Nitrogen Toxicity Flush
- Thread starter MrBamfo
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If you just did a flush to get rid of excess nitrogen, why would you turn around and add more? The excess nitrogen is not "in the plant".. It's in the coco.. That's why you flushed the coco (To remove some of the excess nutrients). Use a ppm meter to check the run off. If the ppms are in range, no need to feed. If the ppms are too low, add a very low amount of nutrients to get the ppms in range.
I flushed the coco down to about 230 EC, my tap water was 197 EC. So the plant would only have straight tap water. Wasn't sure if I should let it run on the tap water for a day, before restarting feeding so it could pull down the Nitrogen in the plant. But was concerned I would just start running deficiencies with other nutrients. Or if I should give it a lower ppm feed to prevent other deficiencies but still hopefully be able to pull down the Nitrogen.
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You are going to have Calcium problems if you do not replace what you have washed out of the coco. Make a minimum 25% strength Balanced nutrient fertigation and then bump the Calcium to 140 PPMs total (if the base nutrients provides 50 PPM and your starting water is 80PPM ~ 40 of that will be calcium so you would add 50 PPM more) of the mix and fertigate to 10% run-off.
My calculations are for demonstration use your actual numbers.
We may be putting the cart before the horse. Do you have pictures showing the nitrogen toxicity? It may be helpful to see a more complete picture?
Please fill in this form: (copy and paste part is below, this first one tell what specifically to include)
-Problem: (brief description)
-Medium/grow method: soil; soilless-- coco, or peat based like Promix, etc. (please provide the actual product name); DWC, NFT, etc.
-Feed and supplements used: include brand, dosage/strength, frequency of feeding and watering (alone); method-- by hand, drippers, rercirc' or drain-to-waste,... N-P-K #'s too if you can!
-Water source: RO/DI; tap- dechlorinated-?..... EC or TDS reading; pH (don't bother with this on RO/DI, do bother with TDS/EC though to confirm it's working well enough)
-Strain and age
-Climate: night and day ambient T and RH%; res' temperatures; any extremes in T/RH% exposure
- Light used: HID, LED, COB, combo of,... wattage; light cycle hours (20/4, 18/6 , etc.); distance to tops....
-Additional info: PH in the root zone. How long have the plants been affected?...How fast did symptoms appear?... Anything else you think might be relevant..
--Pictures including WHOLE PLANT PICS, and troubled leaves.. use normal light or flash as other light sources ruin color rendering, critical for diagnostics! Turn off the grow lights.
✂ - - - - - - - - - - -
(copy and paste)-->
Problem:
Medium/grow method:
Feed: and supplements used:
water source:
PH in the root zone:
Strain/age:
light used:
Climate:
Additional info:
My calculations are for demonstration use your actual numbers.
We may be putting the cart before the horse. Do you have pictures showing the nitrogen toxicity? It may be helpful to see a more complete picture?
Please fill in this form: (copy and paste part is below, this first one tell what specifically to include)
-Problem: (brief description)
-Medium/grow method: soil; soilless-- coco, or peat based like Promix, etc. (please provide the actual product name); DWC, NFT, etc.
-Feed and supplements used: include brand, dosage/strength, frequency of feeding and watering (alone); method-- by hand, drippers, rercirc' or drain-to-waste,... N-P-K #'s too if you can!
-Water source: RO/DI; tap- dechlorinated-?..... EC or TDS reading; pH (don't bother with this on RO/DI, do bother with TDS/EC though to confirm it's working well enough)
-Strain and age
-Climate: night and day ambient T and RH%; res' temperatures; any extremes in T/RH% exposure
- Light used: HID, LED, COB, combo of,... wattage; light cycle hours (20/4, 18/6 , etc.); distance to tops....
-Additional info: PH in the root zone. How long have the plants been affected?...How fast did symptoms appear?... Anything else you think might be relevant..
--Pictures including WHOLE PLANT PICS, and troubled leaves.. use normal light or flash as other light sources ruin color rendering, critical for diagnostics! Turn off the grow lights.
✂ - - - - - - - - - - -
(copy and paste)-->
Problem:
Medium/grow method:
Feed: and supplements used:
water source:
PH in the root zone:
Strain/age:
light used:
Climate:
Additional info:
Thanks, I totally head spaced the fact, getting the runoff ppms so low wiped out the Cal-Mag in the coco. Put a Cal-Mag boost in, think I'm going to let it ride for a couple of days, but if it gets worse I'll try and figure out how to upload. Thanks again.
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FWIW, I did a couple flushes to deal with issues in my coco grow last winter, and I took a slightly different approach. I flushed with the exact nute mix that I wanted the plant to get, and kept flushing until the runoff was more or less identical to the input. At that point I knew that the medium had in it exactly what I wanted it to, and getting it there did not stress the plant by hitting it with dramatically different osmotic conditions. Plants do not like being hit with large osmotic changes, and any setback caused by this is lost time with autos. I definitely do not recommend a plain water flush for this reason, but I realize that lots of more experienced peeps on here differ in opinion.
The couple flushes I did seemed to work perfectly. It took a lot of nute mix, but when I did the last one, I collected the runoff, adjusted the ph and EC, and reused it with no apparent issues. OTOH, a few gallons of lost nute mix is a pretty cheap way to get a grow sorted.
I second the recommendation to use at least some cal mag. I assume that you coco was buffered, but if you do go for a plain water flush, you could rinse some of the buffering out and cause problems later even if you use cal mag. Coco can be a bit of a bitch with Calcium and Magnesium - lots of these nutes are locked up by the coco, so you need to keep the coco full in order to feed the plants.
As always, just my two noob cents on the issue.
The couple flushes I did seemed to work perfectly. It took a lot of nute mix, but when I did the last one, I collected the runoff, adjusted the ph and EC, and reused it with no apparent issues. OTOH, a few gallons of lost nute mix is a pretty cheap way to get a grow sorted.
I second the recommendation to use at least some cal mag. I assume that you coco was buffered, but if you do go for a plain water flush, you could rinse some of the buffering out and cause problems later even if you use cal mag. Coco can be a bit of a bitch with Calcium and Magnesium - lots of these nutes are locked up by the coco, so you need to keep the coco full in order to feed the plants.
As always, just my two noob cents on the issue.
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