foxfarm question

hi i am wondering if anyone has ever heard that fox farm nutes are for soil or hydro, but not for all types of hydro? the guy at the hydro shop said that the ff nutes are meant more for ebb and flow or flood and drain, etc. but apparently not for systems that require oxygenated solution. his reasoning is that the oxygen in the ff nutes, or any other organic/ organic-based nutes will cause fermentation, which can make your nute solution to become frothy and smelly, ultimately leading to root rot. and if this is correct, i could be wrong but i believe the gases caused/release from fermentation is co2. the green part of the plant wants breathes in co2, and the roots want oxygen. if roots get co2, they suffocate right? anyone have any input or thoughts on this?

Thanks!

That's sounds right what he told you . Fox farm is a soil based company more so . So there nutes work good in soil,soiless, and flood and drain systems . It can ferment . To make compost teas you mix your nutes in some water and bubble it with air , it ferments after 24 hrs .No co2 ,no yeast needed . You need something like Dyna-Gro , cheapest Hydro nutes around , they work in soil too .

so it's not recommended but would it work if i already purchased the items? just until i use them up? or could that be a bad idea?

dancinmanson69 said:

so it's not recommended but would it work if i already purchased the items? just until i use them up? or could that be a bad idea?

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Always worth a try , but go light on the nutes at first . Given how diluted the nutes will be it's probaly worth it .Is this your first grow? It's alot easier to learn how to grow in soil then venture to hydro . If it doesnt work and you dont want to waste the nutes just git some soil and git a few runs under your belt in soil .

i have done hydro before several times and gotten huge plants, but never to completion. i have the idea of hydro down and have grown with the fox farm nutes before, but i get root rot or the res gets too hot or the room gets too hot or i over feed, etc. and the plant doesn't make it. i had never heard that the ff nutes were geared more towards soil and oxygenless water until the other day, so i figure that may be part of my problem. i have a 400 watt hps/mh light with co2, bubble buckets, 6inch ice box all in a small cabinet. 1hp chiller, 633gph pump to circulate water from a garbage can reservoir to the chiller and then to the ice box and back to the garbage can. so i don't know if it's necessarily the nutes or the heat that is killing my plants each time, or if i'm just over-caring for the plants, when sometimes less is more. i have a ppm meter, and a ph monitor and really hard tap water, like 580ppm outta the faucet. but i've seriously had plants almost to completion with buds all over, not really dense though, which may be due to the high heat. but they were tall and bushy and smelled great but i always mess it up at the end.

I can see where he is getting this idea, but being a brewer I know cO2 and water properties fairly well. There is possibility for fermentation theoretically, but even if it did cO2 bubbles out and evaporates very rapidly, so any agitation would insure it has fully escaped. I would not worry about any cO2 content in your water from FF nutes getting oxygenated. I have an air stone in my nute water jug and it has FFGB in it.

Kingofqueen- if you have any suggestions let me know, but i am really into the idea of hydro, seems to grow much faster than when i grew in soil and more of a challenge which i do like, and i already have 6 seedlings in buckets already. my vicious cycle seems to be that my cabinet gets too hot so i need the chiller and icebox, which creates humidity, which calls for a dehumidifier(which i have in there), the dehumidifier gives off a lot of heat, and the air coming out of it needs to be chilled, and so on. the room my cabinet is in is 8x9 and the chiller is outside of the room because it also gives off a lot of heat, but the reservoir is in the room, where the heat from the light is blowing out of. i'm getting really frustrated just with the heat problem because i've spent a shitload of money already and am pretty broke now, and i just went out and bought the liquid tri-pack of ff and the chaching, beastie bloomz and open sesame as well, and now the hydro guy is telling me i shouldn't use those for oxygenated hydro setups. lol

thanks coco, that gives me some confidence. i'm prob just heat stressing the plants and over caring for them rather than using the wrong kind of nutes. as i said, i have had plants almost to completion with just the liquid tri pack in the past, it's prob me that is killing the plants. do you use all the ff nutes or just ffgb?

Thats all I got buddy I grow in soil . Nose around in Hydro and look at DWC grows and you should learn something .

ok i went to a different hydro shop and the guy said as long as i keep my res temps in check, i should be fine with little to no fermentation. i am gonna go for it and i will report back to let you guys know how it goes.

You need to check out Heisenberg's thread then :

https://www.rollitup.org/dwc-bubbleponics/361430-how-breed-your-own-beneficial.html

Otherwise you'll KEEP running into the same probs you've been having in the past by using FF nutes this way.

FF's not really for DWC.

just an update on my last post, the fox farm nutes seem to be doing just fine in the dwc as long as i keep the res temps below 72. so is it not necessary to flush in dwc unless you over-nute your plants? if you were to flush in dwc, do you just use plain water just in the res or do you pour the plain water over the hydroton in the basket into the res?and when you add nutes to the reservoir or when you top-off the res, do you pour through the hydroton into the res or just straight into the res?

another update on the fox farm nutes in dwc- i have learned that i need to use half strength or my plants get burned. might just be the high ppm i start with before adding nutes: 580ppm after PHing the water but before adding nutes. gonna test this with r/o water. it seems as long as i don't let the temps get above 72f in the res, i don't have problems with root rot, even when using the big bloom(organic)