H3ad 6/9 cal/mag problems

[lysol]

My plant is definitely infected. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=161891

 

[Stonercool]

Here's another link to help you with the springtails:

http://www.howtogetridofstuff.com/pest-control/how-to-get-rid-of-springtails/

Heck, I'll just paste the info here because it's easier. Might help you out.

Good luck!

From the link above:

• Bifen Granules - Bifen granules are potent and can be used indoors and outdoors, making them a pretty versatile solution. Their effect also lasts longer than most insecticides. Each granule emits fumes that are harmful to springtails, which is why a 25-pound bag is enough to cover two acres of land. Apply these babies around your property and your springtail problem will soon come to an end. Just keep your pets way from them since the granules are poisonous.
• Insect Spray - Insect sprays work best when applied on cracks, crevices and hard to reach places. The poisonous cloud emitted will take out any pest that it touches, including springtails. Make sure you wear a safety mask when applying. Long exposure to the gas may damage your respiratory system.
• Liquid Insecticide - Bifen granules work even better when partnered with liquid insecticide. Not only does liquid insecticide kill springtails instantly, it also increases the effects of the granules. Spread the granules around the springtail havens, preferably near the exit points. Once done, spray the insecticide onto where you placed the granules. If the springtails are hiding beneath an object, simply lift it up and exterminate everything that's moving.
  
• Insecticide Dust - Insecticide dust is highly corrosive, so you better wear safety gloves when handling it. Place a generous amount in a hand duster and blow the particles onto a springtail colony. Within minutes, the dust will eliminate them all. This solution is perfect for the smallest crevices.
• Fumigation - In extreme cases, in which the springtails number to over ten thousand, the only available solution is fumigation. Hire an exterminator to fumigate the area. The insecticide used contains powerful chemicals, which can eliminate all the pests in your home in just a few hours. It can damage your lungs, so you have to leave the premises while the exterminator is fumigating.

 

[Carl Carlson]

2) If you're using plain tap water to break down your coco, that's a problem. I use a pH adjusted 1/3-1/2 strength complete nutrient solution to break down the coco. (Or flush it, if it's the moist bagged stuff. Bcuzz, etc..) Anytime my problem seemed to be pH related, I had to bring the pH low to compensate for breaking down the coco in 7.0 tap water. At least that is what I have observed.

my experience with the botanicare loose cocogro has been that the pH is remarkably stable from start to finish.

It's partially the combination of water quality and the % of ammoniacal nitrogen in the fertilizer, but I suspect the in-house preparation of the coco has something to do with it too.

 

[reddy1]

5.5 feed ph works for me because my ph usually drifts up to 6.0(sometimes higher) after 24 hours.

i wish i knew why it was doing that, i'm using RO water and fox farm nutrients, that's it, no additives. pH after 24 hours is the runoff, not the reservoir. GH users don't get any drift or am i alone?

i just figured it out, i also have mixed in some BT(mosquito dunk soaked) to try to kill my springtails or gnats. the mostquito dunk water has a very high pH, after the nutrients were taken up by the plant the BT bacteria probably raised my pH up a bit.

this thread has been very informative, thanks for the link on the pesticides. must kill all bugs.

 

[dubbalicious]

Thanks Rez

 

[]A[Boss]

SM-90

 

[Carl Carlson]

This is a great discussion....

We've got Rezdog with great results, watering strictly at a pH of 5.5

We've got H3ad with great results, watering in a range from 5.5 - 6.2

That by the way is the range that Canna suggests for coco on the official website.

We've got other growers that swear by a range of 5.8 - 6.2

etc.

How is possible to have great results with these different numbers, all growing in coco?

What if irrigation water pH plays a much smaller role than is generally believed on the pH of the soilless medium, be it a peat mix, coco coir, perlite?

What if the relationship between the buffering capacity (alkalinity) of the water, not the pH, and the type of nitrogen in the fertilizer (ammoniacal vs. nitrate) have a much, much larger affect on medium pH?

