Noobin up a PPK

[DaveTheNewbie]

if i can stretch it wide enough so that im only running 1 plant per side ill be a happy lad. Im running things longer in my preveg so that they are going into the vegger much readier this time round. Im happy to loose a few grams to keep numbers down.

But really im just curious as to how this is all going to pan out, its something new and different, and that really looks like a indica now rather than a stretched out stick insect.

Its still hot and dry round these parts, but the nights are cooling off, so at lease she has a chance as a reasonable temp for a change.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

i just checked the EC/PPM in the res as i moved the whole shebang to the flower tent.
The EC has risen from 1.2 to 2.0
The PH has dropped from 6.0 to 5.4
Im totally unsuprised by this, its what i expected to happen with recirc coco.
I wonder what will happen in another 8 weeks time as this swing keeps going?

 

[delta9nxs]

i just checked the EC/PPM in the res as i moved the whole shebang to the flower tent.
The EC has risen from 1.2 to 2.0
The PH has dropped from 6.0 to 5.4
Im totally unsuprised by this, its what i expected to happen with recirc coco.
I wonder what will happen in another 8 weeks time as this swing keeps going?

hey, dave, i wouldn't touch the solution at those numbers. at the end of week 2 beginning of week 3 in flower the whole solution will change character.

wait for that before making any decisions.

 

[DHF]

hey, dave, i wouldn't touch the solution at those numbers. at the end of week 2 beginning of week 3 in flower the whole solution will change character.

wait for that before making any decisions.

D9 Bro.....what`s your take on EC/PPM`s risin and PH droppin in Dave`s single PPK thingy.......

Reason being , that every bone in my body`s screamin "rule # 1" with any and every recirculating hydro setup there ever was , in that as the plants eat...ec/ppm`s drop and ph rises....gradually......and.....

If ec/ppm`s soar and ph drops after an up in feed ppm`s , it`s always meant IME that the plants weren`t eating , but rather drinking water and storing nutes that caused the drop in ph levels that I witnessed for many yrs with shovin excess juice up my Krusty bucket plants......and I also know that @ 1000 ppm`s and 5.4 PH all is not lost as far as parameters for the plants to still grow in , and also.....

I understand completely about you suggesting Dave up his juice to get rid of the impending interveinal chorosis/mag deficiency so inherent in coco setups from the CEC/hoarding of Cal/Mag to a certain level until released back to the plants for consumption.....and again....

Dave`s postin that the yellowing went away and all was good in the hood with the 1.5 ec/750 ppm`s uppage till now.....I guess what I`m tryin ta get at is....

Have you seen this and sprung back from it and that`s why you`re tellin Dave ta hang tough till shit changes next week , and if so......

Enquirin minds gotta know......I defer to your experience on said system/setup , so please teach an old dawg some new tricks my buddy.......Thanks and....

Peace....Freds...........

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

im going to ride this pony all the way. lots of people out there are making good doogs with recirc coco. I just dont trust it because this is always what happens. I figure that the others never checked thier runoff / output water and only checked what they were putting into the pot.

Im far from the first / only person to experience this with recirc coco, its why everyone says to go DTW instead.

And like the fredster said, i would love to hear more about making it work. If i can just ignore it and everything will fix itself up then i will be both suprised and happy.

very suprised and very happy.

I guess worst case scenario is that i throw away the res water and start again every 4 weeks or so, hardly the end of the world. Just a PITA if i was growing on a larger scale.

 

[FlowerFarmer]

I'm unsure of what D9 is referring to, and he is by all means the expect with way more experience then I.

But if you start getting too high above 2.0 EC I'd dilute down and see where you're numbers travel from there.

Always thought if EC is climbing rapidly that the plant is consuming more water then nutes.. leaving you with a more and more concentrated solution - and ultimately lockout/burn. By topping/diluting with RO you can then bring that EC down, bring your pH slightly back up... and the cycle continues... doing so with a target EC of around 1.8 to 2.0 in mind. (at least in full hydro/hydroton...less in coco)

Can you clarify D9?
How does the character of the uptake change ~mid bloom. Are you saying that he'll see a reversal and the plants will start sucking down the nutes to bring his EC down without having to dilute down the system?


