PizzaMan5000
Well-Known Member
Well I can say that it's tough to grow plants with tap water coming out of the faucet at 1,400ppm.
I'd like to share a terrible story you can all enjoy at my expense. See those gorgeous pictures I posted up there? Running on jack's looking great at 3g/gallon 5-12-26 and 2.4g/gallon calcium nitrate. How could a gardener possibly bone up a gravy train like that? Start playing with the mix even though the plants look great. Instead of running the same 3g/jack's and 2.4g calcium nitrate I increased the calcium nitrate to 3g/gallon. This raised the PPM of the reservoir by 150 from 700 to 850, a substantial increase in concentration. Within 6 hours all of my plants throughout the garden were showing signs of over fertilization. New growth was starting to shrivel and twist particularly in the flower room under the high powered LED boards. Operator error completely. No fault of jack's. The company does not recommend a 1:1 ratio. Now I see why Anyhow, I observed this at 11:30 last night as I did a final check before bed. I immediately realized I erred in changing the mix and I had a choice to make. Either go to bed and let the damage continue all night into the next morning or fix the problem. I chose to fix the problem. Dumped the 15 gallons left in the res. Rinsed. Cleaned. Began refilling with RO water. Mixed up a fresh batch of fertilizer. I was panicked by my error and feeling really down on myself so I mixed up some maxi grow to get my girls back on track out of familiarity. I'll be preparing another res of jack's today at 3g jack's and 2g calcium nitrate. I'll run this mix on my nurseries. If everything looks good in 48 hours I'll get the big girls back on the 5-12-26. There are quite a few guys on ICMAG that run straight 600PPM Jack's start to finish. 360PPM jack's and 240PPM calcium nitrate. If the plants are healthy and display no deficiencies why not? Watered thoroughly all areas to flush out the excess calcium nitrate. Evacuated the drip trays. Long story short I didn't get to bed until 4. Today I woke up and checked all my plants. Everything is back to healthy. My second RO res is almost full. Going to mix up a fresh batch of jack's. Today I will be making stock solutions of Jack's 5-12-26 and calcium nitrate. Instead of mixing by weight I will be mixing by PPM moving forward while maintaining the recommended Jack's to calcium nitrate ratio of 1:.67. In a nutshell it seems like Jack's keeps the girls happy at a much lower PPM / EC than GH maxi. If I try to run Jack's at the same PPM / EC I ran maxi at the plants burn.i think youre doing right going higher with the cal nitrate to jacks ratio, youre on the right track.
i ve calced a lot elemental ppm for a 5-20-30 salt a while back and for veg about 1:1 is fine.
pratically i go even a bit higher with the cal nitrate to my 5-20-30 salt (as also foreseen to do so by the manufacoter btw.), maybe 1.25:1 ratio.
