Assitance with Coco - Did I break the K:Ca:Mg?

[rme]

Posted this in the infirmary as well... but maybe a helpful response here too!

My TOP leaves ar e turning this way at two different gardens.

Canna Coco 75%, perlite 25%https://www.icmag.com/ic/attachment.php?attachmentid=235763

Run off is good pH and EC

Location A is well water ran through an RO
Location B is city water ra n through an RO

Canna Coco A+B @ 8ml to 10ml per gallon
https://www.icmag.com/ic/attachment.php?attachmentid=235762 GH CaliMagic https://www.icmag.com/ic/attachment.php?attachmentid=235761@ 3.5ml to 5ml per gallon.

The bottom leaves are showing a big of Mg- and some Ca- ... Or does a Ca t oxicity look the same as a deficiency?

Please Advise! I ahttps://www.icmag.com/ic/attachment.php?attachmentid=235600 m thinking about switching to GH 6/9 method... Although I have used Canna for over 2 years without issue. :s

 

[Arthritis_sucks]

1/4 teaspoon per gallon epsom salts from the drug store. Should fixem up from the info you gave.

 

[Snow Crash]

I do not think these problems are completely nutritional.

Just looking at them I see evidence of transpiration stress and leaf temperature excess. Potassium is very important for effective transpiration, but so is having a balanced Vapor Pressure Deficit. Magnesium is important to help regulate leaf temperature and photosynthetically generated energy transmission, but competing cations and light source could be impacting this.

Bottom line, your room looks too hot and too dry for the babes. But... Maybe you foliar'd with some neem, or something "junky" that clogged up the leaf stomata. It's really hard to tell from a distance.

My suggestion to you to reach a solution:

1. Balance your VPD - Try to drop the ambient canopy temperature a few degrees and increase the humidity a few percentage points. Cannabis growers are, sometimes, unnecessarily scared of humidity levels over 50% and if your temps aren't consistently beneath 76f this can become problematic for some genetics.

2. Foliar spray with soft water and a surfactant - RO water is highly reactive with bicarbonates and hard water won't solve the bulidup problem with the stomata. Soft water is less reactive and will act just fine to clear the plants leafs. The surfactant I like to use is Ivory unscented biodegradable dish soap, just 1 drop per liter, this lowers the interfacial tension of the water (makes water "wetter") and improves its ability to dissolve buildup.

3. Increase the light distance - 6 inches further from the top of the canopy can help reduce the photosynthetic stress and leaf temperatures as the plant returns to a safe balance. You don't want to move too far away or reduced lumen levels will actually cause more stress, not less, so just a little bit could be the difference here to help them rebound for 3-5 days.

4. Decrease the use of competing cations - Specifically Calcium. Even the lower end of your feed levels with 8ml of A&B and 3.5ml of CaliMagic you're looking at a minimum of 140ppm of calcium. Maybe in peak veg, maybe, plants need that much Ca. But after a few months of rocking that much of that particular element the cation buffer of the media becomes stacked with Calcium and adding it at a rate suitable to recharge the media when it is already overfull locks out other elements. Namely, Magnesium and Potassium, the elements these plants are struggling with. Given the relatively low ratio of K+ and Mg++ in Canna's formula creating competition for uptake with the calcium could be a contributing factor.

CANNA has formulated their program to accommodate 10ml per gallon of Cannazym 0-2-1 during bloom. This PK change adds another (give or take) 25ppm of P and 25ppm of K, and those little changes go a long way. I strongly recommend that you at least increase your Potassium levels here as per the design by CANNA. Something many gardeners find with Canna is that it lacks necessary magnesium during mid to late bloom and they include Epsom Salts at a rate of 1/8th teaspoon to 1/4 teaspoon (a gram per gallon is perfect for me) to get a better ratio of calcium to magnesium in response to the changing needs of the plant.

Best of Luck!

 

[Arthritis_sucks]

hammer on the nail.....

hammer on the nail.....

I do not think these problems are completely nutritional.

Just looking at them I see evidence of transpiration stress and leaf temperature excess. Potassium is very important for effective transpiration, but so is having a balanced Vapor Pressure Deficit. Magnesium is important to help regulate leaf temperature and photosynthetically generated energy transmission, but competing cations and light source could be impacting this.

Bottom line, your room looks too hot and too dry for the babes. But... Maybe you foliar'd with some neem, or something "junky" that clogged up the leaf stomata. It's really hard to tell from a distance.

My suggestion to you to reach a solution:

1. Balance your VPD - Try to drop the ambient canopy temperature a few degrees and increase the humidity a few percentage points. Cannabis growers are, sometimes, unnecessarily scared of humidity levels over 50% and if your temps aren't consistently beneath 76f this can become problematic for some genetics.

