Indoor Which nutrients??

[TshirtNinja]

i still stand by my statement that with NORMAL tap water your good. i gave the advice to ph your water one time to make sure your water is normal. with proper nutrients the ph shift should still be in range unless your loading up on way too many suppliments. i use a broad stroke because most water/nutrient combos will be fine still in soil that isnt some sort of miracle grow or home depot special.

 

[BigBuddha]

Damn, that sucks. I don't have an EC meter, but the PPM of my tap water is around 130-160 which sounds way better than yours. So I guess you do a lot of foliar feeding with epsom salts to get around the mag lockouts?

Tell me about it!!

You know the ironic thing? I never even thought to check it for 18months because of a debate just like this one where loads of people were arguing that there's no need to check ec using organics.. which is partly true.. but nobody thought to say that your tapwater ec is still relevant if you're adding nutes to it! Of course, I had loads of problems as soon as I started using nutrients but could never figure out why. So, I gave them less. Then what happened? Yeah that's right.. deficiencies. Lol.

So.. for ages I struggled to figure it out.

Anyway.. in the end I discovered that adding citric acid [technically] lowers the ec of tapwater by about 30%. It's very complicated to explain all the tech behind it, but the basic model is that citric has a very high cation excange ratio, so when it comes into contact with calcium it somehow bonds with it and makes it less accesible to the plant. Or something along those lines. So I can bring down my ec from 0.9 to about 0.65 just by adding citric acid. So that solves the mag lockout. No need fo foliar feeding there. By the way that explanation is my totally limited understanding of particle physics and electrons and ions. Which is basically nothing.

OR.. if I'm growing organically in batmix, I can get away with just tapwater for almost the whole grow, so there are no nutes causing excesses or lockouts.

Very complicated to manage my water to keep it within range which is why I got some PM hardwter nutes which are designed just for my water-type (so far so good with those). I know I'd be better off buying an RO system.. but I just got obsessed with doing it without one for some reason and never got around to ordering it.

My tap water came in at 90 ppm and 6.6 ph. I have seen 110 and 125 ppm, but the ph is always with in a point. I am lucky to live in a place where good water is plentiful.

Lucky git. I DREAM of tapwater like that!!

 

[BigBuddha]

i still stand by my statement that with NORMAL tap water your good. i gave the advice to ph your water one time to make sure your water is normal. with proper nutrients the ph shift should still be in range unless your loading up on way too many suppliments. i use a broad stroke because most water/nutrient combos will be fine still in soil that isnt some sort of miracle grow or home depot special.

Erm.. I don't wanna sound like I'm nitpicking.. but how can you stand by a statement that you know is incomplete? Even in your post above you say that MOST combos will be fine. Yeah maybe they will I agree.. but in your own words it says that not ALL will be. That's all I'm saying. Not all will be.. and so long as there exists the reality that not all combos will be fine for growing pot indoors.. it's a fact that some people will need to ph adjust no matter how good their tapwater is.

If that last part is true, which we know it is, then we cannot say that it's good advice to tell people that if thier tapwater is ok then they don't have to ph adjust.

That's potentially plant-killing advice for some growers. Why would you want them to not know the full story and have a ph-problems-free first grow?*






*Obviously you do want them to have a good grow.. that's a rhetorical question.

 

[slightlystoopid]

Damn you guys have some clean tap water I was forced to instal reverse osmosis my tap water is 494 Tds and 7.4 ph almost toxic to drink . I use pro mix so I p.h every feed in and out but I am very anal and like to get everything out of my plants

 

[TshirtNinja]

your beating a dead horse.... i advised to check ONE time. ONE TIME and if its not out in a crazy range that your ok in soil for the most part. now if you do that and see something wrong then you need to evaluate your situation but as a generality i think the vast majority of people that have water in the range i quoted will be fine in soil ONLY. i never once asked someone to blindly follow my advice. and yes your nitpicking to the point that its ridiculous. i said most not all so please just stop beating a dead horse. there is no reason for people with autos to worry that the ph shift is crazy once nutes are added as you should not be feeding full on anyway compared to the vast majority of photo grows. its not like im not talking from experience. ive helped a LOT of people look into there setup and ph in soil hasnt been an issue with most growers but the amount of nutrients they use.

 

[BigBuddha]

When one of you comes along and is shocked by the tapwater of others.. it makes me feel inadequate because mine's even worse!!

 

[BigBuddha]

your beating a dead horse.... i advised to check ONE time. ONE TIME and if its not out in a crazy range that your ok in soil for the most part. now if you do that and see something wrong then you need to evaluate your situation but as a generality i think the vast majority of people that have water in the range i quoted will be fine in soil ONLY. i never once asked someone to blindly follow my advice. and yes your nitpicking to the point that its ridiculous. i said most not all so please just stop beating a dead horse. there is no reason for people with autos to worry that the ph shift is crazy once nutes are added as you should not be feeding full on anyway compared to the vast majority of photo grows. its not like im not talking from experience. ive helped a LOT of people look into there setup and ph in soil hasnt been an issue with most growers but the amount of nutrients they use.

Dude.. you can't change the goalpoats halfway through a discussion. It's universally accepted as an unfair debating tactic.

