Ppm going up over time?? DWC with Hydroton, AN Advanced Nutrients

[snowkitty]

I am running a 14 bucket recirculating DWC system with Hydroton as a growing medium. I have airstones in the bottom of buckets in Rubbermaids hooked up to an upper/lower reservoir combo with a float valve. My upper reservoir is 15 gallons of pH’ed RO water and my lower one is 20 gallons of my nutrient solution.

I’m trying to set my nutrient solution to 800 ppm but it is going up about 100 a day. Today is Day 3 and we’re at 1100 ppm.

I’ve only got 5 plants drinking the water and they are all weeks old so I don’t think they are drinking up either water or nutrients at an exorbitant rate…it’s a big system that is less than 1/3 full…so a lot of water in the lines in addition to my reservoir with float value. Only 5 of the airstones are running right now.

At first, I thought it might be my ppm meter, which is a Nutra Dip Tri Meter. It reads in increments of 10 ppm (you multiply the reading on the face x10). I calibrated it with 1500 ppm solution according to the manufacturer directions. I keep checking it in the 1500 ppm solution and it is spot on. I also check it against distilled water from Wallyword (20 ppm). My household tap water reads at 300 ppm. I just set up a RO system in my house and that water reads at 80 ppm (I expected it to be closer to 5-10 ppm so this one makes me suspicious).

I want to switch to lava rock from Hydroton because of the sediment that comes off the clay pellets. I've always washed the Hydroton well to get as much sediment off as possible but I still find it in the bottom of the Rubbermaids. I can’t change these plants since they are happily rooted as of now…and should the Hydroton cause this many problems, anyway??

Nutrients are Sensi A/B, Barricade, Zone, Hygrozome, Voodoo Juice, Mother Earth Tea, B-52, Scorpion Juice, Nutriboost, humic acid, fulvic acid.

I’ve got an in-line water chiller hooked up to my system. We’ve spent the last two weeks flushing the system out with household water, re-filling it with RO water, and re-mixing the nutrient solution.

…and then scrambling when the ppm fluctuates wildly yet again and we can’t figure out if it is the meter or our water or our additives or ?????

 

[Hydro-Soil]

I want to switch to lava rock from Hydroton because of the sediment that comes off the clay pellets. I've always washed the Hydroton well to get as much sediment off as possible but I still find it in the bottom of the Rubbermaids.

If anything, lavarock is worse. Due to the extremely fragile sharp edges, any and all movement creates more rock dust. You'll always have sediment in the bottom of the res.

BTW, the aforementioned sharp edges also shred root systems if you move a bucket/container that has roots throughout lavarock and the rock shifts.

Lavarock is great stuff but it's messy and (like nitromethane/fertilizer explosives) you don't want to disturb it once you've got it set up.

 

[snowkitty]

If anything, lavarock is worse. Due to the extremely fragile sharp edges, any and all movement creates more rock dust. You'll always have sediment in the bottom of the res.

BTW, the aforementioned sharp edges also shred root systems if you move a bucket/container that has roots throughout lavarock and the rock shifts.

Hydro-Soil...thanks for the quick reply! The reason I am going to lavarock is that I am doing a modified Krusty Bucket System (KBS). I say modified because I got the setup from someone else and now I am doing research to figure out how to get it back to Krusty's principles. I've got the stress free environment/sealed room/co2/air conditioning/vertical unshaded light stuff going on but I'm planning to modify my buckets to use Krusty's design. Right now I have the Rubbermaid /5 gallon paint bucket/net pot set-up and I want to go to extreme NFT in Krusty's bucket design.

He calls for 2-3 inch lavarocks and nothing else. The lava rocks must be big to support his trees. I remember sharp edges being mentioned in some of the posts I read. One of the other things we just figured out is that we're moving the plants from the veg room to the flower room in this current set-up and that's probably stressing the plants out. Looks like krusty left them in the same place for the entire cycle, which is what I plan to do next time. Based on your comments about lava rocks tearing the roots I DEFINITELY want to leave them in the same place. Thank you for the information!

 

[Marick23]

I've read in several places that too rich of a co2 enviroment can raise your ppm. I am in no way shape or form the one to ask but you might look into it.

