First time grower in RDWC

So me and my brother are first time growers. We really liked the hydro option and decided to go with that knowing it would be harder to start with. Having said that we killed our first set of plants. The advice we was getting was scattered and often contradicted by someone else and seemed like some of the advice was more soil related.

So we run off well water and our ppm has been between 35-70ppm, Sal .06ppt, and ph 5.3-5.5(we balance it to 5.8 ). When would we want to start adding nutrients to our water to bring the ppm level up and what ppm should we be shooting for.


Our plants started yellowing from the new growth from the base to the tip on day 6 from sprout (auto flower). We thought this would be an immobile nutrient deficiency and got some cal mag to add. We asked for advice on Reddit and was told by one poster to shoot for 350ppm and another poster said 200. We thought 350 would be to high and instead did 200ppm with hrdroguard/cal-mag/general hydroponics flora series and this seemed to cook our plants. We diluted the water to 175 then 150 and eventually made a new rez at 125. But the plants have been stunted since and we are just going with a new batch. First pic is day 6 from sprout 2nd is day 25 from sprout.

First welcome to RIU. When I start seedlings I give them a light feeding that is around 250 ppm. How do you start your seeds? Do you use Rockwool or some other method? Me I start seeds in Rockwool and when roots are showing I move to bucket and leave about 2 inches of space between water and bottom of pot so that the just get a misting from air stones and are not getting to wet. This is how I do it and have had 100% success rate. Others may do it differently. Some others will chime in hopefully and you can take the info provided and make an informed decision and find out what works for you. Good luck and happy Growing.

I don't give them food until they have produced serrated leves and have a way to begin to process nutrients. Usually when I see 3 fingers begins to grow at the crown above true leafs. Then I start at about ¼ - ⅓ strength veg feed for first week, then half for the next week, then ¾ to ⅘ recommended dose on feed schedule. And usually hover around there for all of veg

Skillcraft said:

First welcome to RIU. When I start seedlings I give them a light feeding that is around 250 ppm. How do you start your seeds? Do you use Rockwool or some other method? Me I start seeds in Rockwool and when roots are showing I move to bucket and leave about 2 inches of space between water and bottom of pot so that the just get a misting from air stones and are not getting to wet. This is how I do it and have had 100% success rate. Others may do it differently. Some others will chime in hopefully and you can take the info provided and make an informed decision and find out what works for you. Good luck and happy Growing.

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Can I make a suggestion @Rolltideroll420 ?

Hatch your seed in a simple rockwool cube. Let it grow untill you see roots. Then place it on another cube, then build a base. I use 1.5 inch cubes stack them like this. At this point I am still totally hydroponic, my plant is tall enough to sit on the bottom on the net pot basket and fill with hydroton around it. Roots exposed to water directly.
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Now you can start your training if you wish.

Looking at your picks I don't know if the roots ever made it to the water below on your last attempt

Skillcraft said:

First welcome to RIU. When I start seedlings I give them a light feeding that is around 250 ppm. How do you start your seeds? Do you use Rockwool or some other method? Me I start seeds in Rockwool and when roots are showing I move to bucket and leave about 2 inches of space between water and bottom of pot so that the just get a misting from air stones and are not getting to wet. This is how I do it and have had 100% success rate. Others may do it differently. Some others will chime in hopefully and you can take the info provided and make an informed decision and find out what works for you. Good luck and happy Growing.

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Ty for the welcome. I started in rockwool also and had the water level right at the bottom of the net pot for the first few days then we lowered the water level to about an inch or two below the net pot. At day one from sprout we gave it a small dip into 155ppm water 3/4 up the cube and set the rockwool where it could drain. On day 4 we did the same with 168ppm. We had a slight burn with this and flushed the Rockwell with straight water. About 2-3 days later we started seeing the leaves yellowing and thought we needed to feed again so we brought our ppm up to 200 and it burnt them. The leaves eventually turned yellow all the way through. Then the tips started to turn brown and burn and work back to the base of the leaves.

ProPheT 216 said:

Can I make a suggestion @Rolltideroll420 ?

Hatch your seed in a simple rockwool cube. Let it grow untill you see roots. Then place it on another cube, then build a base. I use 1.5 inch cubes stack them like this. At this point I am still totally hydroponic, my plant is tall enough to sit on the bottom on the net pot basket and fill with hydroton around it. Roots exposed to water directly.
=
=
===

Now you can start your training if you wish.

Looking at your picks I don't know if the roots ever made it to the water below on your last attempt

Click to expand...

Our roots actually came out the bottom of the net pots on 8/9 of the plants. They have new growth happening still we just feel we have stunted them so much and being an auto flower that we might be better to just start over.
Hopefully on this next batch we have better success. We was thinking about using a rapid rooter this time around and when we put it in the hydroton we will top feed it till the roots come out the bottom of the net pots. And probably trying to feed it at about the time you mentioned with the first set of true leaves and the next set starting. We just wanted to see if that was about the right time and what strength to use. We used a 1/3 strength last time to get us to the 200 ppm range because our ppm was still low at 1/4 this might be why we had the burning. Should we not worry about what our ppm is as much as staying 1/5-1/4 strength of the recommended until we see deficiencies.

