Proper PPM level

Discussion in 'Hydroponic Growing' started by Sabastian, Jan 1, 2011.


  1. I clean tubs between water changes. I use RO water 10 ppm at most. Not sure about air movement, but I like to think so.
     

  2. what strain are you growing
     
  3. Thanks again Caesar. I'm gonna switch to RO water next exchange which should be this weekend. Do you still feel 800-1000 w/ RO water is a good target as you posted earlier given any new info since? My tap has been running 130-140ppm.

    Also, I have just enough room to run one more large spiral CFL. I have 1 65w 3000k and another 65w 6500k. While in veg I was thinking to add another 6500k, but should I then switch it out to a 3000k when flowering, or does that make sense? Will I cause problems or reduce effectiveness if I have more 3000k vs 6500k light at different times? Gonna post the question to the general board as well... thanks!
     

  4. RO is always a good chose I'm not shore what your using for nuts but you will wont to keep and eye out for cal/mag deff
    as far as CFL's go I'm really clueless but i would not go much over 800 PPM using them i run 1000 PPM using a 1000 MH , CO2 and all the bells and whistle in veg
     

  5. Right now Oasis (northern lights) but also Burmese Kush and Skywalker( blueberry and Mazar cross)as well as skunk #1. Getting ready to run Armageddon which will be new to me.
     
  6. #26 Sabastian, Jan 18, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 18, 2011
    Just an update if anyone is interested... after pushing the nutes into the 980-1000+ range, burn started to occur, ph started dropping and ppm started increasing daily. I adjusted by adding ph upped water which also reduced the ppm, but it has been a daily effort to keep the ph and the ppm down. I was going to switch to RO water this weekend but decided to run it a bit longer into this week. The plants are rather short and bushy and I don't think they will ever recover or do what they could have. With RO water I will run less than 800ppm. I will probably go ahead and flower them starting at the end of the month so I can get some experience there, lick my wounds and start again when I've gone through this learning process. I don't think that you can run this level of lighting (130 watts of CFLs) with higher levels of nutes, at least not with this plant strain. Next time I think I may go ahead and get a small 150 watt HPS and go with a different nute brand. I don't think heat will be an issue cause I will probably just put it in the spare shower I don't use.

    Thanks again for all your help everyone. If they make it through flowering I will post some pics and let you know how they came out.
     
  7. Wow just read this and for some reason thought you were in flowering stage. IMO you need to drop your nutes dramatically to like 400 ppm or so.
     
  8. #28 toy4runr, Jan 19, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 19, 2011



    Sunleaves makes a nice little 150Watt light that is a ballast / reflector combo that is switchable from MH to HPS. Might be just the thing for your grow. However, I assure you that you will eventually want more light so you may wish to consider an electronic switchable 400Watt ballast with a good relfector and appropriate MH and HPS bulbs. I use Nextgen. Here is a link: http://www.hidhut.com/catalog/digital-ballasts-c-21.html
     
  9. Thanks you all, will check the lights n links out. BTW, yesterday I switched to RO water and dropped my nutes to less than 650 and this morning the plants look a lot better. One of them was really droopy but today it is looking a lot more perky. I got the RO water at Winco (not sure you all have one of those, big grocery story chain) and their water is only 30 cents per gallon if you use your own container. Measured at 11ppm and 6.0 ph. My tap was pretty good at 130ppm average and 6.2ph, but as someone else mentioned ya never know what is in the water... at 30 cents a gallon that is clearly the way to go with my little set up.

    Regarding the lights, I'm probably never going to grow more than 2-3 plants max at a time, and my plan at this point would be to add the 150 watt HPS and put the other 130watts of CFLs on the sides. I have a lot more room now that I have given up on the cabinet and am just running the thing in the bathtub/shower.
     
  10. Just one final update in case this is helpful to others... by switching to RO water, reducing my nutes into the 650-700ppm range and making sure ph ranged between 5.8-6.0, the plants have recovered very nicely, are growing great and will probably be ready to turn in another week or so... late, but that's ok. For the record, I think the RO water was a very very good idea, eventhough my tap didn't seem bad... there may have been something in it that was contributing to the problem. Thanks again to all!
     
  11. I'm having similar problems been sitting in the couch all day trying to figure it out because of so many different things that happened a week ago. Looks like light burn but my light were always a good 12 inches away. Ph was really acidic and changed it immediately. Now after that my ballast died on my and plants woke up 3 hours late on top of that I only had a small cfl replacement which didn't luminate nearly enough. At the time the ballast went out I had a fresh batch of nutrients that I put in the night before and it was 200 ppms higher than what I usually put ( which is 800) so it's sitting here with little light and high ppm couple days later leaves look like yours what was it well just like u I lightened up the solution and I saw the ppms got higher and higher every other day that meant the plant was drinking water and not eating because it was becoming more concentrated or would stay the same ppm from 3 days ago after adding water back to the same water line (dwc by the way). This most likely means that the plants not eating because it had to much nutes I would think it would start eating again if I adjusted the ph and got rid of the lockout so since it did not i can only come to the
    Conclusion that i went over on nutes so I just gave it str8 ro water and is most likely gonna help I guess u really don't need that much all at once when doing hydro just make sure it has food at all times even if its a little ill spread out the dosages throughout the week and keep the roots in 400-500 ppm water instead of slamming it at Rez change time having the roots submerged in a higher solution of 1000-1200 decreases the chances of burn and it still gets the same amount of food
     

Share This Page