The saga continues.
I’ve swapped the res and the TDS is 145/500. The CM deficiency is significantly diminished but I’ll need to calculate the amount of CM that’s in the res. It’s not just a question of how much I’ve added but there’s also the fact that I’ve had to swap out large amounts of nutes for RO to try to get the TDS level low enough to stop pH from falling.
The res was at 170 but, out of desperation, I added 16ml CM which took the TDS to 200. pH fell from 6.0 to 5.3 overnight so I had to add Up and I ended up swapping out 11 gallons of nutes to get the TDS to 140. That 140/500 is actually 115/500 because the Bluelab monitor reads high by 25 points.
At the moment, the res is sitting at 145 and pH dropped from 5.9 at 1930 yesterday to 5.5 at 0930 today. That’s the slowest drop I’ve seen in at least a week.
What I’ve seen is that not that TDS is ½ the strength that they had as seedlings, pH drop has slowed significantly. I can continue to drop TDS but I’m going to be at the 100 range soon, a level that I suspect is too low to support the plants. I can’t imagine that this is “normal” - a plant can’t be moving to flower and need ½ the nutrients that it was using as a seedling so I’ve got to look at the cause for dropping pH. I suspect that it’s a bio agent of some kind in the res.
I don’t have root rot. I removed one of the plants yesterday - they’re still growing and I’ve decided to keep the two bigger plants plus Jeff, which was the smallest plant and is tucked away in the back right corner. During that process, I took each plant out of the res and inspected the net pot and the roots. Nothing out of whack there. The roots are not slimy and they smell like "clean dirt”. The Rapid Rooter is moist and free of visible algae. The Hyrdoton is moist and free of visible algae.
As best I can tell, that leaves me with one of three options - either I’ve got plants that require tiny amounts of nutrients to grow and flourish or I have a bio agent that’s causing pH to drop or my nutes are very out of balance.
I don’t think it’s the nutes. Checking through my grow journal and photos, I’ve had this issue since the plants went into the res. I’ve done multiple nute changes, in terms of composition and strength and the pH hasn’t been steady for almost three of the five weeks that they’ve been in the res.
I don’t think I’ve got "perpetual motion” plants. I’m pretty certain that I have plants that need a lot of CM but I don’t think they can run on a high amount of CM and < 100 PPM of other nutes.
That leaves me with a bio agent. How do I go about getting rid of bacteria in a res + water pump?
I checked the water chiller yesterday - couldn’t see much of the “innards” but there was no odor and no coloration of the small area that was visible.
And thank you People’s Republic of California but Botanicare’s Kind nutes are no their way out in CA. I tried to order a fresh bottle of Grow and it’s not for sale here. I do have ½ gallon of Grow left so I’ve got more than enough if I manage to get this grow back on track but it leaves me with a couple of other bottles that are orphans. That’s unfortunate but it also has convinced me to stop using Botanicare nutes. I’m not keen on the fact that their feeding chart is different than what’s on the bottles - that’s sloppy. Another factor is their web site - it’s about the most useless web site I’ve seen in the 27 years that I’ve been using the web. That site does most things wrong and, when I can’t find information about the products that a company sells, it makes that product less interesting to me. After these nutes, I’ll switch to General Hydro’s Flora. I know that their products work and they have a website that’s functional, to boot.
So, that’s my Monday — how’s yours?
I didn’t realize that Z7 would whack everything. I had seen it recommended so I thought I’d give it a try.