And coco coir tends to much to be more pH stable than peat, which means the grower would have to use some really whack water to really mess with the pH of the course of a grow. I measured the pH of the coco in my current grow a couple of weeks ago (3 weeks into bloom, 8 weeks total life at that point). The pH hasn't budged a bit. It was 5.8 to 6.0 in all of the plants.

***

this article is from January:

http://www.greenhousegrower.com/production/?storyid=2890&style=1

In most cases, small pH adjustments (0.2 to 0.6 pH units) are easily accomplished by simply changing the type of fertilizer. Large pH adjustments can be time consuming, costly and typically result from infrequent pH monitoring.

[..]

The form of nitrogen in your fertilizer is what causes substrate pH to decrease or increase. Nitrogen is the most important pH-controlling ion because it is the only element required by plants that can be supplied as both a positive cation (ammonium: NH4+) or a negative anion (nitrate: NO3-) and accounts for more than half of the nutrient ions taken up by the plant. Fertilizers high in ammonium have an acidifying effect and cause substrate pH to decrease, and the opposite is true for fertilizers high in nitrate (Table 1).

When ammonium (or other positive cations) is taken up by the plant, a positive charge enters the root. Plants must remain electrochemically neutral, and thus the roots secrete positively charged H+, which reduces the pH (Figure 2). When nitrate (or other negative anions) is absorbed, the roots balance the negative charge by absorbing H+. As more nitrate is absorbed, more H+ is removed from the soil solution, and the substrate pH increases (Figure 3, see page 46).

Urea is a third form of nitrogen that is a common component of fertilizer. Once in the soil or the plant, urea is split into carbon dioxide and ammonium by the urease enzyme produced by microorganisms or the plant. For this reason, urea is considered equivalent to ammonium in respect to effect on substrate pH.

[..]

Water alkalinity is essentially dissolved limestone and if not treated, will lead to problems with high pH such as micronutrient deficiency.

If the concentration of alkalinity in water is zero, the opposite will occur and substrate pH will decrease over time.

[..]

When plants were grown with deionized water, substrate pH decreased over time regardless of fertilizer treatment. Generally, end-of-crop substrate pH increased as the amount of ammonium in the fertilizer decreased.

When plants were grown with high-alkalinity tap water, the opposite occurred and substrate pH increased over time, regardless of fertilizer treatment. Fertilizer treatment did not have as strong an effect on end-of-crop substrate pH as with deionized water. Results indicate the high alkalinity is the primary factor controlling the change in substrate pH.

I found the second to last paragraph quoted above confusing and e-mailed one of the authors. his response:

To clarify, the first sentence is talking about the pH over time. The second sentence is comparing only the data points at the very end of the crop/experiment. You could also say that “end-of-crop substrate pH decreased as ammonium increased”.

if anyone cares and wants to read more on this subject, I suggest Bill Argo's set of articles hosted here: http://www.staugorchidsociety.org/culturewater.htm

 

[Carl Carlson]

Lysol, what is the true pH of the coco in the plants that you're having problems with?

If you're going to test, go a step further than testing runoff from your next feeding.

Use the pour-through method: Saturate the plant first, wait an hour than pour through enough distilled or r.o. water to get 50 ml runoff and than measure the pH and EC of that.

When you measure runoff directly from feeding, you undoubtedly are measuring some of the adjusted irrigation water itself. does anyone disagree with last part? watching pots drain 10% after a good watering, I just can't see it any other way.

 

[Carl Carlson]

I had cal/mag problems in my first coco grow using this 6ml/9ml GH nutes only. Adding a bit of cal-mag (6ml/gallon) seemed to help a bit, but it obviously wasn't the whole issue.


Eventually I measured my well water at 250 ppm, higher than I would have guessed. Another well available to me measured out under 100 ppm, so I switched to that water. POW! happy plants!

BINGO.

