doing to much, TDS pen issue's

realhigh

realhigh

New member
At first I had some PH issues, old pen that dried out and took some time getting back. I just kept checking against the drop test and eventually all checked out with wife's new PH pen.

Okay now my TDS meter, the 20 buck one that calibrates with 342 ppm solution, a pain because it is sensitive adjuster.
Basically wife got a new one, it is factory calibrated, so no adjusting it at all or calibration solution.
In the 342ppm solution, it read 356ppm's, and in my week 4 solution it reads 1965ppm's, but my pen will read it at 1465ppm's, this is a huge jump, and yes I just calibrated my pen to make sure that was not an issue.

I am more freaked and wonder what and how strong it all is ( the res solution )
I know that my additives came up near 650 ppm's, and than I went with 25ml per gallon pure bend pro bloom, this should have been near 800ppm's of bloom,so knowing this than I should be near the 1450ppm mark. Only been in the mix for 14 hours so far, and they plants did take up near a gallon of solution, and look okay, guess i just answered my problem and will stick with my old pen and watch the plants for adverse effects from such a strong mix.

Thanks for any input or comment.
 
theres two different ppm - one that is .7 and one is .5

sounds like you just have one of each

25 ml of pbp sounds like a lot
 
Yes I do agree all came up higher than I wanted, but I did want to push higher on the base nutrients (pbp bloom) no real bloom additives unless one calls LK that.

Not the best mix, ph was 6.1 when it stared, dropped to 5.4, 12 hours later at 4.9, yet the plants did not look so bad. I will cycle a few gallons every 12 hours, take two out and put 2 gallons of straight water back in, until I get TDS back in range or a stable PH going.

Thanks for stopping by Rollin J............
 
i bought a pen years ago and never used it. to me, just another thing to complicate the uncomplicated ;)
 
Well it is a tool, can be a pain in the butt, but also can help one figure things out a bit faster.
I know with organics you can push a higher TDS, with a full spectrum LED and a set up grow room, most will find the plant will require more nutrients, process more so I have read. Now I may have pushed to hard as I see a bit of leaf tip burn, but not all leaf, and there is some weird shit with the PH droppind down to high 4's, it is like the plants are just feeding on the PH upper, as I put it in, and in 12 hours time it is gone along with almost a gallon of water.

So many issues, yes I do remember why I like my container mix and just had watered and fed as needed. I am not sure if I can convert this system that way, maybe a drain to waste type set up, put a lower raised base with screen so fluids can drain down thru medium and than out the drain tube. This would keep the medium and roots from clogging up the drain tube. I will have to think this out, at least for summer heat. In winter time the hydro with a heater helps keep all warm.
 
Screw the TDS pen issue's, they are just a tool I use to confirm things. What really has me is this damn PH dropping, like bottomed out on me, and does not come up much at all with PH upper, not like I would think it should. Just has me running in circles, guess just drain it out, and start over with just simple shit.
 
is your ph dropping overnight? or do you mean just when you add your nutes?

are you using RO? with pbp it drops my ph very low especially with a strong mix - I use half ro and half well water and that seems to help

edit: you adding cal mag to the res first?
 
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I do mix all up in a separate container so it can set a day or two before doing the res change.

I mix Hydro guard first, cal-mag, epsom salt,LK, and than PBP into the water. I like to have all figured out so that I put my PH upper or downer in first, than do the above list.
This new batch I had to wait on "sweet raw" amino acids until Monday, after adding that I will set my ph if needed.

Yes, PBP bloom decrease the PH, and I agree the more you add the harder it is to get ph back up, but that is why adding PH upper first is a plus as it buffer's PBP more and you wind up using less PH upper, but if the plants with take up the ph upper, res PH bottoms out fast and hard.

Okay city water sucks bad, so I have to use my old RO 6 stage filter, so it give me water with a ph of 6.5 to 6.7 and a TDS of 75 to 79 ppm's.
City water has a level of arsenic to it, do not think a RO unit removes it ????????
I think I need to look at 70 day cycle on this strain, so we are getting close to half way mark.

Any thoughts ? Oh lately this last week I have used some Glacier bottled water to top of res with looking for some PH buffering.

Does bat guano go bad????????? I have some that is 0-6-0, all P that is over 10 years old, says to promote flowering, and is week 5 late in the game for it ??????
 
ro should remove arsenic - gauno shouldnt go bad per say but I know the makeup of it changes as it ages - If i remember right fresher gauno has more nitrogen and the aged stuff is for flowering - not too late at all

I can get my ph usually right where I want it just by using tap and ro - but then again I am not on city water - but yeah I was seeing the ph drop to about 4 when I used pure ro on a strong mix
 
Some things do have a self life and some even state it on the bottle, but there is nothing on the guano about it being bad, or anything other than a line about storage which I followed. Looked okay, a bit left in the cup so I mixed up with water and fed to the flower outside, see if they die or flower nicely.

Guess I need to get a new unit or all new filters for my old unit. My neglect is costing me now I think.
 
The Tower of power looked great the last time I saw it. i remembered one ingredient I forgot to put on the list...Carboload.:puffpuffpass:
 
Yes, I do like the AN line up, or the old one when I used them as I had nice results once I cut down to half of what their grow/mixing chart side.
But that was a costly line of fertz to run, and when I lost all my supply, well I knew I would not use the again, my budget just has no room for it.

Do think I will get their PH upper as it was the best I ever used with many different brands of nutrients.