It's been a while but I thought when running ebb buckets right around mid bloom i'd see a change in the plants and my pH would start plummeting (as if uptake was slowed). It'd wreck the plants if strength wasn't diluted to bring the pH back up until the equilibrium was found again.




Interested in hearing more about this. I thought the idea was to weaken or strength the "bulk res" water to keep the "pulse" res in line with our target EC.. be it 1.2 EC or 2.0 EC.

 

[DHF]

I'm unsure of what D9 is referring to, and he is by all means the expect with way more experience then I.

But if you start getting too high above 2.0 EC I'd dilute down and see where you're numbers travel from there.

Always thought if EC is climbing rapidly that the plant is consuming more water then nutes.. leaving you with a more and more concentrated solution - and ultimately lockout/burn. By topping/diluting with RO you can then bring that EC down, bring your pH slightly back up... and the cycle continues... doing so with a target EC of around 1.8 to 2.0 in mind. (at least in full hydro/hydroton...less in coco)

Can you clarify D9?
How does the character of the uptake change ~mid bloom. Are you saying that he'll see a reversal and the plants will start sucking down the nutes to bring his EC down without having to dilute down the system?


It's been a while but I thought when running ebb buckets right around mid bloom i'd see a change in the plants and my pH would start plummeting (as if uptake was slowed). It'd wreck the plants if strength wasn't diluted to bring the pH back up until the equilibrium was found again.




Interested in hearing more about this. I thought the idea was to weaken or strength the "bulk res" water to keep the "pulse" res in line with our target EC.. be it 1.2 EC or 2.0 EC.

I thought it might be cuz Dave`s got a single isolated container not daisy chained to other plants/containers FF , and that`s why I was waitin for D9 to explain what you and I`ve noticed with normal fast hydro setups....

I`ll be over here on my bucket waitin for the DR to illuminate us.....

Peace.....Freds..........

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

Im far from the first / only person to experience this with recirc coco, its why everyone says to go DTW instead.

DTW keeps moving the shit out of the media.

PPKs move the shit out of the media. (Limited accumulation do to relatively stable humidity profile (no dry-out phase for salts to come out of solution combined with regular 'flushing' to move unused minerals back into system solution.)

PPKs are like DTW.

If you had just straight pure water and ran it through (no plant yet), the only thing in 'solution' would be the leachates from the coco. But you rinsed your shit, right?

If you ran feed solution through the coco (no plant yet), it would eventually stabalize once the cation exchange capacity was at full capacity. You charged your shit, right?

Now, once you add a plant, it gets a little more complicated in reality, but we can mostly ignore this for this conversation.

The question we have to ask is why is my pH dropping and my EC climbing? There is something in the water that is causing this. Okay... is it a probem?

If you are feeding a 'useful' feed, then you could keep adding back 'pure' water and the EC would eventually fall to 0 as the plant metabolized all the shit there was to metabolize. If you're adding shit that the plant will never use, eventually the EC will increase. How this effects the pH is related to the particular chemical composition of the shit the plant will never use.

If you have a bulk tank at a certain EC, and you want your system EC to change... change your addback bulk EC. So if you think the system EC is too high (don't worry, it isn't) change your bulk feed EC down. Transpiration radically effects feed rate and transpiration is radically effected by environmental conditions... so there's a lot going on in the world. That's why you use fancy meters and shit. To understand the consequences.

If you're only feeding on food for the whole of the plants life, and if--as we believe--the nutrient demands change over life, the shit the plant isn't eating will change over time in the system.

When the system pushes outside your guidelines, change it out. With only one cell, that's almost no cost.

That's enough of that.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

Hey IF, thanks for weighing in. I will have to reread that to fully digest it.

if many people say that recirc coco will always give a +EC and -PH, then i can only assume that it is a function of the coco not being fully inert. I am no super chemist type person and im talking above my comfortable knowledge level here.

i got the impression (pls correct me) that you are of the opinion that IF you flush and charge your coco then it SHOULDNT change EC and PH purely due to the coco medium?

is that correct?