 

[Carl Carlson]

its not a ratio problem with the nutrients

the problem is with your water

we've got Bingo again

 

[Carl Carlson]

Could be from either too soft of water or too hard of water.

very smart

 

[Carl Carlson]

Finally, it sounds as if factors drove the pH of the coco in lysol's plants down below 5.8.

all things being equal, calcium is uptaken slightly more easily by plant roots than magnesium, so look again at the charts posted by h3ad on page 2 of this thread and imagine what happens if the pH falls below 5.8 in a soilless grow. Mag lockout.

 

[]A[Boss]

i'm noticing what seems to be a mag prob on my seedlings using 5.5 pH... my flowering plants don't seem to have a problem though.. i'll get some pics and keep an eye on things.

 

[]A[Boss]

nevermind, my water jug for my seedlings was 5.1 pH so that's the prob..

 

[lysol]

How is possible to have great results with these different numbers, all growing in coco?

Plants can change the PH themselves.
Plants also can adapt
People use different nutes
There are different kinds of coco, etc..

In nature there is no man standing over the plant with a test kit and drops ;-) the plant still grows.

 

[Carl Carlson]

Plants can change the PH themselves.
Plants also can adapt
People use different nutes
There are different kinds of coco, etc..

In nature there is no man standing over the plant with a test kit and drops ;-) the plant still grows.

exactly.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

...
If you use it as hydro medium, of course you need to add all the nutes the plants needs, as coco is a near inert medium. Coco coir has a very high cation fixation capacity, as well as very high cation exchangeability. But its neccesary to mantain a equilibrium between the differents cation, otherwise lockouts appear. To manage this, ph control is the key, using all the hydro range (wide range:5,3-6,3, narrow range 5,6-6,1). If you run a ph over 5,8 continously, Ca accumulates in the medium and produces a lot of problems. Flush rids anions easily, but its more difficult wash out cations fixed in the medium.

There are 2 "schools" in coco coir growing: one use ph over 5,8 , add Mg continuosly and flush periodically (the advise of Kapt Krink), while the other use a wider ph range trying to avoid salts accumulation by ph management, without adding CalMg nor flushing...

Yes plants can grow in a variety of conditions, especially in nature. In our indoor setting we can never completely reproduce nature (nor would we want to, lots of plants die in nature for various natural reasons), so we try to take from our knowledge of biochemistry and utilize only the important aspects of nature and do it in the most efficient manner possible.

Lots of nutrient source/pH/concentration combinations work, quite a few work really well, and there are a couple of dozen which could be considered within the optimal range. Do what works best for you, producing what you like to smoke, in a manner that is not over-burdening. It is all just guidelines, there is no "one recipe to rule them all"

 

[DutchMaster$]

very nicel put H3ead. This thread is super healpful. keep it going.

 

[GrnMtnGrwr]

if your pH keeps rising on its own then there is your problem

get better water

mixing it to a pH of 5.6 on monday, it should read MAYBE 5.7 on thursday. grow/micro/bloom won't fuck with the pH but trying to be clever with additives will...

Can you or anyone else expand on this a bit? Right now I only ever save nute mixes for a few days, but they drift from 5.8 to 6.1 or so, just sitting in a 5 gallon bucket for 24-48 hours. I'm planning on hooking up a 10-15 gallon res, and will be adding airstones. Will this make a difference with the PH drift at all, or is it just because of my tap water?

No access to RO machines around here... might have to look into hooking one up.

 

[lysol]

Can you or anyone else expand on this a bit? Right now I only ever save nute mixes for a few days, but they drift from 5.8 to 6.1 or so, just sitting in a 5 gallon bucket for 24-48 hours. I'm planning on hooking up a 10-15 gallon res, and will be adding airstones. Will this make a difference with the PH drift at all, or is it just because of my tap water?

No access to RO machines around here... might have to look into hooking one up.

You need to let it sit for 3hrs for PHing it then. PH raises only under a few conditions. During heavy aeration (co2 bubbling thru it), while theres a plant growing directly in it (DWC) or right after mixing it when all your ions are still dancing.

Anyways my problem was solved when I started using epsom salt. I am still using tap water.