Any way, lets review the key points:
- starting water: the best solution is to use tap water if ec is <0,4 or slightly higher. With high EC tap wather, is really suggested to use a RO system, than cut RO water with tap water till 0,3-0,4mS/cm
- pH: if your starting water is like the one mentioned above, pH adjustment shouldn't be necessary. You can always adjust nutes pH but please, do not rise or lower it to achieve correct run off pH: it doesn't make any sense. Run off pH can fluctuate a lot due to roots activity, and that's absolutely normal
EC: of course you should adjust your feed EC to the right value. It's also very important to check for run off EC once a week more or less. Run off EC should be as close as possible to feed EC. If you find it lower or higher a good way to take it back to normal is to just increase your feeding time. For example, if you are feeding 2 times per 10 minutes each, switch to 2 times 12 minutes.
Feeding Times: you should adjust your feeding time to achieve a sufficient run off. That way you can assure coco CEC is always buffered while also preventing salts build up. You should also adjust number of feeding to let the substrate dry a bit between a feed and the other.
Pot size: best results are achieved with a pot size that enables you to give up to 3 or 4 feed per day when the plants are in the maximum need. It usually means quite small pots.
Perlite and clay pebbles: by washing your coco coir before seedling (remember the "fullfilling cec" thing?) you should also wash away all the finest dust so you end up having quite large fibers. In that situation, you really doesn't need perlite. If you're missing it, you should consider to use smaller pots rather than adding perlite.
Hope it helps!
TC
I wait until the plants leaves reach beyond the edge of the solo cup. By that time, the leaves are usually starting to droop from lack of root space anyway.
Hey paperchase
One thing on the water - what you can do is mix nutes in, balance ph - get an air stone and bubble the water for a half day or 24 hours and then re check the ph - usually it will rise quite a bit then ph it down again and it should stay a lot more stable.
what is the ppm or ec of your water?
I have .6ec water which is crazy so I got an RO machine.
Bulkreef supply. If you got any RO questions hit me up - I learned a lot when researching mine - I was hesitant to get one but an awesome decision
I tried putting 2 gal tap in 10 gal RO but ended up going pure RO adding potassium silicate to ph it up. Mix in some calmag and 6/9 and it's perfect.
Mix in some calmag and 6/9 and it's perfect.