2. Foliar spray with soft water and a surfactant - RO water is highly reactive with bicarbonates and hard water won't solve the bulidup problem with the stomata. Soft water is less reactive and will act just fine to clear the plants leafs. The surfactant I like to use is Ivory unscented biodegradable dish soap, just 1 drop per liter, this lowers the interfacial tension of the water (makes water "wetter") and improves its ability to dissolve buildup.

3. Increase the light distance - 6 inches further from the top of the canopy can help reduce the photosynthetic stress and leaf temperatures as the plant returns to a safe balance. You don't want to move too far away or reduced lumen levels will actually cause more stress, not less, so just a little bit could be the difference here to help them rebound for 3-5 days.

4. Decrease the use of competing cations - Specifically Calcium. Even the lower end of your feed levels with 8ml of A&B and 3.5ml of CaliMagic you're looking at a minimum of 140ppm of calcium. Maybe in peak veg, maybe, plants need that much Ca. But after a few months of rocking that much of that particular element the cation buffer of the media becomes stacked with Calcium and adding it at a rate suitable to recharge the media when it is already overfull locks out other elements. Namely, Magnesium and Potassium, the elements these plants are struggling with. Given the relatively low ratio of K+ and Mg++ in Canna's formula creating competition for uptake with the calcium could be a contributing factor.

CANNA has formulated their program to accommodate 10ml per gallon of Cannazym 0-2-1 during bloom. This PK change adds another (give or take) 25ppm of P and 25ppm of K, and those little changes go a long way. I strongly recommend that you at least increase your Potassium levels here as per the design by CANNA. Something many gardeners find with Canna is that it lacks necessary magnesium during mid to late bloom and they include Epsom Salts at a rate of 1/8th teaspoon to 1/4 teaspoon (a gram per gallon is perfect for me) to get a better ratio of calcium to magnesium in response to the changing needs of the plant.

Best of Luck!

Yupp lol.

 

[rme]

Thanks for all the info!

I'm trying out the GH 6/9 method on a couple tables... I'm getting sick of Canna as I don't want to pay for the cannazym and other products in their line up.

It's funny, a guy who works for Canna told me the only reason there are salts in the Cannazym is so it doesn't freeze when being delivered. Canna rep from Canada.

 

[Snow Crash]

Thanks for all the info!

I'm trying out the GH 6/9 method on a couple tables... I'm getting sick of Canna as I don't want to pay for the cannazym and other products in their line up.

It's funny, a guy who works for Canna told me the only reason there are salts in the Cannazym is so it doesn't freeze when being delivered. Canna rep from Canada.

I was fortunate enough to attend a CANNA "party" before the Maximum Yield Garden Expo in SF a few months ago which was mind-blowingly awesome and informative. They went into great detail on a lot of subjects but spent most of the time discussing why they suggest tap water over RO water (bicarbonate formation) and how they use runoff readings and slurry tests to determine media health.

While the elements in Cannazym do aid in preservation they also have a noticeable impact on the final ratio. Figure 8ml of A+B has ~37ppm of Phosphorus. Add in 10ml of Cannazym to that and you've effectively increased the amount of that single element in the solution by 67%. Which, while it may seem minor on the bottle, is a huge shift going from ~37ppm to ~62ppm (minimum).

Rather than shell out the big $$$ for that ratio shift you can use a variety of other 2:1 PK supplements on the market with higher concentrations of what I think is the big difference maker here. I have used Botanicare Hydroplex 0-10-6 in the past with great results. The lowest cost viable option is MonoPotassium Phosphate or "MKP." Green Planet Bud Booster or Fox Farms Beastie Blooms are basically this stuff (although way overpriced) but you can find it online by the pound. I found a 50lbs bag for $110 (Use at 0.5g per gallon) with free shipping... and at 0-52-34 it is going to stretch up to 45,000 gallons of solution as a Cannazym replacement. That's $0.0024 per gallon.

 

[rme]

I was fortunate enough to attend a CANNA "party" before the Maximum Yield Garden Expo in SF a few months ago which was mind-blowingly awesome and informative. They went into great detail on a lot of subjects but spent most of the time discussing why they suggest tap water over RO water (bicarbonate formation) and how they use runoff readings and slurry tests to determine media health.

While the elements in Cannazym do aid in preservation they also have a noticeable impact on the final ratio. Figure 8ml of A+B has ~37ppm of Phosphorus. Add in 10ml of Cannazym to that and you've effectively increased the amount of that single element in the solution by 67%. Which, while it may seem minor on the bottle, is a huge shift going from ~37ppm to ~62ppm (minimum).