 

[snowkitty]

So it is a few hours later and of course I'm still running around testing everything. The pH of my household water is 7.1 and after it goes through my RO system it is 8.0. Is that normal?

So, my upper passive reservoir does not have just my "plain" RO water (plain = 80 ppm) because of the high pH. I was pHing the water before putting it in the upper reservoir. Now I am realizing that using pH down equals adding ppm, so that could be the source of my mysterious ppm rise. So now I am confused...

Should my upper reservoir be adding RO water given that it has a pH of 8.0? How will doing that affect my overall reservoir pH? Is there something I need to be doing to my RO water or tracking down in how my Hydrologic operates?

 

[Indecent]

Is your PH dropping? The general rule is the plant is overfed if the ppm increases and ph drops. If underfed, ppm drops and ph increases. If stable, ppm stays the same and ph slowly rises.

 

[ogatec]

I’m trying to set my nutrient solution to 800 ppm but it is going up about 100 a day. Today is Day 3 and we’re at 1100 ppm.

I’ve only got 5 plants drinking the water and they are all weeks old so I don’t think they are drinking up either water or nutrients at an exorbitant rate…it’s a big system that is less than 1/3 full…so a lot of water in the lines in addition to my reservoir with float value. Only 5 of the airstones are running right now.

At first, I thought it might be my ppm meter, which is a Nutra Dip Tri Meter. It reads in increments of 10 ppm (you multiply the reading on the face x10). I calibrated it with 1500 ppm solution according to the manufacturer directions. I keep checking it in the 1500 ppm solution and it is spot on. I also check it against distilled water from Wallyword (20 ppm). My household tap water reads at 300 ppm. I just set up a RO system in my house and that water reads at 80 ppm (I expected it to be closer to 5-10 ppm so this one makes me suspicious).

I want to switch to lava rock from Hydroton because of the sediment that comes off the clay pellets. I've always washed the Hydroton well to get as much sediment off as possible but I still find it in the bottom of the Rubbermaids. I can’t change these plants since they are happily rooted as of now…and should the Hydroton cause this many problems, anyway??

Nutrients are Sensi A/B, Barricade, Zone, Hygrozome, Voodoo Juice, Mother Earth Tea, B-52, Scorpion Juice, Nutriboost, humic acid, fulvic acid.

I’ve got an in-line water chiller hooked up to my system. We’ve spent the last two weeks flushing the system out with household water, re-filling it with RO water, and re-mixing the nutrient solution.

…and then scrambling when the ppm fluctuates wildly yet again and we can’t figure out if it is the meter or our water or our additives or ?????

PPM going up 100 ppm per day is completley normal. i think you are underestimating what large plants can do..large krusty style plants can suck down 5 gallons of h20 per day per plant!!!! so as they suck down the water they might not use as much fertilizer so the ppm goes up.

additives will definitley screw with your ppm/ph so its best to get everything in the system stabilized b4 checking the paramters.

growing larger scale is a daily chore so u should get used to messing with the parameters atleast 1x per day. for me its wake up, check ppm, add water to target ppm, check ph, adjust ph..in that order. the numbers will NEVER be on target, daily adjustment is always necisary..

the answer to this problem is a larer rezivior for your system, 200-300 gallon rez, u prob would only have to adjust 1x per week! lol


edit- man that RO water should be allot lower than 80 ppm, i had to run mine for a couple of hours b4 my ppm stabilized (5-10ppm). if it doesnt go lower then somthing is wrong.

 

[ogatec]

dont do lava rock, itll just creat more problems for u.

 

[snowkitty]

Is your PH dropping? The general rule is the plant is overfed if the ppm increases and ph drops. If underfed, ppm drops and ph increases. If stable, ppm stays the same and ph slowly rises.

Actually, my pH is rising with time, too...

I am starting to think that my RO water = 8.0 pH and 80 ppm is not acceptable. My ultra scientific theory at this point is that there's something in there causing the non-neutral pH and the ppm reading. That mysterious item interacts with something else I'm adding to the reservoir (nutes/additives) when I oxygenate my water. Oxygen + mysterious ppm left in my tap water + nutrients = chemical reaction I can't control or figure out...

