Grandma's Molasses question... Foamy Res.

[Rastafarian]

I'm run'n the ebb n gro bucket system and im in the last few weeks of flowering. I've read alot about Molasses and the good things it brings. Well I picked up some grandmas molasses and added it to my res 1 tsp per gallon and now after a day the top of my res is really really foamy. Looks like some bacteria is feed'n off of it or something. Is this normal?

 

[eLiguL]

The molasses feeds bacteria, good or bad, keep an eye on the color of your roots.

 

[Rastafarian]

Its hard to tell about the roots, im using floralicious which turns them a funky brown color already. I guess ill just keep an eye on the plants and see if they start to decline in health at all.

 

[SvenB]

I thought you weren't supposed to use molasses in a hydro setup.?

 

[Rastafarian]

You can use it in pritty much any system besides aeroponics... The sugar gums up the spray nozzles. But one other thing im noticing that i dont like is that my PH is rising about 4 points a day now that ive added the molasses. Before I started using it the ph stayed right where i wanted it and would only fluxuate about 1 point in between res changes. I think i might just scratch the molasses next res change.

 

[Murphy]

NO MOLASSES IN HYDRO

Molasses are for soil only. You will gum up your hydro system and fuk your plants up. Drain it, clean it and just them with water, nothing else.

 

[bobblehead]

yeah, leave it out. It's only good for non recirculating coco and dirt.
The bacteria should be plenty happy in a properly functioning hydro system anyway.

 

[rule35sub1]

I have a bio bucket system, I feed molasses to my bacteria colony every grow. The foam is from a population explosion of bacteria. I use it every grow to help jump start the colonization, once is enough per grow. If you go back and look at my threads, you will see there is no harm in using it.

 

[Rastafarian]

lol, thanks man. I knew that I had read other people using it in hydro systems. I had a feeling it was just the good bacteria feed'n on it. Foam has gone down alot since then but I was wondering about the ph rising. Does that happen to you at all?

 

[rule35sub1]

I don't measure ph, I have been growing the same for many years and have everything dialed in, sorry.

 

[Rastafarian]

Got ya, wish i had the confidence to just toss my ph meter... This is my 2nd grow with hydro so ive still gotta figure out a thing or two. I seemed to do better in soil for some reason. My plants grow like crazy vegging, they look perfect and compact. The second i switch to flowering they stretch all over the place and become hugh bushes. Takes over my whole grow space... Im defenetly a noob when it comes to hydro. The frostiness isnt nearly as good as it was in soil either. Any tips on get'n em nice and frosty?

 

[rule35sub1]

In hydro, I definately veg for less time. I also trim my plants so I basicaly have 6 to 8 main branches with one big nug on the end of the branch. I use Sensi One part, Big Bud and Overdrive, my plants get nice and frosty. I know that you can do some foliar feeding to get them frostier, do some searching on here.

 

[Rastafarian]

thanks for your help dude, much appreciated. Imma look into foliar feeding my babies... I'll test it on a few plants and see how they react. What do you think about foliar feeding late into flowering?

 

[eLiguL]

Foliar feeding late into flower = mold

Going from soil to hydro or from hydro to soil is like any other thing in life, its gonna hard in the beginning but it gets easier along the way.

I have used Molasses in DWC and have seen this foam you speak of. I just manually scooped it out as much as I could and like you have reported the foam just slowly went away by itself.

 

[Rastafarian]

Thanks for the info man, yeah soil seemed to do better for me. But i love how hydro is so easy to maintain. Watering 18+ plants was a big pain in the ass late in flowering when i had to do it once every 2 days. Now i can change my 55 gallon rez and pritty much leave it alone for a week, all i do is top with plain water and check PPM and PH. Im sure once i start flowering these things earlier i'll start having better results. They just grow so fast i think they've become root bound in the 2 gallon buckets their in. One of the plants is 5 feet tall and had to bend it over with a rope tied to a brick... LOL. Oh well, im sure ill get alittle over 2 pounds this grow and next time ill try to keep them alot shorter.

 

[BOOSTEDseven]

from my experience...

USE FULL STRENGTH NUTES with 3part GH Flora series.

i had issues.. with my soil plants were out growing my hydro, and during flower.
not FLOWERING as vigoriously as soil.

I realized.. slowly raising my NUTES.. not only caused PH to fluctuate alot, and
growth slow.

I WENT FULL STRENGTH.. from Rooted CLONES/SEEDLINGS in VEG and
straight FULL strength in Flower....

Now my hydro ebbflow trays are doing what i imagined to do..

many will flame me about going full strength from clone/seedlings from start to finish.
about burn and etc etc etc.. but as they say

PROOF is in the pudding. Right now:
I got twenty 1 week old clones in VEG trays at 1200 PPM
with rock solid PH. and Same in FLOWER. if you mix 1-2-3 or 3-2-1 teaspoons per
gallon.. You should be at 1200 ppm with RO water PH5.5.

and couple of grows under my belt.

Reading LUCAS thread at cannibus world, really opened my eyes.. Worth the read.
With Hydro.. there ins't build up like in SOIL, which effects PPM and PH over time.
No such issues with hydro.

IMO: I think PH fluctuations from low level nutes with ph buffers are more detrimental
to the plants than over feeding.. in a EBB/FLOW table..

GOODLUCK