can imagine with the EC youre running its hard to dial in.I'd like to share a terrible story you can all enjoy at my expense. See those gorgeous pictures I posted up there? Running on jack's looking great at 3g/gallon 5-12-26 and 2.4g/gallon calcium nitrate. How could a gardener possibly bone up a gravy train like that? Start playing with the mix even though the plants look great. Instead of running the same 3g/jack's and 2.4g calcium nitrate I increased the calcium nitrate to 3g/gallon. This raised the PPM of the reservoir by 150 from 700 to 850, a substantial increase in concentration. Within 6 hours all of my plants throughout the garden were showing signs of over fertilization. New growth was starting to shrivel and twist particularly in the flower room under the high powered LED boards. Operator error completely. No fault of jack's. The company does not recommend a 1:1 ratio. Now I see why Anyhow, I observed this at 11:30 last night as I did a final check before bed. I immediately realized I erred in changing the mix and I had a choice to make. Either go to bed and let the damage continue all night into the next morning or fix the problem. I chose to fix the problem. Dumped the 15 gallons left in the res. Rinsed. Cleaned. Began refilling with RO water. Mixed up a fresh batch of fertilizer. I was panicked by my error and feeling really down on myself so I mixed up some maxi grow to get my girls back on track out of familiarity. I'll be preparing another res of jack's today at 3g jack's and 2g calcium nitrate. I'll run this mix on my nurseries. If everything looks good in 48 hours I'll get the big girls back on the 5-12-26. There are quite a few guys on ICMAG that run straight 600PPM Jack's start to finish. 360PPM jack's and 240PPM calcium nitrate. If the plants are healthy and display no deficiencies why not? Watered thoroughly all areas to flush out the excess calcium nitrate. Evacuated the drip trays. Long story short I didn't get to bed until 4. Today I woke up and checked all my plants. Everything is back to healthy. My second RO res is almost full. Going to mix up a fresh batch of jack's. Today I will be making stock solutions of Jack's 5-12-26 and calcium nitrate. Instead of mixing by weight I will be mixing by PPM moving forward while maintaining the recommended Jack's to calcium nitrate ratio of 1:.67. In a nutshell it seems like Jack's keeps the girls happy at a much lower PPM / EC than GH maxi. If I try to run Jack's at the same PPM / EC I ran maxi at the plants burn.
No epsom?I'd like to share a terrible story you can all enjoy at my expense. See those gorgeous pictures I posted up there? Running on jack's looking great at 3g/gallon 5-12-26 and 2.4g/gallon calcium nitrate. How could a gardener possibly bone up a gravy train like that? Start playing with the mix even though the plants look great. Instead of running the same 3g/jack's and 2.4g calcium nitrate I increased the calcium nitrate to 3g/gallon. This raised the PPM of the reservoir by 150 from 700 to 850, a substantial increase in concentration. Within 6 hours all of my plants throughout the garden were showing signs of over fertilization. New growth was starting to shrivel and twist particularly in the flower room under the high powered LED boards. Operator error completely. No fault of jack's. The company does not recommend a 1:1 ratio. Now I see why Anyhow, I observed this at 11:30 last night as I did a final check before bed. I immediately realized I erred in changing the mix and I had a choice to make. Either go to bed and let the damage continue all night into the next morning or fix the problem. I chose to fix the problem. Dumped the 15 gallons left in the res. Rinsed. Cleaned. Began refilling with RO water. Mixed up a fresh batch of fertilizer. I was panicked by my error and feeling really down on myself so I mixed up some maxi grow to get my girls back on track out of familiarity. I'll be preparing another res of jack's today at 3g jack's and 2g calcium nitrate. I'll run this mix on my nurseries. If everything looks good in 48 hours I'll get the big girls back on the 5-12-26. There are quite a few guys on ICMAG that run straight 600PPM Jack's start to finish. 360PPM jack's and 240PPM calcium nitrate. If the plants are healthy and display no deficiencies why not? Watered thoroughly all areas to flush out the excess calcium nitrate. Evacuated the drip trays. Long story short I didn't get to bed until 4. Today I woke up and checked all my plants. Everything is back to healthy. My second RO res is almost full. Going to mix up a fresh batch of jack's. Today I will be making stock solutions of Jack's 5-12-26 and calcium nitrate. Instead of mixing by weight I will be mixing by PPM moving forward while maintaining the recommended Jack's to calcium nitrate ratio of 1:.67. In a nutshell it seems like Jack's keeps the girls happy at a much lower PPM / EC than GH maxi. If I try to run Jack's at the same PPM / EC I ran maxi at the plants burn.
I'm reconsidering adding epsom. I think the issues I experienced were unrelated to the addition of epsom salt in the mix. I think the concentration of Jack's and calcium nitrate was too high. I don't have a science based reason for omitting the epsom salt at this point and think it may have been short sighted. I'm about to mix my 32 gallon res now with Jack's. 3g jacks, 2.4g calnit, 1.1g epsom. I expect an EC of about 1.6-1.7. I've gotta water the babies today right after mixing. I'll report back tomorrow how the plants are doingNo epsom?
