Lucas, Wer art thou

[Verdure]

I Am having stupid issues with the Lucas Formula.

No matter what I do my plant does not like it.

I am using DWC and added the formula after the 3rd day in the system.

I started at 160 ppm (.5 scale). and they didn't like it, yellowing, bleached. after 10 days I bumped it up to 300ppm and noticed some burn.

( I realized I had a bad LED light, too intense red spectrum),

I then switched to MH 400. and switched to 200 ppm. They are starting to do better, but still show some issues. Yellow, pale, and not much growth at day 20.

I am using 1/5 strength Lucas.

I will show some pic soon but some one give me someone insight please.

thanks for having me

 

[Hydro-Soil]

The amount of feed depends on your light intensity, mostly.

You have a MH 400 so you should be at around 400-600ppm. At around 50% strength you'll get a lot of deficiencies, as you're seeing.

Bump it up!

Shoot for around 5.4 as a starting pH. You want the pH to drop as low as 5.2 before a top off of plain water and as high as 5.8 before dropping it back down. (edit: Was that sentence confusing?)

Do you have a ppm/tds meter or are you doing the simple add back of plain water method?

Welcome to icmag... lol

Stay Safe!

 

[FlowerFarmer]

I agree.

Shoot for a target ppm of 950ppm @ .5 conversion in RO water.

Lucas formula was never intended for dilution. You should be using 8/16 immediately after going under hid lighting.

Manage pH just as Hydro-Soil suggested... if done properly in RO you'll likely never need pH adjusters after initial mix-up. pH will rise as plants consume/you top-up with RO. Add-back of nutes will bring it right back down to low 5s.

Welcome to icmag.

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Shoot for a target ppm of 950ppm @ .5 conversion in RO water.

Lucas formula was never intended for dilution. You should be using 8/16 immediately after going under hid lighting.

Personally, I've found that 8/16 using GH Flora 3-part can be used on just about any strain. There are a few nute sensitive ones that 8/16 is too much for, but not many.

Maxibloom, which a lot of folks use for simplicity, is a bit touchier. The ratio of elements is very close to lucas... but not perfect. You'll generally need to use a bit less than 7 grams for a 400w.

Thank you for bringing that up... I've been using Maxibloom for so long I forgot.

Stay Safe!

 

[Verdure]

The amount of feed depends on your light intensity, mostly.

You have a MH 400 so you should be at around 400-600ppm. At around 50% strength you'll get a lot of deficiencies, as you're seeing.

Bump it up!

Shoot for around 5.4 as a starting pH. You want the pH to drop as low as 5.2 before a top off of plain water and as high as 5.8 before dropping it back down. (edit: Was that sentence confusing?)

Do you have a ppm/tds meter or are you doing the simple add back of plain water method?

Welcome to icmag... lol

Stay Safe!

Thank you for the welcome. This is one of the more serious and mature forums for advanced people, and I definitely appreciate the valuable information here.

300 at .5 is what I am going to shoot for and will slowly bump up to 400 over the course of a week.

Yeah I was unfortunate and kept my believe high is a LED company, in which I received a faulty Light. I call it the the Burner, no matter placement.

They babies took a beating for 2 weeks. But they survived. The minute I switched to Ushio MH, things started to improve immediately.

Since LED does not transpire much and is less intense over all, I guess they needed less ppm, and now since I switched to HID, they need more. So, I became confused about Lucas and am trying to figure it out.

Here is a pic ( LED Bleach and 160ppm @ .5) 2 weeks from seed.

 

[Keep goin]

Hey Verdure,

You may just find your girls don't like Lucas...mine didn't!

Not doubting peoples undeniable results..I just found that a touch of the "green bottle" fixed em right up. All of the N in Lucas is coming from the micro...and the grow part of GH's 3 part has very little N in it...There are other things in there though that I found my girls didn't like not having.

Try 3-6-12 to start flowering then move to 2-8-16...and maybe "finish" with the 0-8-16 of Lucas before flush...

Just my 2 cents...good luck!

 

[FlowerFarmer]

Didnt realize we were talking about a seedling.