PPKs move the shit out of the media ... PPKs are like DTW

i struggle with this statement. PPKs recirculate the liquids (nutes and water) repeatedly through the medium. They also wick it back up in the other direction. IF HYPOTHETICALLY the medium (of your choice) is leaching something into the liquids then there will be a hugely more noticable difference with any recirculating system than a DTW system.

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

Nope.

If you wash your coco thuroughly, most of the leachates will... well... leach out.

coco not being fully inert

Arguably, it's not fully inert in that there is some slow degradation of material, and arguably, some material might break down over time and change composition and release shit. I do not believe that this is a significant factor in our timelines. Even reusing coco for multiple runs (now we have to acknowledge root decay, etc., and root exudiates relative to systematic chemistry) it generally maintains it's physical characteristics.

If you charge your coco (hit every positive ion with a negative ion, etc.) then your coco will be chemically neutral (relative to your charging agent (in our case, nutes)).

What I'm suggesting is that an imbalanced nutrient regime is being used in the recirculating system relative to the plants needs. This is true of all recirculating systems... not the coco aspect. If the plant feeds harder on N than on P, pH will drop (most P sources lowering pH).

But pH is not some giant in the hills. It a description of the number of Hydrogen ions available in the solution. And every molecule in the solution affects this. Nitrogen sources can be charged positive or negative (I think--I don't really study nutes very hard... ammoniacal (sp?) or nitrate) depending on the molecular structure.

So I'm saying that your pH is dropping and EC rising based not on the fact that it's recirculating coco, but based on the fact that you are adding shit to the system that is systematically increasing EC and dropping pH.

It's like the plant isn't eating pH down, so it accumulates in the system, increasing EC and decreasing pH. (That's not intended to be literal).

Originally Posted by ImaginaryFriend
PPKs move the shit out of the media ... PPKs are like DTW

I struggle with this statement. PPKs recirculate the liquids (nutes and water) repeatedly through the medium. They also wick it back up in the other direction. IF HYPOTHETICALLY the medium (of your choice) is leaching something into the liquids then there will be a hugely more noticable difference with any recirculating system than a DTW system.

It depends on what mechanic you are looking at with regard to DTW.

One of the reasons DTW is effective (relatively idiot proof) is because is picks up shit the plant isn't eating (nute sourced or degrading media) and moves it out of the system. You can feed with any old ratio of food (kinda) and whatever isn't absorbed gets washed down the drain during the next feed. Nothing accumulates.

In that sense, a PPK is like a DTW system, in that nutes are (mostly) kept in solution by eliminating the drying cycle that causes salts to accumulate in media (come out of solution). They move up and down through the wick (trending towards equilibrium) and then get 'flushed' (strongly remixed) with the pulse (depending on your pulse dynamics).

Will that shit stay in solution? Yep. So when it looks like stuff is getting screwy, change out the system. The water savings (and nute savings) are monstrous compared to DTW. And if your inputs aren't totally fucked, the plants seem pretty happy universally as documented in the growing number of PPK grows.

With regard to coco leaching more than other media... well... maybe. There are a variety of grades of coco, and processes of processing coco. Not all cocos are equal. So maybe some cocos break down faster than others. Some come with accumulated salts in them that would blow up your meters. But this shit can (mostly) get rinsed out.

That said, in my understanding this is not the case. I can't substantiate this impression right now, but I understand that the decay/degradation of coco is measured in years/decades, not weeks/months.