Rather than shell out the big $$$ for that ratio shift you can use a variety of other 2:1 PK supplements on the market with higher concentrations of what I think is the big difference maker here. I have used Botanicare Hydroplex 0-10-6 in the past with great results. The lowest cost viable option is MonoPotassium Phosphate or "MKP." Green Planet Bud Booster or Fox Farms Beastie Blooms are basically this stuff (although way overpriced) but you can find it online by the pound. I found a 50lbs bag for $110 (Use at 0.5g per gallon) with free shipping... and at 0-52-34 it is going to stretch up to 45,000 gallons of solution as a Cannazym replacement. That's $0.0024 per gallon.

Nice post. I was thinking I could add their PK product in at 2ml /gal and have a good profile along with 8ml of A B. . but this might lead to too much K.

By chance were the canna guys French Canadian?

 

[Trend]

Get off pure RO. cut it with tap to 50-70ppm. Toss the calimagic I don't care what other say but over time it seems to cause nothing but problems for me at multiple locations. If you need a calmag botanicare or magical. Even then not every feed and never over 3ml.

 

[Snow Crash]

Nice post. I was thinking I could add their PK product in at 2ml /gal and have a good profile along with 8ml of A B. . but this might lead to too much K.

By chance were the canna guys French Canadian?

Some of them for sure. CANNA didn't have a booth at the Max Yield show so they put on their own little deal on Treasure Island. I have some pictures around somewhere but unfortunately cannot remember anyones name. I think they had reps over from Europe too. The one guy who works on the ground floor, actually doing the growing and who understands the science, had a really thick accent. Thin white guy with square hipster glasses and messy blonde hair, probably in his late 30's. He was fantastic, but I say that because he and I have found the exact same approach to reading runoff from coco and we use it in the same way. I kinda, sorta, got banned from GC over defending my position on coco runoff against some troll from the UK. It was really cool to see that CANNA themselves could back up my position on the matter and that GC is still committed to misleading growers and banning members with quality info. Whatever though, I'm here! And I love it.

 

[rme]

Some of them for sure. CANNA didn't have a booth at the Max Yield show so they put on their own little deal on Treasure Island. I have some pictures around somewhere but unfortunately cannot remember anyones name. I think they had reps over from Europe too. The one guy who works on the ground floor, actually doing the growing and who understands the science, had a really thick accent. Thin white guy with square hipster glasses and messy blonde hair, probably in his late 30's. He was fantastic, but I say that because he and I have found the exact same approach to reading runoff from coco and we use it in the same way. I kinda, sorta, got banned from GC over defending my position on coco runoff against some troll from the UK. It was really cool to see that CANNA themselves could back up my position on the matter and that GC is still committed to misleading growers and banning members with quality info. Whatever though, I'm here! And I love it.

I went to a similar Canna seminar here locally in BC. The dude you probably met is from Montreal and is awesome! Other Canna guys I met , not so much.

Let's here your position on coco run off! Currently I have been collecting the collective run off from 12 pots on 1 table. (table built with a slope and a drain)

 

[Snow Crash]

Coco runoff should be tracked, recorded, and graphed to illustrate how the current feed levels are being utilized. Runoff readings that rise continuously while the feed strength is maintained the same, indicates that the feed level is too strong for the particular plant, in the particular conditions, at that particular time of growth. Or, inversely, if the runoff readings are decreasing then the feed strength is probably insufficient. This is not the same as saying "you need to feed less/more, tomorrow." What the numbers are saying is "you needed to feed less/more, yesterday." It's up to the grower to interpret the readings and react accordingly depending on time of growth, species, and environment conditions. Sometimes it's the solution strength, sometimes its the amount of runoff collected, and it could be a little of column A and a little of column B... Any time the runoff leaves your EC meter blinking in disbelief then that's a pretty good indication a solid rinsing is in order, but that's about the only reaction which can be made from runoff.

The first few hundred ML of runoff is not as valuable as the last few hundred ML. If a container needs 1L of solution for total saturation and 0 runoff then use 1.2-1.4 liters to get adequate runoff. Discard the first 1/2 of the runoff and collect the second half in a clean cup. You will need to collect runoff from each container individually as each will have a slightly different reading. You don't want to dose a plant in good media because the one next to it is struggling.

Essentially, what you are looking for is a stable runoff EC. I try to keep that runoff less than 30% stronger than the nutrient feed solution (1.0ec in and 1.3ec out is fine if it doesn't climb higher). Checking the pH of your runoff is pointless.

If you do notice some issue with the plants, and the runoff isn't indicating anything, then it may be time to do a slurry test and get an accurate reading of the media. Runoff is not an accurate reading. It is a relational data set that has the ability to indicate when the media is becoming unhealthy for growth. The best way I have used it is in combination with my solution EC, temp/humidity, and approximate ppm calculations. Over 3-4 grows this allows me to tailor the nutrient program little by little, and helps point out consistent traits like high temperatures causing certain effects which might have been misinterpreted without a complete record of all the factors involved.