If you start adding all sorts of other qualifications into your original statement five posts later, you can't then use them to say that I'm beating a dead horse when I'm still replying to the first post.

Fact is.. your first post was clearly saying that if XYZ conditions are met, ph adjustment is unnecessary. That's what you said and that's what myself and one or two others have challenged because it's misleading at best, and is easily shown to be so, regardless of your personal experiences. So far, you haven't amended that statement other than to try and substantiate it with additional qualifications. So, I think it's fair for others to keep challenging it if you keep defending it, especially if it's scientifically incorrect or incomplete advice.

You can't have your original claim be shown to be wrong, and then later on when defending it, pull out the hat four or five other conditions that also have to met for your original statement to hold water.. and even if those conditions are all met, it still doesn't address the compete list of relevant ph antagonists.

Sorry.. but if you maintain that most combos are ok without making it very clear to your readers (new growers in particular) that not ALL combos are ok - so there needs to be adjustment in some grows - then you're effectively taking risks with someone else's grow who doesn't understand all the other factors that an experienced grower may.


You can do whatever you like in your own grow.. that's a given.. and you can tell me I'm wrong and show me how if I am.. but, with the greatest of respect for you as a human being, if you keep trying to piss in my pocket and tell me it's raining, I'll keep calling the spade a spade.

 

[boomer petway]

:thread:i have had a couple of grows nearly ruined over not ph'ing properly. my tap water is around 7.6 - 7.8 after standing for 24 hours. i have to adjust differently for veg and bloom nutes ,molasses,epsom salts etc. i also have to take into account fresh soil being used for every grow , what i mean is for example , i have a plant 4 weeks old and i f i water at 6.2 then the runoff is about 5.7 but my flowering plants, at 6 weeks , i can achieve the same run off as what i watered with. this is only possible for me because i monitored the ph and adjusted the ph as neccessary as the grow progressed. how do you account for swings unless you monitor regulary?
having said that.... there are 3 grow shops near me and i like to use them all. one of them recently told me that they no longer sell ph meters ??? they dont think they are neccessary at all??? needless to say i have decide not to take their advice on anything anymore and will not be giving them my business

 

[TshirtNinja]

i was giving reasons why im right.... with how autos are feed and the starting ph of NORMAL tap water your gonna be fine in soil for the most part. if someone cant honestly read a plant then they didnt research enough before even starting to grow. your trying to act like ive told new people "oh guys throw caution to the wind and just water with whatever you have on hand" which is nowhere near what i advised.
here is the first statement i gave.

i feel you.... if your in soil ph isnt as big a deal as hydro at all. i use blue lab ph pens and its the best bang for your buck.

and honestly the swing that is able to be tollerated and still produce top notch cannabis is a lot larger with soil then hydro.

here is my second statement.

with normal tap water and not using a whole bottle of nutrients your ph swing in soil isnt enough to warrant ph'ing unless your just anal and trying to dial in the best possible grow. the difference in yield will be minimal. i tried both ways and didn't see much of a difference. if its on a large scale its worth doing IMO, and from experience its around 2% difference yield. im not suggesting anyone just do this until you check your starting water ph at least one time.

i did not give a normal range in ph for tap water which i regreted after posting but i mention here to check your starting water. sorry i forgot to give the range.....

this is why i said normal tap water..... thats why i said to check it once first..... i specifically said to CHECK IT. but once you do and find out you have NORMAL TAP WATER (ph 7.3-6.7) then your going to be ok. i never said Hey everyone just throw whatever in your soil. you put words in my mouth. also soil with the proper bacteria can self adjust pretty well most of the time. to those using soiless medium and hydro you NEED to ph every time. but honestly a soil mix that isnt just garbage can tolerate the ph difference and buffer it to the plant. i would never suggest to just put 5ph water or 9ph water on your plants but again if your tap water is NORMAL then you dont have an issue. and andy idk what nutes you use but that ph drop doesnt sound good at all. some hot nutes you got there fella

here i re suggest that users of soiless and hydro need to take a lot more care of ph range again which is the consistent argument im having.

i still stand by my statement that with NORMAL tap water your good. i gave the advice to ph your water one time to make sure your water is normal. with proper nutrients the ph shift should still be in range unless your loading up on way too many suppliments. i use a broad stroke because most water/nutrient combos will be fine still in soil that isnt some sort of miracle grow or home depot special.

still pointing out that with most normal suppliment use that these combos should be fine..... i also redefine that using off the shelf soil instead of proper soil is a bad idea and honestly again if your using this stuff you didnt research enough that ph would not be on that growers mind.
im not wishy washy with my advice. i simply neglected to give the proper ph range of NORMAL TAP WATER. again i stand by my statement that NORMAL TAP WATER is fine if you simply check the ph one time and dont overload on nutrients. soil CAN and WILL cleet the ph level at the root level and will still work just fine for the most part for a newbie. checking ph religiously and getting into advanced suppliments besides basic nutrients is not something i advise a new comer to even deal with. learn how to read a plant first and then you can start to get better yields. but i honestly see no point in someone spending 100+ dollars on a ph reader when they need to simply evaluate the water source and go from there.

 

[Eschatos]

I don't trust my tap water a bit. One day it's running cloudy, the next tastes "numb", most of the days is not bad. I don't drink it. I believe it's because it's coming from the sea.