actually producing runoff >3000ppm, I would flush with phed nute solution until the runoff is close to input. This will take a lot of nute solution, likely at least 2-3x the volume of your planters. I would not use plain phed water for flushing. The roots are stressed by large changes in ppm levels, and the change will be worse if you use plain water. The roots will have enough to deal with getting your 3000ppm down into more tolerable range. However, you can use tap water for most of the flushing process, just make the EC/PPM of the flush mix the same as your target EC/PPM level of the final nute solution. Finish the flush off with a good dose of RO nute mix to get rid of most of the tap water mix.

All this is without my knowing what the soil is, or the stage of growth or condition of your plants. If the soil is really heavy and the plants tiny, you might not get away with flushing because it will leave the soil entirely soaked, the small seedlings will not be big enough to dry it out, and consequently the risk of damage from over-watering would be high. Also, if the "cannabis soil" has slow release nutes included in the mix, and is too hot for your seedlings, flushing may not fix the problem, period. Your only option then might be transplanting, and that might be difficult to achieve without seriously stunting or killing your plants.

Photos and more information would help - you should fill out the form on the infirmary subforum to get the best help here. Good luck with sorting things out, there is lots of help available here.

 

[IndoorTropics]

>3000PPM seems silly high to me. First, make sure that your EC/PPM meter is on the setting that you think it is. If your meter was inadvertently set to EC, the actual ppm of runoff will be far lower than 3000, likely about half that. I have made this mistake...

If your soil is actually producing runoff >3000ppm, I would flush with phed nute solution until the runoff is close to input. This will take a lot of nute solution, likely at least 2-3x the volume of your planters. I would not use plain phed water for flushing. The roots are stressed by large changes in ppm levels, and the change will be worse if you use plain water. The roots will have enough to deal with getting your 3000ppm down into more tolerable range. However, you can use tap water for most of the flushing process, just make the EC/PPM of the flush mix the same as your target EC/PPM level of the final nute solution. Finish the flush off with a good dose of RO nute mix to get rid of most of the tap water mix.

All this is without my knowing what the soil is, or the stage of growth or condition of your plants. If the soil is really heavy and the plants tiny, you might not get away with flushing because it will leave the soil entirely soaked, the small seedlings will not be big enough to dry it out, and consequently the risk of damage from over-watering would be high. Also, if the "cannabis soil" has slow release nutes included in the mix, and is too hot for your seedlings, flushing may not fix the problem, period. Your only option then might be transplanting, and that might be difficult to achieve without seriously stunting or killing your plants.

Photos and more information would help - you should fill out the form on the infirmary subforum to get the best help here. Good luck with sorting things out, there is lots of help available here.

Pics are linked in thread above. Sorry.

 

[Olderfart]

Pics are linked in thread above. Sorry.

No worries, I was already looking at the thread, I misunderstood earlier that you were referring to the grow that you have documented in the other thread.

Anyway, having gone through your thread, @Proph has you covered with the advice provided earlier. If you are using super soil, you do not want to add biotabs. Usually when using super soil, the seedling is started in a less rich mix and allowed to send roots into the super soil a bit further into the grow.

If the biotabs are already in there and you can remove them, I think you should probably do that. In any case, the plants don't look too bad, so you aren't done with them yet. If you can get rid of the biotabs and continue watering with just water, they may do just fine in your super soil. If the plants look like they need nute help later in the grow, you can add some nutes then.

Good luck with it, and sorry about my confusion earlier.

 

[IndoorTropics]

Ok. So first off, I never rinsed or watered this "cannabis super soil" prior to planting my seeds, well i did, but never to run off. From a little research this seems to have been a mistake. Perhaps if you read further this was the WHOLE MISTAKE to begin with? Maybe the soil is not as hot as first thought and should i have just rinsed it? I was just told it has enough for seedlings for 2-4 weeks, oops.

So considering i don't need all my plants to survive for my tent size (planned to cull when grow too big), I will use a few different approaches to each plant slowly and see what works best. I also picked up some fresh bags of this super soil and perlite today to run even further tests on stand alone.

On the most effected pot. In total I must have run about 12-18L (not more) of water through the 3 gal of super soil by now over the past 48 hours.

I now have a runoff from this pot giving PH 6.5 and 350-400 PPM (water input of 6.7 and 20ppm)., i proper flooded her through over the last couple hours again, and yesterday she was almost dry and had about 3-4L.
There is still 1 Biotab in this pot. I am not taking it out or going to try. It was put into the soil on day 7-8 anyway so is prob just been fully activated.
Others I may try to remove.
Waiting for this first one to drain off as much as possible and will throw her back into the tent.

Does this sound like a potential success? Should i just do the same for all other pots? One or two I am just going to leave as they are, especially the so far unaffected ones, if any still exist, tbh they all have very minor symptoms at least.

P.S. I found this guide of PPM for autoflowers on another site via Google. So assume my mini flushing has put me back into a decent range for end of week 2 and start of week 3, then the biotabs can kick in and do their magic?

Also thanks @Olderfart I will def try your method on 1-2 of them with nute mix.