[SEEDYNONO]

so i check the runoff about 30 minutes after i water my plants each day.

i always use ph balanced water between 5.0-6.5 when i water and i've only used very small amounts of pbp grow, lk, and hygrozyme for feeding them. the weird thing i notice is my runoff ph is always high.. around 7-7.5.

now this used to always be the case with soil grows because of the dol. lime.. but what the hell is keeping the ph so high in this coir? i haven't added anything weird.. or ever given them water with a ph that was off. i've heard pbp will lower ph quite drastically in some cases but that would lead me to expect a lower ph runoff.. not a high one.

i read somewhere about when the plants are hungrier and eating up a lot of nutrients out of the water the purer water is left to sit in the coco and the ph goes up because the nutrients have left it and they were the only things keeping it stable. this is pretty much the only thing i can think of because i've even been trying to water with lower and lower ph (keeping it near 5-5.5) to move the runoff ph down over time.. but it doesn't budge..

what do you guys think is this common with coco? huge problem? i was expecting to see runoff matching closely with what i watered with and this is messing with my program..

i'm scared to give them heavier feedings because i have some burning on the edges and tips of the first sets of leaves even on my biggest month old plants (the first single blade above the coty's and the three bladed sets above those)

..but i may need to give them more pbp.. so what's up coco growers?

[SoaringHi]

I don't know if this applies to you since you are not using canna A+B. I pulled this off of Canna's website a few months back, so here is the info as they see it:

Measuring the drain water from the coconut substrate provides irrelevant information; steering with the use of such information can thus cause damage to the plant. So: no need for measurements when using CANNA fertilizer together with CANNA COCO in a normal setting.

Good luck, maybe someone more experienced can give you more specific information.

[Ono Nadagin]

I kinda do the same thing... I just feed at 5.8ph and dont worry about the runoff...

[SEEDYNONO]

okay cool thanks guys! plants look pretty damn good just wondering cause this is the first time i've been really seriously concerned with ph whatsoever.. in soil it never seemed to matter.

so with the runoff it will read what it reads.. i'll just make sure i keep putting balanced water in.

Thanx for sharing that info. I was absolutely unaware of that. And I've been needlessly preaching the need to check it. My plants are not showing any symptoms of low ph, but it might explain why my yields are not what I'm wanting....yet. Then again maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part. Then again, I have been checking the first water out on the runoff too. I donno. Still dialing it in and learning new shit every day

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to SoaringHi again.

PourThru Sampling

Learn and Love thy PourThru Technique

[gaiusmarius]

as far as the return ph goes, that really is something that you can ignore to a certain extent. although i will say that my return ph might start a bit high around 7 but will quickly, withing the first weeks of auto watering, sink down to what i'm feeding at or close to it.

as for ignoring the return, you have to remember that canna wants you to use the maximum amount of nutes that the plants can take, this is why they tell you to ignore the return, if you run to waste you really can ignore it to a certain extent, but there comes a point where the coco can no longer deal with it as well as keeping the plants in top shape. depending on strain that moment can be reached at return ec 2.0 to 3.5 depending how high you are feeding. what is true, is that you can't decide to run your tank with water only for a few days because the return is high, as that will screw up the rhythm of the plants. but you can help them by flushing the salts out in one go and going straight back to normal nutes after the flush. doing this can really give your plants a second lease on their flowering vigor. if the return ec has reached way higher levels then you are feeding with.

I hand water daily at pH 5.8 and I water till I get about a 10-15% run off. Leaves started getting some spots early in veg and when I checked ec of the run off it was over 2.0. I check regularly now. Had a second problem and ec was up. Flushed both times and cured the prob but I'm a proponent of checking run off. Those of you with drip systems probably water enough that it's not needed. But if you hand water once a day, I'd check the return ec and pH.

After I get these trees out of the closet, I'm going drip.

Peace

[gaiusmarius]

you'll find things are similar in a drip system even if it takes a bit longer for the ec to raise, it still does it. although if you know your plants nutrient needs and do a 5-10 minute maintenance flush every time you fill your tank, then you can get away with not doing a big flush till the end. but it is certainly worth keeping an eye on, like mojo says, it's easy to see the difference with the plants having a crazy or normal return ec.
peace