Flora Nova Grow and Bloom help

I think you covered it. It is as simple as if you add your full ppm nutrients to a reservoir without accounting for the continual increase in concention (ppm) caused by water evaporation your alrady skewed nutrients (unbalanced) will also bemore concentrated by the additional full ppm nutrient mix you are adding. At least mix your makeup water at 75% or 85% strength to make up for evaporation losses and simply add a few ml more concentrate if needed. Your feeble excuse of the dangers of adding full strength nutrients to the reservoir is a sham. You simply add in small amounts into water that is well aerated and there is no issue.

Your suggested method is obviously not safer. One one possible sage guard it offers is very small in comparison to the huge problem it can cause. In fact the only advantage it offers is ease. Ease seldom presents a better out come, just a bit of break for a person more willing to take dangerous short cuts than they are willing to provide the minimal amount of time it requiresto do somthing properly. A little bit of simple math would show you how wrong you are about the PPM concentration. Your trying to say that adding sya 25% new nutrient water daily when it is say 25% over strength due to no allowance for evaporation is simply ludicrous.

Maybe I'm missing something since I have only been growing since 74 and use sound scientific principles gained through an extensive college education in the sciences. I don't think what I could possibly be missing that could convince me in anyway that your giving good davice in this manner though.

I knew aerogardens were sad, but 1 gallon? That is real sad!!

As far as a debate between RO and distilled waer there is no debate. Even a laboratory glass well monitrored and controlled distiller seldom puts out water of better quality than a 96 to 98% rejection RO filter system, especially if it includes a DI filter cartridgem meanin 99.999% pure water. You will never get that quality of water from distillation. Plus the distilled water usually contains nearly the same levels of Trihalomethanes and Haloacetic Acids as before distillation.

I do appluad your practice of changing out the reservoir at least once weekly. In reality though if I ever use a resvoir that small for anythingbut young clones, I would simply change the resrvoir daily and not worry about ppm issues. Of course most people using an aerogarden are also probably using $50 or a gallon nutrient concentrates so that might add $10 a month to their growing cost. Seems reasonable to me.

I don't know how this got to be a penis measuring contest, but apparently you win. i understand the concept that evaporation vs ion uptake means that adding a pre mixed concentration of nutrients will skew the system to be more concentrated. However, there is very little evaporation in an aerogarden (when sealed correctly) compartively to other systems. Which is why when completely refreshing your system weekly, you won't run into any problems.

Adding small amounts of nutrients to the resevoir would be great if it were practical for an aerogarden system. It is not. Allow me to lift the veil of my ludicrous "sham". Unfortunately, Aerogardens are not the perfect system for hydroponics/aeroponics. In fact i'll be the first to say that they are on the hairy assed end of the spectrum of perfection. The reservoir is too small, the roots end up taking over a majority of the system 4-6 weeks into a grow. This makes Putting in even small amounts of nutrients a tough task. The best way to accomplish that would be to take off the top grow bay, but removing that when you've got 3+ pounds of growth is dangerous to the plant. you could find countless stories of people who had their plants smashed dropped and damaged taking off this to refill the resevoir. As long as the testing results come back ok, why wouldn't i refill my resevoir with my pre-mixed solution.

As far as RO systems, many people don't have them installed in their homes and distilled water is a cheap easilly attainable solution. In fact I've read reports that distillation removes more ppm of common minerals then reverse osmosis. you are right given equal quantities RO water is better, but to put it in terms that i'm inciting propaganda is ludicrous.

You obviously have a pre-existing disdain for aerogarden growers, so don't come into an aerogarden thread to berate those whose only means to grow something is through aerogardens.

Look i know your educated, experienced and inteligent. I've read your posts and i can appreciate that you have helped a lot of individuals with understanding some simple & complex aspects of chemistry in growing. But sometimes the most optimal way run a system may not be the best way to run another.

cited RO article
http://www.pwgazette.com/rofaq.htm


I also really appreciate your interest in restoring the seafloor, i think that's a really cool hobby.

Your vulgarity is not appreciatted and is entirely uncalled for.

Your link is accuratte in the area I described in that it passes on the Trihalomethanes and Haloacetic Acids. It side tracks and gets innacuratte from that point on. It is very flawed in simply saying distilled water is better at removing salts. And that the salts remain behind. Anytimes there is a flash over minerals are passed through the condensor. This happens any time the water gets more than a few degrees higher than the evaporation temperature of water. I have seen many people create distilled water with water at a rolling boil with bubbles extending up and into the condensor. Lots of TDS in that distilled water. I was called into investigate a soda packing plant's processing line years ago when the major manafacturer still had many plants using distilling systems rather than membrane filtration in areas with hard water. They had a TDS ove 60 ppm coming out of the distillation plant. It was entirely due to processing the water at too high of a temperature. They increased production years before without increasing the number of stills they sued. They simply incraesed the temp and therefi ore increased production. Sad but a fact in commercial businesses. The operators are often pretty clueless and changes are made without contacting an engineer or even a strained processing operator.

I have seen many, many condensors with thick layers of calcium carbonates covering their surfaces. Routine maintenance for commercial distillers is to clean the condensors with acids to remove the carbonates. Those carbonate coatings extend through the piping exiting the distillers.

A distiller is only as good as it is operated. To operate a distiller in a fashion that equals the salts removal of a 96% to 98% rejection level RO filters is nearly impossible because it requires perfect temperature control through out the full distillation process. That just does not happen. Analyticl and research labs have even used methods where they only kept the middle stream production and through away the first and last 25% produced and it was still substandard to most RO water and all RODI water that could be produced automatically. And the distilled water requires nearly constant control and observation through out the process. The RO or RODI water production simply means turning on the water supply and walking away.

Companies that bottle drinking water if needing to filter use RO or ROd DI filters not Distilled water. Distilled water is old shop methodology and is only around beacuse it is cheap and can take davantage of waste heta. control to do so. Most analytical labs can not accomplish quality distilledwater that and that is why they use RODI filters rather than distillers to produce ultra pure water.

If a person does not own a RO or a RODI filter and chooses to buy water they should buy RO water not distilled water. In general commercial RO water is purer and has a lower TDS. Plus you are assured with RO filter water that the water has also been filter through cativated carbon filtration. Thai is not the case with Distilled water.

I really can not see why any person who bought an aerogarden can not simply put two bulkheads in the side of the aero garden and attach it to a larger reservoir with a surface water level at the same height. They can then simply do all there additions changes and such through the second reservoir. It would only nend a small pump and two hoses or pipes to interconnect the two reservoirs. An insanely small reservoir is just that. INSANE. This alteranive would allow the advanrages of a small grwo area to control temp and humidity easier but give you the advantages of a larger reservoir.