bubbleponic replacing water / nutes question.

hey,

ive been reading and learning a lot here, and i love this site.

im kinda confused with the whole replacing the water/nutes in my system.

can i just drain the water and add new water and nutes? like with no cleaning of the reservoir n such?

and what do i do with the root mass? just let them hang in the air? nothing will happen to them?

whats do i do guys?

~thanks

I change the res every week. I drain it completely then refill with the nute schedule for the new week. I add water to keep the level steady during the week but I don't add more nutes. Others do it differently. A little air bath is good for the roots. If I'm not in a hurry I leave them hang in air for a half hour before refilling.

I find that when I do a res change I get a growth spurt. I'm thinking it has to do with the roots getting lots of air. So at one point I was draining and then refilling with the same water every other day. This on top of adding what water was used. It certainly didn't hurt, my plants are going crazy.

I also added nutes in the proportion of the water used each day. I have a res with 6 gallons of water. If I found they had used 1 gallon of water that day I would refill that one gallon and then add a 1/6 dose of nutes, 2 gallons, 2/6 nutes.

I never burned the plants so I feel this works to keep the nutrient level up to what you want it to be. If I could find the testing gear I'd like to test for what the plant actually used that day (N,P,K or whatever), but until that time I'll have to do some guessing and this method was recommended to me by a very experienced grower.

Either of the methods described above will work. The roots love the air they get during a res change and you will see a growth spurt. You don't need to clean anything, just empty and refill.

awesome guys.
thank you very much^^
i will be posting my own journal soon. stealth pc tower grow of THC bomb.

It seems to me there is a shift away from adding nutes back in proportionally. Probably because of what has been hinted at - you know how much water is gone but you don't know how much of each nute component was consumed. Adding more will almost certainly change the balance. My take is that plants and animals in nature don't have a buffet of food in front of them every day. If the nute concentration gets low on the 4th or 5th day, and it is reset on the 7th, I'm ok with that. If I "really" felt they needed more nutes by the 4th or 5th day I would change the res completely every 4th or 5th day and reset nutes so I know what is in there.

Illegal Smile said:

It seems to me there is a shift away from adding nutes back in proportionally. Probably because of what has been hinted at - you know how much water is gone but you don't know how much of each nute component was consumed. Adding more will almost certainly change the balance. My take is that plants and animals in nature don't have a buffet of food in front of them every day. If the nute concentration gets low on the 4th or 5th day, and it is reset on the 7th, I'm ok with that. If I "really" felt they needed more nutes by the 4th or 5th day I would change the res completely every 4th or 5th day and reset nutes so I know what is in there.

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I'm just stating what worked for me, and they were never over fed. To me the bottom line is you give what the plant needs. I don't feel as though I've exceeded what the plant is capable of consuming as there was never any burn, that, to me, is one way to read the plants needs.

So, if what you're doing works for you IS, great keep it up!

I belive that adding more nutes when you top off is good for veg because they eat so much, but once into flower I got some burn from overfeeding them and I believe this is because they eat less. I can't prove this, but all I'm saying is keep a close eye on them. At first sign of burn you should replace some of the water with plain water to lower concentration. Believe me, nute burn can get out of hand quickly if you don't act quickly.

I have a different take on the differing opinions. here we go, like what was stated earlier you dont really know for sure how much or what proportion of the nutrients you plant consumed, but on the other hand if you can really read your plants and know what they want, then do what works for you.

I always like to stay away from nute burn so for me, I am always a little wary about force feeding, and they always say, you cant FORCE the plant to get bigger by just giving it more and more nutrients.

So I guess my two cents is: keep your plants healthy and happy, and once you can afford to experiment with nute levels and what not, then by all means show us the way

ACGrower said:

I have a different take on the differing opinions. here we go, like what was stated earlier you dont really know for sure how much or what proportion of the nutrients you plant consumed, but on the other hand if you can really read your plants and know what they want, then do what works for you.

I always like to stay away from nute burn so for me, I am always a little wary about force feeding, and they always say, you cant FORCE the plant to get bigger by just giving it more and more nutrients.

So I guess my two cents is: keep your plants healthy and happy, and once you can afford to experiment with nute levels and what not, then by all means show us the way

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I agree with your two cents. Good job!