Negative ghostrider. Jack's 5-12-26 has 6.3% magnesium sulfate. I'm on RO water so the extra mag in epsom salt is probably useful. If I was on tap probably not.for jacks some epsom should be needed (32....1), the megacrop 2 part have 6% in it allready (more then jacks).
It was most certainly operator error on my part. Jack's recommends 1:.67 ratio of jack's to calcium nitrate. I screwed the pooch by doing a 1:1 ratio. No good.still jacks itself say use 1 part epsom to 3 parts basesalt, 321,
You are correct ghostrider.tyour Ec is too high for my view.
I never question anything you say but I have had the opposite experience. Maybe it depends a lot on what we all choose to feed with. But in my experience, more than 1.5 EC in coco starts to cause problems and more than 0.9 EC in RDWC is the same. Just my experience.I have seen so many times, folks running an EC of 1.6 and having all sorta issues. I asked them to up the feed to around 2.0 and bam problems went away. To each their own but I can't get good results below 2.0, ever.
If you aren't adding Epsom, then your 1.6EC feed is quite a bit higher in N than a 1.6EC feed with Epsom would be.I'm reconsidering adding epsom. I think the issues I experienced were unrelated to the addition of epsom salt in the mix. I think the concentration of Jack's and calcium nitrate was too high. I don't have a science based reason for omitting the epsom salt at this point and think it may have been short sighted. I'm about to mix my 32 gallon res now with Jack's. 3g jacks, 2.4g calnit, 1.1g epsom. I expect an EC of about 1.6-1.7. I've gotta water the babies today right after mixing. I'll report back tomorrow how the plants are doing
You are missing out on a lot of sulfur by not adding epsom.Negative ghostrider. Jack's 5-12-26 has 6.3% magnesium sulfate. I'm on RO water so the extra mag in epsom salt is probably useful. If I was on tap probably not.
Jack's contains 6.3% magnesium sulfate which is beautiful. I think that's why some gardeners omit the epsom. The 5-12-26 is already loaded with it, but I'm also on RO water. I will add 1g/gallon. My target EC is 1.6. It sure seems like most gardeners running jack's stick between 1.2-1.6. As a matter of fact there are many gardeners on ICMAG that run 600PPM start to finish with excellent results. It seems like Jack's really packs more of a punch than the maxi I was using. To get satisfactory results I had to run maxi at 800-850 consistently. That only makes Jack's last even longer making it an even greater value. Got some pics I'm gonna post from making my stock solution. Had some residue from the 5-12-26. Wondering if any of you have seen the same. Nothing major. I filtered it to eliminate any minor residue I observed to keep the stock solution pure with no particles. The water wasn't boiling, but it was close. That may have caused some elemental interaction. I'll only gently warm the water next time I make stock solutions. Gimme a few. I'll be back.You are missing out on a lot of sulfur by not adding epsom.
Indicas need a lil lower feed iirc.It looks like the problems seem to have resolved since adjusting to 3g jacks and 2.4g calcium nitrate. I really didn't see much to photograph. After looking at the pictures I don't think there was a deficiency of any kind. I think full strength just burned them plain and simple.
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Girl scout cookies. Looks pretty darn healthy I suppose. Maybe I overreacted?
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Ghost train haze looking healthy also.
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I'm making stock solutions. Mixing 2# of fertilizer in 128oz of cold water isn't a good game plan if you ever want to finish the process.i dont need boiling water to dissolve my salts completly (usig hakaphos made for drip irrigation), cant comment there.
used maxigrow too (one bag), it worked but it clumps and dont dissolve good in cold water.
Try 320g in that volume instead.I'm making stock solutions. Mixing 2# of fertilizer in 128oz of cold water isn't a good game plan if you ever want to finish the process.