 

[rme]

Coco runoff should be tracked, recorded, and graphed to illustrate how the current feed levels are being utilized. Runoff readings that rise continuously while the feed strength is maintained the same, indicates that the feed level is too strong for the particular plant, in the particular conditions, at that particular time of growth. Or, inversely, if the runoff readings are decreasing then the feed strength is probably insufficient. This is not the same as saying "you need to feed less/more, tomorrow." What the numbers are saying is "you needed to feed less/more, yesterday." It's up to the grower to interpret the readings and react accordingly depending on time of growth, species, and environment conditions. Sometimes it's the solution strength, sometimes its the amount of runoff collected, and it could be a little of column A and a little of column B... Any time the runoff leaves your EC meter blinking in disbelief then that's a pretty good indication a solid rinsing is in order, but that's about the only reaction which can be made from runoff.

The first few hundred ML of runoff is not as valuable as the last few hundred ML. If a container needs 1L of solution for total saturation and 0 runoff then use 1.2-1.4 liters to get adequate runoff. Discard the first 1/2 of the runoff and collect the second half in a clean cup. You will need to collect runoff from each container individually as each will have a slightly different reading. You don't want to dose a plant in good media because the one next to it is struggling.

Essentially, what you are looking for is a stable runoff EC. I try to keep that runoff less than 30% stronger than the nutrient feed solution (1.0ec in and 1.3ec out is fine if it doesn't climb higher). Checking the pH of your runoff is pointless.

If you do notice some issue with the plants, and the runoff isn't indicating anything, then it may be time to do a slurry test and get an accurate reading of the media. Runoff is not an accurate reading. It is a relational data set that has the ability to indicate when the media is becoming unhealthy for growth. The best way I have used it is in combination with my solution EC, temp/humidity, and approximate ppm calculations. Over 3-4 grows this allows me to tailor the nutrient program little by little, and helps point out consistent traits like high temperatures causing certain effects which might have been misinterpreted without a complete record of all the factors involved.

Excellent!! I remember this as the thoughts of the Canna dude I met as well... well written. I suppose a collective run off from 12 pots on a sloped table isn't a good test tough! woops

 

[habeeb]

snow,

you ever see my test done on canna? just had to throw that out there as I know your a huge canna coco fan.. I myself am going to run it again, as I was on H&G for awhile, but I'm back

what I still find odd though, is there very very low K, and the fact others have had better results, switching to there hydro formula ( flower fields for example ). I've heard it from H&G's aqua flakes to "lucas'" R/O hydro formula.. I just still can't understand why the different formulas then???

did the guys ever get to talk about the cogr formula? I wonder what is so different. I was told by a rep, to use it if going longer then 4 weeks veg... whatever that means to anyone, as I have never seen it sold on USA shelves to date..



well I want to play around with canna more. that's all I have to add.


here's the chart, it was done with 5ppm R/O whatever that means.

 

[Snow Crash]

snow,

you ever see my test done on canna? just had to throw that out there as I know your a huge canna coco fan.. I myself am going to run it again, as I was on H&G for awhile, but I'm back

what I still find odd though, is there very very low K, and the fact others have had better results, switching to there hydro formula ( flower fields for example ). I've heard it from H&G's aqua flakes to "lucas'" R/O hydro formula.. I just still can't understand why the different formulas then???

did the guys ever get to talk about the cogr formula? I wonder what is so different. I was told by a rep, to use it if going longer then 4 weeks veg... whatever that means to anyone, as I have never seen it sold on USA shelves to date..



well I want to play around with canna more. that's all I have to add.


here's the chart, it was done with 5ppm R/O whatever that means.
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=25801&pictureid=982859&thumb=1]View Image[/url]

I'm a pretty big fan of Canna Coco A+B in veg, but I totally agree that their levels are a little off for flowering. They supplement the base line with the 0-2-1 Cannazym and 0-10-11 PK13/14, but these products are costly for what you get from them. Which is why I supplement PK+mag from other sources to their light base feed formula to balance out the program for the bloom phase.

The test that you provided is about in line with what you would expect from the listed percentages on the bottle. A quick way to get a rough estimate of your ppm's when mixing multiple products together is to take the ml (or grams) used per gallon, multiply by the percentage on the bottle (use "4" for 4%, not 0.04), and multiply that by 2.65. Phosphorus as labeled in the US is actually P2O4 and only 43% actually P. Potassium is labeled in the US as K20 and only 84% K. For those elements you take the ppm estimate and multiply by 0.43 or 0.84 respectively.

I use these numbers to build together a good ratio from a variety of products when need be. While it's tremendously less difficult to use a dialed in bloom program with 1-part bases (CNS17 Bloom and Ripe) I've done things a lot of different ways. Canna is a great base to play around with and I'm sure you'll have a good time if you take the right approach into supplementation.