I'm going to add a pre-filter to my RO unit. I have the Hydrologic Stealth 200 so I'm going to purchase their pre-filter for sediment and chlorine and see if I get better results with my RO water. Then maybe I can eliminate this unknown variable running around in my tap water...

 

[snowkitty]

additives will definitley screw with your ppm/ph so its best to get everything in the system stabilized b4 checking the paramters.

growing larger scale is a daily chore so u should get used to messing with the parameters atleast 1x per day. for me its wake up, check ppm, add water to target ppm, check ph, adjust ph..in that order. the numbers will NEVER be on target, daily adjustment is always necisary..

edit- man that RO water should be allot lower than 80 ppm, i had to run mine for a couple of hours b4 my ppm stabilized (5-10ppm). if it doesnt go lower then somthing is wrong.

ogatec, thanks for sharing your routine. I've been reading a lot about reservoir management. I have the upper reservoir and float value to continuously add water, which is why I thought that the ppm rise wasn't coming from plants consuming water and leaving behind a higher concentration of nutrients in my reservoir.

But like you said, that RO water isn't right...and I've finally accepted that. So I think my upper reservoir is adding a major unknown to my whole system since I am using 80 ppm water instead of something 10 ppm or lower.

Looks like I have some more research to do on lava rock. Krusty growers all swear by it but I need to learn about the drawbacks. Are you saying that lava rock will have as many sediment/pH fluctuation issues as Hydroton? Or are there new concerns (other than the sharpness) that I need to start learning about?

 

[gdup]

I use straight tap water which here is 7.5 ph and 95 ppm and never have any problems. Ph will always climb, usually for me it climbs high quickly during the first couple days after reservoir change. What kind of ph down are you using? I've used the botanicaire ph down and it adds tons of ppms and takes alot to bring it down but the GH ph down works great and brings it down quickly while adding minimal ppms. By the way I'm using hydroton and once I have it locked in I have very little ph fluctuation. I often don't have to add ph down for a couple days. Are you in Day 3 veg? Cause the rocks will wash off alot of crap and shit into your reservoir and that is probably why your ppms have gone up. You will probably see things stabilize after a reservoir change. Not sure about the lava rocks, but no matter how much I rinse off the new hydroton, it always washes shit into my reservoir the first week or so.

 

[ogatec]

ogatec, thanks for sharing your routine. I've been reading a lot about reservoir management. I have the upper reservoir and float value to continuously add water, which is why I thought that the ppm rise wasn't coming from plants consuming water and leaving behind a higher concentration of nutrients in my reservoir.

But like you said, that RO water isn't right...and I've finally accepted that. So I think my upper reservoir is adding a major unknown to my whole system since I am using 80 ppm water instead of something 10 ppm or lower.

Looks like I have some more research to do on lava rock. Krusty growers all swear by it but I need to learn about the drawbacks. Are you saying that lava rock will have as many sediment/pH fluctuation issues as Hydroton? Or are there new concerns (other than the sharpness) that I need to start learning about?

i cant really help you out with krusty systems or float valves, i dont have any experience with that but, the ro unit is a different story...


run that thing overnight to a drain. if the water coming out in the morning isn't 5-15 ppm then u need to send that unit back for being defective. no since in paying for the best & not having it work! 80ppm is not "working" check all connections & stuff..

i do remember having to flush mine for a while b4 my ppm settled, but after 8-12hrs of use ppm should be below 15 for sure


hydroton is custom made for growing, its just an all around better media than lava rock.. krusty prob liked lava rock cause its cheap, it works, and u dont have to go to the grow shop to get it...next time u should do a grow with 1/2 the pots lava & 1/2 hydroton to see what u like...its not going to make a big difference either way..

 

[snowkitty]

It took a second opinion from you, ogatec, but my partner was telling me the same thing...that 80 ppm was not acceptable...and I'm getting it sorted out with the retailer and manufacturer. That was sound advice indeed...and the manufacturer agrees that it should be in the 10 ppm max range.

 

[ogatec]

just make sure & flush it for 8-12 hrs CONTINUOUSLY b4 calling it defective. i had to flush mine overnight before my ppms fell to that level. i think the carbon filter puts off ppms or something until its completely flushed out....

after 12hrs of flush, if its still above 15ppm then yes its time to send it back....