If you are adding 5 gallons of water with little run-off you are letting your pots get too dry! What you need to learn about watering will come with practice. Here are the basic rules: Never let the soil dry out. Soil and or coco can become hydrophobic if allowed to dry. This means it repels water. This in turn will create dry pockets in the soil and roots there will die. If your soil - coco have accidentally dried out use a surfactant to help re-wet it. I like yucca powder. Don't let soil remain soggy by watering too much too often. Root rot, damping off, molds, fungus gnats and other problems start in soggy soil. When you do water water the entire pot. How to learn when to water starts before you plant the seed. Fill your container with fresh soil/coco and weigh it (heft it) this is the lightest weight and consider it a dry pot. Now slowly water until the soil/coco will no longer absorb the water and run-off begins; weigh the pot (heft it) this is the maximum water, the wettest the pot can get. The difference between wettest and driest is the maximum water weight, for ease of explanation lets just say the water weighs 20 pounds. When the pot loses 10 pounds (half of the water weight) it is time to water again. There is an art to watering.
No it is not too late to fix coco. It is one of the reasons we use it in cannabis. This is radical and I usually ony recommend it in a dire situation. I do not know if we are there but here is the procedure. Use distilled or RO water PH 6.2 to flush the pot twice it's volume or 200% run-off. The forest products in this are a wild card but this should rinse it well. Now run through 150 PPM of Cal-Mag and wait 30 minutes. Now fertigate with 70% strength balanced (that means ALL of the recommended products in the vendor line) bloom nutrients plus 50 PPM of Cal-Mag. Add Mykos or any other beneficial microbes, kelp, Humic Acid, B1 and a P-K booster all at 70% of the recommended strength. Fertigate all of these nutrients at the same time. Then from this point forward treat this like a hydro grow and fertigate balanced nutrients every time to 15% run-off.
I don't have anything else but what I have already stated.