To confirm most should have no problems doing full lucas under HID lighting. Seedlings I've always gave em 2ml micro / 4ml bloom until they had a few good sets of leaves.

No experience with LED.

Might wanna start a few more in case that little guy doesn't pull through.

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Hey Verdure,

You may just find your girls don't like Lucas...mine didn't!

Not doubting peoples undeniable results..I just found that a touch of the "green bottle" fixed em right up.

Either the pH range was off (not enough or too fast/slow) or you had a mag hungry strain (half gram to a full gram of epsom salts per gallon will fix that). Either way, it wasn't your girls 'not liking' lucas.

Adding a touch of the green bottle? That will make a solution that your plants are much more picky about, as far as ppm goes. Straight 8/16 and the plants will tolerate a much greater ppm range without burning.

10 years... lots of strains... lots of setups. Lucas Rocks!


Stay Safe!

 

[Verdure]

Good Day

Yes I am still in seedling stage.

Things are started to look better once I switched to MH400 and put about 200ppm of Lucas...

I am going to slowly bump it up and try to hit 950@ .5 when its in full Veg mode.

In the meantime, I am following a method of 10 ppm usage per day as an indication of the correct ppm levels. If the PPM goes down more than 20 a day( after top off with water only), its not enough nutes.

If it stays the same, then its too much.

10ppm a day, then I have the right level


So, Hopefully I can get things proper.

Regards

 

[Verdure]

Guys, Still having some issues. Alot of twisting, although growth seems to be happening and a bit more greener at 180ppm. I am 3 weeks in. Not looking like it should be. Pics up shortly

 

[joe fresh]

feed more and watch your ph...for me seedlings and clones (IF NOT IN DIRT) always start off at 550ppm at the .5 scale, and within weeks its up to 800, then by flowering its at 950ppm

but twisty leaves is usually a sign of ph problems

 

[Verdure]

Someone recommended this to me

"here it is.

If you actually look at the analysis of GH FloraBloom and Flora micro you would see that Lucas was back ass back wards when he came up with his formula. He advised two parts Bloom to one part Micro. If he would have gone with two parts micro and one part bloom he would have gotten a ratio of 3.3, 1.6, 2 but it would have a mess of calcium at 333 ppm. That high calcium would mean that the reservoir s would likely have to be changed out weekly rather than going for weeks or a full grow by just adding water and more nutrients.

So on this advice I tweaked it for myself. I went with a roughly 4:3 Micro:Bloom, at 4ml Micro, and 3ml Bloom a Litre for veg, and reversed it for Bloom.
Which gives you an NPK of roughly 20-15-16 for Veg and 15-20-19 for Bloom

It's a bit heavy on salt, and a little low on Mg, but it gets the job done right off the shelf. Although mine would randomly show slight nitrogen deficiencies from time to time, very slight, like a day or two of light colored leaves."

 

[joe fresh]

here, this might help you, its in my "sick plant diagnosis" thread in the sick plants section https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=231387

The Flora Micro is providing the Nitrogen and the Magnesium in the proper balance, thus there is no need for the Grow formula and little or no room under the maximum acceptable ppm limit of 1600 @ 0.7 conversion.

Calculated EC/TDS levels:

EC microsiemen:
0-4-8: 946 µS
0-5-10: 1184 µS
0-8-16: 1894 µS

TDS @ 0.5 conversion:
0-4-8 = 473 ppm
0-5-10 = 592 ppm
0-8-16 = 947 ppm

TDS @ 0.7 conversion:
0-4-8 = 663 ppm
0-5-10 = 829 ppm
0-8-16 = 1326 ppm

Seedlings 50-150 ppm
Un Rooted clones 100-350
Small Plants 400-800
Large Plants 900-1800
Last 1-2 Week of Flowering Water!

Originally posted by Lucas

now for the problem, why do folks in dense, slow drying mediums, use less than full strength nutes? The answer is, nutes accumulate in a pot of soil, every time the medium dries out. Especially if full strength nutes are used for every irrigation.

Soil growers learned early on not to feed daily, instead they feed weekly at full strength, or daily at quarter strength. Or they feed full strength for a while, and as the plants get unhappy, the grower "flushes" the soil.