Also with being well water I don’t know what exactly is in the water. With it being 30-70ppm from the tap should I use a form of cal mag from the first feeding?

Do you understand ec? You are reciting ppm. Do you know their are 3 different conversion charts based on what formula your device uses?

ProPheT 216 said:

Do you understand ec? You are reciting ppm. Do you know their are 3 different conversion charts based on what formula your device uses?

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I don’t know a lot about EC I did know a conversion was happening from it to ppm but I don’t know what the conversion is. From most everywhere I’ve seen ppm is what they talk about so that’s what I’ve looked at.

Rolltideroll420 said:

Our roots actually came out the bottom of the net pots on 8/9 of the plants. They have new growth happening still we just feel we have stunted them so much and being an auto flower that we might be better to just start over.
Hopefully on this next batch we have better success. We was thinking about using a rapid rooter this time around and when we put it in the hydroton we will top feed it till the roots come out the bottom of the net pots. And probably trying to feed it at about the time you mentioned with the first set of true leaves and the next set starting. We just wanted to see if that was about the right time and what strength to use. We used a 1/3 strength last time to get us to the 200 ppm range because our ppm was still low at 1/4 this might be why we had the burning. Should we not worry about what our ppm is as much as staying 1/5-1/4 strength of the recommended until we see deficiencies.

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I'm not gonna lie, and I'm ready to take the heat

I don't check ec unless I notice something isn't right. Then I will start taking notes, and monitoring the situation. Dwc I can instantly change my plants root environment in minutes. I just watch my plants. Tacos, and claws, leaf tips, color changes. They talk I swear

Rolltideroll420 said:

I don’t know a lot about EC I did know a conversion was happening from it to ppm but I don’t know what the conversion is. From most everywhere I’ve seen ppm is what they talk about so that’s what I’ve looked at.

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You could easily be off what you thought you were doing by a point or 2 even at this low ec

ProPheT 216 said:

I'm not gonna lie, and I'm ready to take the heat

I don't check ec unless I notice something isn't right. Then I will start taking notes, and monitoring the situation. Dwc I can instantly change my plants root environment in minutes. I just watch my plants. Tacos, and claws, leaf tips, color changes. They talk I swear

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Yea we are just struggling understanding their language lol. That’s all going to come with experience tho. We’ve got a few books we have been reading but you just can’t really supplement experience.

You sound like you were quite prepared, to the point I'm shocked with your results. Would suck if this was why but... how much did you spend on your ppm meter? Only good cheap one I know of is ink birds. Other than that it's hurting your more than helping if you got some 10 dollar pos off amazon

ProPheT 216 said:

You sound like you were quite prepared, to the point I'm shocked with your results. Would suck if this was why but... how much did you spend on your ppm meter? Only good cheap one I know of is ink birds. Other than that it's hurting your more than helping if you got some 10 dollar pos off amazon

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My brother bought it it’s a apera brand. Shows about 110 dollars on eBay.

Rolltideroll420 said:

My brother bought it it’s a apera brand. Shows about 110 dollars on eBay.

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Lol, I have their ph pen. I'm baffled. Guess you were scared to burn them up and never gave them food

ProPheT 216 said:

Lol, I have their ph pen. I'm baffled. Guess you were scared to burn them up and never gave them food

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Yea we tried not to skimp to much we got the same brand ph meter. We have an 800 dollar light se7000 spider farm. 400 dollar chiller we have about 2500 all together invested in our tent but we split it up between three people so we could afford it. We will figure it out tho. Ty for the help again.

K I S S

Just do the ⅓ feed strength thing to get started or double what you did on your meter. Rather see some curl or burnt tip than just yellow and die. Use ec/ppm to see if the plant drinks more, less, or equal water vs nuts. Ideally you want your plant to clean most the plate off as it begins to fill the res [eat more than drink, see value drop]

What is your light? How far away?

ProPheT 216 said:

What is your light? How far away?

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Spiderfarm se7000 on 40% at 20” above plants
I’m the brother he mentioned.

Spent all that money but did not buy an RO unit for the well water?

If you want to do hydro I think it is a must have...makes life easier. Then you know exactly what is in the water...only what you put in it. That well water already has a ph of 5.5??? That is bad stuff.

Turn the light all the way down and move it way up...like 4 feet up.

Keep it simple is the best advice.

I run sterile hydro with jacks 321 in ro water.

.4 ec for seedlings. 0.8ec for a small plant.

1 ec for veg. Then I just read the plant and the ec of the res. If they are eating a lot raise it up a lil.

I stunted a lot of Autos learning my lights and environment. They will be fine. I grew huge plants that I stunted for a month. They will just take a lot longer. And that defeats the purpose of an auto but such is life.

My guess is your well water is junk. With RO water i do not use ph up or down. The nutes put it at the correct spot.