Okay I did drain out 4 gallons of res, replaced with 4 gallons RO water, got TDS down and PH up some, this AM PH was just a point lower than last nights, so topped off with some chilled bottled water, ph went up a little as I needed, so at least the girls are starting to get a break from the ph swing and high TDS I ran.

Now I need to get Week 5 figured out as I do not want to high of a TDS, but all needs to be there nutrient wise.

Now the guano took down the ph, and it's npk is 0-2-0 with some calcium %. I need to do some math conversion and figure out ppm's for each element, than total them all up and see what I truely am feeding these girls and how much, but the key will be the source water, so need to tend to the RO unit if I want to eliminate it as an issue.

Thanks for chatting with me about this RJ and BL.
 
As it seems to go, another issue to solve. I just purchased some Botnicare Sweet Raw as it is suppose to have 20 amino acids and some carbohydrates etc....
Now when I got the bottle, it only list a percentage for Mg at 1.5% and Sulfur at 2.0% and says nothing else other than how good it is and it provides essential elements for the plant.
Anyways waiting for time so I can call and find out the scoop on it .

Bummer part is, my week 5 mix is maxed out at 960ppm's with the bat guano, and just mixing half the label listed amount increases the TDS by 90ppm's and I feel the mix will be to hot.

So I will run the Week 5 as week 6 and actually us Week 5 to get shit right and give a flush/cleaning break over the next few days. If all one gets is smaller buds, well overfeeding and getting them all nasty is not good smoke at all, LOL
So I will do my best and see if I can recover from this and get all figured out and ready for the next run as we finish up the Pineapple Jack.
RO unit issue first, as if I subtract that extra 70's ppm's from the mix, well I would have room for Sweet Raw or a different supplement I wanted to use.
 
See I would not be having issues if I had listened to another from this site. They told me to get the RO filters changed or a new one, and I just put it off thinking I could still make it work for me, NOT...

I mean it is working as I have not killed the plants, but if I know have all that I need to get a balance diet with true 0ppm RO water, well than I should do it, so got a new RO unit ordered, it will work for me while I get new filters and clean up the older unit. Feeling better already.
 
Wow, that was fast as I already got my new R0 system yesterday. I did not like the cloudy discharge I collected during my 3 gallon test. First 3 gallons produced I wanted to check levels on and I also wanted to monitor the discharge volume per gallon of RO water.

All is good, now I will know what is in the water, nothing. Yes on has to put back all macro and micro nutrients, but at least I do know what they are getting and it makes keeping track of the res much easier.
 
What the hell am I doing wrong, or should I ask what is the cause or what is going on.

Okay I mixed up Week 6 nutes on Friday so they could stew for 24 hours, but I did not wait but about 5 hours to adjust ph some, some ph upper is added at the very start to offset some nutrients when added, so it was near 12 hours I had ph of 5.4 and then I decided to put air stone to the solution, should have waited, but no I added a little more ph upper trying to get to my target of 5.8 on ph level.

It was at 5.85 when I added the 12 gallons to res last night, 11 hours later (lights ON) the PH was at 6.9, holy shit! Any one have issue's like this ??????
Oh it took 1 ml ph downer to 1 gallon of mix to get a ph of 6.0, so I added a total of 12 ml's of ph downer to my solution to get down to a ph of 6.0 on all 12 gallons.

So one should just mix all up, truly wait 24 or 48 hours before checking PH, and how many use air during this time, or just a pump to circulate it around, or just let it set and mix by hand every so often if you remember ????????????

Yes I have a seperate tote to mix all up in, than I pump it from the tote into the res after it has been drained, so if I need to give it 48 hours or what ever I can get the schedule going, any thoughts ....... or do I need to use a new line up of nutrients ?

What was the mix ?
30ml Sea Kelp ( offers .13/0/.60 npk and all macro nutrients )
8.5ml PBP Bloom
5ml Cal/mag pro
2ml Hydro guard
8ml Sweet Raw
2ml Fulvic Acid
1.5ml Humic Acid

My target TDS was 800 ppm's and this came to 848ppm's, so not to bad with the calculations or measuring, LOL

Yes, new RO filter is kicking out zero TDS and a ph of 6.9.

Oh, no bat guano in the mix, as the other batch had a bad odor to it, just smelt funky bad and it was made with old RO filter system, so I got rid of it.
 
Aeration will drop u pH my res goes to a 4.5 when mixed in mutes and left for 2 days under aeration.
I then fix with tap water :puffpuffpass:

Good luck brother ...I'm not a hydro guy or I would offer u more help .
:ridinghorse:
 
Damn it, this sucks, it did it again, so now I know to wait at least 36 to 48 hours, okay tha this my next set time.

I mix up all in a tub outside the grow area, than drain res and us pump to refill res.
Now the mix will be very low in PH because of PBP and LK, so I do add some pre calculated ph upper to water first, than the rest of the products.
Now PH was low at first and it will rise over time, like 5.8 on this batch, than I let it set 24 hours, bam the PH slams down to 4.4, so I freak and put in 12ml ph upper to get it at 5.4 before adding it to res, and what the hell the first thing 12 hours later with the plants the ph spikes to 6.8, holly shit, so I added only 2 ml's of ph downer to top off mix to bring it down to 6.5. I am waiting for it to drop down again on it's own as I do not want to add to much downer than a bunch of upper, shit kinda already did that.

OH well they are not getting much bigger, but they are getting frosty and very stinky and tight to the pinch. I have also had a low humidity issue, 16% to a few highs in the 40's, but only a few, average is probably only at 20% humidity, I just need it to be more steady at a higher percentage. Well week 7 has begun.
 
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