Nutes dont get eaten by the plant, they stay in the soil, when the water evaporates, therefore, a soil grower must keep track of the actual TDS in the root zone, as it builds up over time.

These comments apply to any dense medium, not just soil.

The reason there is such a strong belief in "flushing" to produce quality end product, is because of the history of soil growing having the problem of nutes accumulations.

The root zone TDS goal is the same in soil or DWC, but in soil, the irrigation strategy needs to account for nutrients accumulation in the medium.

So if I was teaching a soil grower how to water, the principles are
1. use no more water than the plant will consume in 24 hours (if roots stay wet, they use up the oxygen, and no new oxygen will be acquired until the medium dries out enough to breathe)
2. water with plain water for 2 irrigations, then feed at full strength in the 3rd irrigation, or, use 1/3 strength nutes with Every irrigation.
3. On the feeding irrigation, allow runoff from the bottom of the pot, so you can test the TDS and pH. IF the TDS of the runoff is higher than 1800 TDS (all TDS values are at .7 conversion), reduce the amount or frequency of adding nutrients in the future waterings.
4. Flush the medium with plain water IF the runoff goes over 1800.
5. If pH goes below 5, in the runoff, flush the medium with plain water.
6. Ideally, the runoff TDS and pH should be ~1300ppm @~5.8pH

bear in mind that as a pot of medium dries out, the pH drops, and the TDS climbs. The goal is to keep the TDS and pH in the root zone from becoming too strong.

Flushing is not necessary in DWC or EbbFlow, or any system that has a TDS below 1500 in the root zone.

OTOH, it is common to see runoff above 2000TDS in pots of medium. They should most definitely be flushed until the runoff is below 1300, before feeding again, and also before harvesting.

 

[Verdure]

feed more and watch your ph...for me seedlings and clones (IF NOT IN DIRT) always start off at 550ppm at the .5 scale, and within weeks its up to 800, then by flowering its at 950ppm

but twisty leaves is usually a sign of ph problems

That high really??

I Cleaned and redid the DWC Buckets today at 220ppm. I am going to have pics up shortly. Please be the judge. I was quite concerned to be honest

 

[Verdure]

here, this might help you, its in my "sick plant diagnosis" thread in the sick plants section https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=231387

View Image

Well I set my PH to about 5.3 and let it build up to 6.0, then I change the buckets with a new fresh solution.

That list say start at 5.8, could this be my issue as well. i was told by many that 5.2-6.2 is fine.

I do have quite a low ppm, but last week I tried 300ppm and the tips stated to look burned and I took it down to 200ppm immediately...

I am just quite lost at the moment...

 

[joe fresh]

the thing about ph is...you want it to "swing"...by the ph slowly moving up or down it allows the plant to get full use of the ferts in the solution...


i personally have never grown dwc, so i would listen to ppl that have, but i just though ti would throw my opinion out there...

one thing i learned...theres 1000 ppl on the internet willing to give you info and tips on how to grow....but theres also 1000 different ways to grow it....so if you start listening to everyone and taking advice from everywhere you will likely get mixed up....IMO, the best thing you can do is listen to everyones opinion, then YOU decide what to do next...this way you will learn and only from our mistakes do we learn...lets just say ive made alot over the years, lol...

 

[Verdure]

the thing about ph is...you want it to "swing"...by the ph slowly moving up or down it allows the plant to get full use of the ferts in the solution...


i personally have never grown dwc, so i would listen to ppl that have, but i just though ti would throw my opinion out there...

one thing i learned...theres 1000 ppl on the internet willing to give you info and tips on how to grow....but theres also 1000 different ways to grow it....so if you start listening to everyone and taking advice from everywhere you will likely get mixed up....IMO, the best thing you can do is listen to everyones opinion, then YOU decide what to do next...this way you will learn and only from our mistakes do we learn...lets just say ive made alot over the years, lol...

I completely understand. Any anyone with input is kindly appreciated. I am getting there, I have come to realize nutes/ lighting have a direct correlation, especially in hydro.

 

[Verdure]

Here are pics, Sorry for the Delay.

 

[Verdure]

 

[Verdure]