I need hydro help!

So here is my set...4x4 flood table, 40 gl res 4x4 rockwool cubes on cocomat. I feed once a day( flood and drain). I use Gh micro, grow, bloom and floralisious plus. I am also using a 1000HPS bulb, just switched to 12/12 from 18/6 with MH bulb. this is my first grow, i only have 11 plants, this is my trial run. I did reserch for a few months before buying all the stuff and getting my room set up (sealed room) temp never gets over 75 never under 70. I feel i have done evrything right up untill now. So my question is this. I read that you shouldnt us full nutes until bloom or yu risk nute burn, i went to low in the beginning and my plant were yellow. I fixed that problem. I always tested my ppm and they always looked good, however, i didnt realize i needed to calibrate the ppm meter. I thought my water was 200ppm but it is actually 445ppm. My res solution is at 1450 right now, the leaves are starting to hook. so if i need to be at 900/1100 ppm and my water is at 445 how do i know how much nutes to put in to be in that range including my water? I know I should use RO water but until i get that what do I do? I want to do a Flush and get things right but im not sure what the mesurements should be! here is a pic I took about an hour ago.

people that dont use nutes until bloom are either retarded or have very good soil. i know thats kinda rude but its the truth. especially in hydro where theres no soil to provide the nutrients the plant needs. in hydro, you must supply all the nutrients from day 1. the key is to know how much to add, small plants need less water, and less nutrients, but they still need it.

Dont have RO water? thats fine. i had a huge 55gal jug/barrel and id fill it with tap water. id pour some stuff in there that was made for fishtanks that removed ammonia/chlorine etc.. and let it sit for around 2-3 days. after, the water was fine.

I dont use ppm testers, call me cheap, or crazy, whatever. i think it doesnt matter what the ppm is, i think what matters is HOW THE PLANT LOOKS. if you see that theres a deficiency, you add nutes. if theres burn, you dont add any.

from the pic, your plants look fine. if the leaves begin to hook, then your probably high on nitrogen, but not high enough to freak out, let the nutrients work themselves thru. next time ya add water to the reservoir, dont add nitrogen, and that will in turn lower the nitrogen of the water, by diluting it.

nick17gar said:

people that dont use nutes until bloom are either retarded or have very good soil. i know thats kinda rude but its the truth. especially in hydro where theres no soil to provide the nutrients the plant needs. in hydro, you must supply all the nutrients from day 1. the key is to know how much to add, small plants need less water, and less nutrients, but they still need it.

Dont have RO water? thats fine. i had a huge 55gal jug/barrel and id fill it with tap water. id pour some stuff in there that was made for fishtanks that removed ammonia/chlorine etc.. and let it sit for around 2-3 days. after, the water was fine.

I dont use ppm testers, call me cheap, or crazy, whatever. i think it doesnt matter what the ppm is, i think what matters is HOW THE PLANT LOOKS. if you see that theres a deficiency, you add nutes. if theres burn, you dont add any.

from the pic, your plants look fine. if the leaves begin to hook, then your probably high on nitrogen, but not high enough to freak out, let the nutrients work themselves thru. next time ya add water to the reservoir, dont add nitrogen, and that will in turn lower the nitrogen of the water, by diluting it.

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You read my post wrong, First off im not retarded, second i never said i didnt use nutes. I said I didnt use full strength nutes! once i went into bloom i followed the instructions as listed and my plants are hooking!

Is that a recirculating or drain to waste res?Your plants look fine.Do not overthink or over worry for this is the tendacy of a first grow.
50-75% strength of the nute label or GH website feeding chart is a good guideline but read the plant without aforementioned tendancies will get you through the grow.

it is recirculating. I also went today and got some of the hard water Micro. so you do think the feeding chart is accurate? follow it to a tee or 50-75%

If you are seeing leaf curling, flush with pH's water. 400's is high for PPM in tap water. I recommend going to walmart and buying distilled water. It is cheap as fuc*. Or a reverse osmosis filter. I also recommend if you can't, run your ppm for nutes 400 less than you are currently. I always subtract my PPM of water from my nutrient mix. So like if my plants are in late veg/early flower, I'll feed at 1000 max. that means 600 PPM for nuted and 400 for tap water, ect. I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any Q's.

marc88101 said:

it is recirculating. I also went today and got some of the hard water Micro. so you do think the feeding chart is accurate? follow it to a tee or 50-75%

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I'd go 50%, then see if they like 75%. Then go from there. Too little nutes is easier to fix than too much. Ya know?

I thought about getting distilled water, I just don't know how if I can get 35-gallon jugs. Then I might actually look retarded! I cant get the RO untill next week. So if i need to make my nutes 600 ppm, how do i figure out the measurments? how do i know how much of x is going to be what ppm?

Tmac4302 said:

I'd go 50%, then see if they like 75%. Then go from there. Too little nutes is easier to fix than too much. Ya know?

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I gotcha, Ill do that. Thanks for your help. I really appriciate it. The first guy that responded said ppm doesnt matter...lol, and im the retard

you should flood more than once a day also.

BBYY said:

you should flood more than once a day also.

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Really? how many times a day? and when? my light cycle is 8pm to 8am right now. I feed them at 9pm, Ive never noteced any drooping. they are 24 inches tall, just started flowering on tuesday. HINDU KUSH!

Since they are in r/w blocks and co co mats I would think once a day flood should suffice without root zone over saturation.Yes 50% and work up and I never used Floralicious so that may need more cutting back but GH feed chart should give you an idea.Keep in mind that mfg label/charts should be treated as potential maximum.

marc88101 said:

.....snip.....my water is at 445 how do i know how much nutes to put in to be in that range including my water?

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I just finished my first grow. I grew 4 plants in an NFT tube. I also used the GH Flora series nutrients. You sound like you are doing this quite nicely. So let me actually answer this question.

Let's say you want to set your PPM to 1000. Since your tap water reads at 445 you ADD 445 to 1000. So you would want to see a PPM of 1445.

Ok let's do a second example say say your tap water comes out at 250 and you want to set your PPM to 750 then you would actually shoot for a reading of 1000 on your TDS meter.

Essentially you ADD whatever the PPM of your tapwater to the nutrient level you are shooting for. It's really simple and you'll be fine. The equation looks like this:

DESIRED nutrient PPM + Tap water PPM = Actual PPM you should measure

Now the way I did it with my nutrients is I started at 1/4 strength. When they began to look less green I upped it. I kept slowly upping it until the very tips of the leaves burnt. Just the tiniest burn at the leaf tips. Another thing I noticed was I had magnesium issues almost immediately using the GH Flora series nutes. So even with my very hard tap water I still had to add 2 tsp/gallon of Epsom Salt. I switched to Botanicare's Cal/Mag because it has iron too and used that after I got my RO system. So if you begin to see little pinpoint rust spots on your leaves try some magnesium.

Oh and don't worry a little extra Mg won't hurt your plants. Good luck!