Shit never ends in the garden man. I swapped out both my carbon blocks, prefilter, and DI resin. Fucker is spitting out 4-5ppm. No good. Spending another unplanned $50 for 2 new RO membranes on amazon. They'll hit Thursday and will be installed ASAP. How I was able to zero in on the membranes as the culprit is because all other filters have been swapped. This increased the rate of flow through the RO system dramatically. The RO membranes just can't keep up. Also, when the membranes are going out on ya it will trash your DI resin extremely fast on the final 5th stage of filtration. DI resin is a pretty ocean blue when it's all good. In under 1 month half of it has turned sludge brown. Another sign of that the RO membranes are failing. Here's a pic of the 5 stage system. It's basically a prefilter, 2 carbon blocks, the 2 RO membranes, and then finally to the DI resin. I gotta split before the DI with a flow regulator that goes to my kitchen sink and a 1 gallon pitcher in my basement near my garden work area I installed a float valve on. Who the hell wants to walk up stairs for a water refill. Not this fucking guy. That's for sure
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Laundry cold water tee feeds the RO system. Nuttin fancy. The 2 white canisters are the RO membranes. This is a water saver model so it has a 1:1 exchange ratio. The best you can get for efficiency.
So I asked myself a question today and we're gonna find out the answer soon enough. The question was, how low can I go on ec with jack's 321 that satisfies the plant's needs without using more than is necessary. I'm running 600PPM which is around 1.2 ec on the res I'm making today. I'm also trying out RAW's humic acid. I particularly think the RAW brand is a fleece job, but I bought this shit years ago and thought I'd give it a whirl at the lowest recommended rate of application. 1/8 tsp/gallon. It's supposed to increase the effectiveness of nutrient uptake. I doubt it, but we'll see. If I notice any negative effects the remainder of the bag will get trashed.
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I'm doing a major overhaul today getting the flower room up and running. I'm gonna banzai the fuck out of this overgrown critical mass that's way overgrown. Basically I'm just gonna hack the canopy down about 6". Then I'll let it all regrow back as an even lush horizontal canopy. And 6" lower
She's a beast:
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Applying another round of Forbid 4F to mitigate a mite issue. I fucking hate growing in the warm months. Mites are a plague that never ends. All it takes is 1 of those little cocksuckers to hitch hike on some article of your clothing. I change my shoes. I change my clothes. I shower after working outside before entering. Doesn't matter. The fuckers find a way in. After the forbid application I'll be switching to all organic methods using Grandevo CG and Venerate CG. They are safe and effective up to harvest day. Planning to initiate flowering in the next 14 days. Need a little more girth on my other smaller plants. This cycle is definitely gonna be a reduction in size. Not too dramatic, but it will be easier on me and the wife. Last cycle was a real bitch of a process. No encores
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Here's a pic of the outside garden using jack's 20-20-20 @ 650ppm:
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Edited: I mistakenly listed my ec as 2.5. Total brain fart. 1.25 ec
Just jack'n it fellas. It releases endorphins and promotes a sense of calm