Another PPM question

Good afternoon all
This is my 1st visit to the site so I would just like to say hello, with that said I will get right to it,

View attachment 2421112View attachment 2421113I Just rececently switched from soil to a waterfarm set up 15gl res and a circulating air pump useing 4 buckets turned into a dwc setup, elimenated the driprings and bucket inserts and replaced them with air stones and 6inch netpots sittiing in ordinary square bucket lids (got all this gear from a guy getting rid of a ton of stuff cheap) included were 2 ppm penns an EZ test penn and a brand new BlueLab penn,
I'm not sure if I'm haveing a ppm problem but I have 4 in veg in FoxFarm hydro about 4 weeks old and for the first couple of weeks they have been in a mix of 180ppm (old penn) or 210bluelab (.030difference between penns)either way they look great, velvety green with lots of growth, after 2weeks I changed out the res and brought PPM's back to 210(BL) after a week PPM's started dropping, ppm has been dropping.020pts per day if I add a few dropps of FFhydro to the res within 4 or 5 hrs the plants start to get darker, by now my res has the ppm of tapwater .077ppm(ez)-110 (BL) , do I just keep adding a few drops per day , or change the out the res,if I change out the res do I go full strength I dont want to burn them, other than the BlueLab reading .030 higher both penns reflect the low ppm, .... also i see guys with 1200ppm, If I went over 200ppm useing FF hydro on any other dwc grow that I've done I would get burn how are they running such big #'s..............hope I wasnt to long winded and sorry for any question that should be common sense,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Thanks for any help

Welll first for Fox Farm your ppms sound very very low as I use fox farm and the charts always have the ppm between like 1000 and 1500 but I even run at 1800 ppm. You sure your reading ppms?? Download their feeeding chart make sure your using the hydro chart not the soil chart as the nutes and ppms are very different they have hydro nutes and soil nutes same names just different mix.. PPms will drop daily or maybe rise. dropping shows the plants are eating. if your ppm rise then it means they are drinking more then feeding. Do not add more food daily you should just top off with pure water daily then start fresh with next drain and refill.Keep your ph around 5.5 to 5.8 in hydro

Heres the hydro feeding chart

http://www.pueblohydroponics.com/feeding/foxfarm-hydro.pdf

First off, I run two waterfarm kits combined into one, using 1 controller bucket, 12 buckets, and 3 circulating pumps. I would suggest putting the drip rings back in. I also run a 110L 12 outlet commercial airpump with the air stones in each bucket. The drip rings will help you in early stages until your roots have made it down to the water below where the air stones are. Combination top drip and DWC works great. If you can, put the rings back in!

PPM depends on a few things and with these kits that we have, circulation, ppm, and PH are very big factors. It's hard to control the ph of 12 buckets through my controller, but I've managed to figure it out.

My main recommendation, is start low, and gradually work your way up. Do things slow, because making quick adjustments with these kits recirculating is rather tricky. Mine circulate 15 mins on, 15 off, so that everything can level out while the pumps are off.

Also, is your PH pen properly calibrated? Some come from the factory and need calibration immediately.

As far as making corrections for your PH/PPM, I'll tell you what I do, that works for me. This will probably work great for you because you use water pumps as well. Most waterfarm users don't.

When you have the right ppm/water ratio for your plants, they will use the two pretty consistently together and your PH/ppm wont fluctuate very much.

If your doing what I was previously doing.... I was pumping 4 gallons out, and putting 4 fresh (200ppm mix) back in. The next 4 gallons in would be water only. Well I found that my PH would rise and fall and had a weird trend to it until I started only correcting with low nutrient mix. Meaning, If I saw my ph in my controller was 5.6, I would make a 4 gallon batch of 6.0 to try to balance at 5.8

If I only used water for PH up, and PH down to bring it down, i found that it was much more unstable more often than just adding a consistently low nutrient mix, but on a consistent basis.

My mix is: 1tsp floragro, 1tsp floramicro, 1 tsp florabloom, 1 tsp calimagic. 4 gallons water. (technically 1/4 strength from what the bottle says) All for combined mix for 200ppm (340 with tap). I will correct PH as needed to accompany the rest of the system. Took A LOT of trial and error.

View attachment 2421233

See? No reservoir. Oh, plus those little reflective squares that I put where the drip rings go, works GREAT. Keeps root temps low, keeps it shaded, and my roots actually have grown directly under the drip rings, and are all the way to the bottom in my buckets.

Plants pictured are 1 month old.