 

[hotboxes]

A lot of great info there IF, personally Dave I think you should just add some kind of cal/mg to each feeding till your coco is charged. This is me and I know you said some things aren't accessible for you but I add cal/mg to every feed to me its an incentive. Most of the time I use new Coco but I let it sit in water for a few hours before I drain and squeeze the water out and then charge it with a cal/mg before I use it and even then I add it to every feed.I think it has to be your environment still, I have been running my PPK with straight add backs nothing more nothing less no change outs, but my environment has been spot on with in my parameters. Hope you get it worked out buddy the plant still looks great, the system is working that's a fact now its time to get the rest in tune.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

that really was an epic post IF, and i think i got it. I like the way you answer questions at a level that i can understand but still with a solid reasonable science basis behind them.
I am happy to use new coco every run (even if it is a bit wasteful) and if i have to change out the local res every 4 weeks im sure i can get over that.

The bit about coco degrading over a time period that makes it more or less irrelivant is the real bit of info i was looking for.

Im not anti the PPK in any way, i just have to adjust things to make it work for me in my tent setup. And it sure is growing a lovely plant.

 

[St3ve]

Nice info up in here

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

ok so i was thinking about this some more.
im using maxibloom which is a bloom formula (5-15-14) in veg
so the plant has needs for N, and im feeding it a buttload of P+K
of course its not using it all up.
of course it will use more as flowers form up.

so D9 is very probabally right in that it will sort itself out over time.
the mans a genius.

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

You:

im using maxibloom which is a bloom formula (5-15-14) in veg
so the plant has needs for N, and im feeding it a buttload of P+K

Me:

It's like the plant isn't eating pH down, so it accumulates in the system, increasing EC and decreasing pH. (That's not intended to be literal).

Looks like I was actually being literal by accident, as lots of people use phosphoric acid for pH down. (Jacks balances out at 3-1-4 when mixed demonically.)

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

And P leaches readily. Which is why it's fed so hard during bloom outdoors ('cause most washes away), and why it's such a pollution problem for water systems (feeds crazy blooms in lakes and ponds).

So in a recirculating system they way you're running it, it'll just keep washing out of the media and back into the sub reservoir (driving up EC and driving down pH in the location of your meter.)

 

[Grow4Flow]

So Dave,
Did you go back to Blumats? I looked over your PPK build as i would like to give it a try but could not quite understand this "Small Rez" storm pipe thingy you have gong on. Been reading a lot of posts and my understanding is that bucket sit atop the rez with a top feed, Drain to rez, repeat. Can you elaborate?

Thanks in advance.

Looking forward to joining this next level shit.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

So Dave,
Did you go back to Blumats? I looked over your PPK build as i would like to give it a try but could not quite understand this "Small Rez" storm pipe thingy you have gong on. Been reading a lot of posts and my understanding is that bucket sit atop the rez with a top feed, Drain to rez, repeat. Can you elaborate?

Thanks in advance.

Looking forward to joining this next level shit.

good question.

i started trying to do what everyone else does by having a single control res with float valve and multiple satelite PPK plants.
because the entry points in my tents are too high,i decided to just run the single PPK IN the control res.
therefore i ditched the stormpipe and made the control res the bottom half of the system.
Its the same thing that HotBoxes did when he started by introducing a single PPK into his system.
In the future if i like PPKs (and i strongly do so far) i will go back to the storm pipe and run multiple PPKs at once. This will involve cutting new holes into the tents so that the control res can be put back outside the tent itself.

So your looking at version 1 (the theory) and then version 2 (the reality). As with much of what i do, i fuck things up, learn, fuck things up again, then eventually work something out.

I also have bought 4 blumat maxis to test them out as well.

I hope this answers your questions. The only complaints about PPKs i have heard are around the fact that the damn plants grow so well/fast that it can be overwhelming, and trimming takes forever cause theres so much work to do.

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

The only complaints about PPKs i have heard are around the fact that the damn plants grow so well/fast that it can be overwhelming, and trimming takes forever cause theres so much work to do.

Big problem.

Cannot be overstated.

 

[Grow4Flow]

thanks for the response Dave.

Another question if ya don't mind......
so the water level maintained in the bucket below the media should be 1-2" below the tail piece correct? if this is so how does the media filling the tail piece wick up the nutrient solution to the roots in the upper tray/pan? surely we are not relying solely on the top feed?