I waited 2 weeks as I've never had a problem till this week. Ppm at 590, ph 5.9. You say ppm goes down, as you top off and add your nutes back do you not try to maintain your ppm or do you just top off with tap until there is more tap then nutes and flush it then ? Any extra tips on lucas would be nice, there is so much and so far it's been great. At what points do you add cal mag and any other micro nutes ?
i think i see the issue. your ppm is way too strong for those small plants. that's why you have the clawing. too much N. i hardly go over 1.0EC (roughly 500ppm) even in full flowering. at those size, my EC is around 0.2 (100ppm).
i've done lucas for over 6 yrs now so i'm fairly experienced with it. here's what i'd do: flush with pH'd water for 24 hrs. always my first step if having issues. next, mix up a batch of nutes using 2mL micro/ 4 mL bloom for however many gallons you have. feed that to them for a few days. they should start to look better. if so, mix up your next batch at 3/6. then go to 4/8 and up to 5/10 if still looking good.
i never liked the add back part of lucas. here's why. let's say you mix up a batch at 5/10. what if the plant uses lots of N but not much P or K? then when you addback, you replace the missing N but now your P and K are way too much. i mix up batch on day 1. top off with just plain water for the rest of the week. dump on day 7 and mix up a new batch. repeat. repeat. repeat.
you "shouldn't" need cal/mg with lucas. micro nutes are in the micro bottle so extras not needed.
lucas is great. the only thing you might want to try is using RO water. i'm in CO too on a well with about the same ppm as you. i still fill up 5 gal jugs at walmart with RO. it just makes everything easier. i use about 10 gals a week.
all that make sense? if not, ask away. more than happy to help!