Keep your ph around 5.5 to 5.8 in hydro

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5.5-6.1 to be precise. View attachment 2421239

some things I'm using,
HTG 250w HPS,MH conversion(veg and flower)
FoxFarm, grow big hydro and Tiger bloom
Hygrowzym
Milwaukee Ph56
BlueLab dig penn
res temp F
Well heres what I did, last night my res had a ppm of 120 Ph.1 (calibrated Milwaukee Ph) and the plants look really green with a spot or 2 of burn on the lower bigger leaves which happened during a complete res change last week(some history)ppm's were dropping from 180ppm (what I started with before ppm drop) to 130 within 5 days so I changed out the res bringing ppm's back to 180ppm and within 4 or 5 hrs I started to get burn, I diluted the mix down to 130ppm and readjusted ph, things got better and growth really took off(pic is 5days after last posted pic) well back to what I did to the res last night, I pulled 10gl out of the res and let the buckets back flush to the res, then I brought ppm's to 150 adjusted ph to 6.0 and filled the res back up (without the bucket inserts the system runs with 15gl) and again within a couple of hrs I started noticing the tips of the leaves getting white not white but brightish looking and the leaves that had burn started to show signs of burn so again I dropped ppm back down to 120-130 and again within a couple of hrs the tips on the leaves filled in with green and all signs of burn stopped,,,,,,I guess I will keep ppm's at 120 as long as things look good, until I change over to Tiger bloom and I guess I will start at the same 120-130 just to be safe,,,,,,,,,about the dripprings, yea I guess they would be good to keep youngins going but I had nothing but grief with all that hydroton, I just take them from a daisy cloner after roots are about 5inches long and go wright into the net pots then I just raise the water level up into the net pots about 1/2inch when roots start poking through I drop the level to an inch or so below the pot,,,,,,,,,Again thanks for the help I will keep posting updates and pics if anyone is interested .View attachment 2422320View attachment 2422322View attachment 2422323

I like how you have the controller outside of the tent to keep the water temps down. Good call.

Thanks,,,it killed me to cut a couple of holes in my tents but I just made a couple of x's with a little Hobby knife,,,where did you get that reflective matt I wouldn't mind picking up some of that, I was also thinking of wrapping the buckets with some sort of insulation (non fiberglass of coarse),,,,,,,,,,,,,how long before you flower those girls which I must say look great, you obviously have it figured out, I don't think I could run the #'s your running , I tried bringing things to 140ppm 6.0ph and started to notice burn, diluted back to 120-130 and all seems fine, ph is stable along w/ppm and they are drinking things up and growin. I have to say ,things were slower w/soil but less stressful less hurdles to overcome but I am determined to figure all this out.

Home depot. 10'x25' roll for 16$

I still have quite some time. I'll letcha know when!

I have to say ,things were slower w/soil but less stressful less hurdles to overcome but I am determined to figure all this out.

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LOL, I hear ya!!! I am just finishing my first hydro flood and drain and I was waiting to find the plants dead every day lol. But that was replaced with shock and awww when I saw how much faster the girls grow in water. I have jumped in with both feet and am now running three res's and it all just keeps getting better!!!! I learned that the worst thing I was doing was panicing and trying to bring things in check to quickly just keep it low and slow all good. PH was my biggest problem at first but seems ok now with slight fluctuations. Good Luck!!!!

I'm still expecting to find them dead everytime I check on them,just started noticing some spots on the leaves (now what)going to change over to TigerBloom later today.

The Mataro Blue I am growing has 2-3 phenos and one plant is blotchy and yellow but there is not much I am doing as the other plants are fine and all in same tray. You should post some pics to see if there is an issue.

have grown at least a doz grows using the same FF nutes in individual dwc buckets without any of these issues, I recognize the spots as burn and its not that bad, once I changed out the nutes to Tigerbloom and started the circulation I was catching the return to the res in a cup and what was coming back to the res was almost 40 points lower, so say it went in at 170ppm it was returning as 130ppm?,,,all I can figure is the roots are acting like a filter and accumulating the nutes, so I diluted the mix and put the circulation pump on a timer it will run 15min every other hr View attachment 2427885View attachment 2427886View attachment 2427887

Wow thats an amazing amount of food!!! I run my timer 15min on 1hr off but my roots just hang in the air. My issue is PH and if I let it go above 6.2 the plant gets even more yellow!!

What country are you guys in ? just curious as 170 and 150 ppm is lower then the diluted ppm for new cuttings. With Fox Farm ppm should be 1000 ppm and over as per Fox Farms charts. I stay between 1500ppm and 1800 ppm in flower. I use US meters and pens for ppm, ec, and ph.

Actually Filthy I think he was using that as an example not the actual reading! It was the 40 points in to out that was the point I believe. Hell my water is 300 ppm TDS out of the tap lol