The calm before the storm, perhaps? Refilled the res and it’s been calm as can be.
Redid the res to 1.0 and 5.8 yesterday. I didn’t use the AN Tarantula in the new res. I submitted a support inquiry on AN’s website about using Tarantula with HydroGuard, even though the label says that it’s compatible with all benes. I’d prefer to hear their tech support people confirm that before I go pouring $100 per gallon liquid into 35 gallons of nutes. No response from AN TS.
In addition to wanting confirmation about compatibility before I took the plunge, I can’t find any indication that there’s still an issue. I’ve checked all of the net pots and the hoses and there’s no trace of the slime that I found the other day so I decided to hold off on the Tarantula.
Per the pix, they’re adding leaves and roots. The growth above “ground” looks more like adding leaves than adding height but the root growth really surprised me. I mixed the Botanicare nutes at full strength and ended up with an EC of 1.1. I was concerned about using an EC that high so I bailed out some of the nutes and added RO water to get it down to 1.0. That’s on the high side for plants of this age but I’m getting in the mindset of using their
guidelines as
guidelines and “listening to the plant”. No sign of ill effects of going with 1.0.
Besides those changes, nothing. I’m using Inkbird controllers - I refer to them as Hotbird and Wetbird. They’re keeping the tent weather right at a VPD 0.8. I’m taking lea surface temps at mid-morning and mid-afternoon. It was +1 this morning so I put that in the PulseOne and the big change was to drop the setting on Wetbird by 1%. BFD. Temps are stable with not heat or cooling. So very nice of the SoCal weather to have such mild temps. The only thing that’s changing is that pH is down to 5.7. BFD again.
Light level is 310-320 PPFD or a DLI of 315*.0648 (that’s the factor for 18 hours of light). That’s a fair amount of light but there’s no indication that it’s too much. No cupping or praying so I’ll leave it at 320 for today and increase it over the weekend.
Many of the electrical devices are controlled through a Kasa smart strip. I went that route after dumbshit me fouled up the light timer after an electrical outage and the grow revegged. This time around, I set the schedule for each device in the Kasa. I can control the power to each outlet on the smart strip and the schedule is downloaded to the smart strip as well so I don’t have to be present to turn things on and off. I just let the computer (the iPhone) and the smart strip do what they’re designed to do and then leave it alone.
Anyone with an opinion on what’s going on with Joe? It looks like a calcium issue to my newbie eye but I’d appreciate some input on that. The res is at 1.0 using the portions recommended by Botanicare and that includes CalMag. I was hoping that putting in the right levels of nutes/CalMag would clear that up but it’s hard to tell if it’s improving. Maybe I should think of it differently - it’s not getting worse.
Everything’s working the way I wanted it to. One problem though - it’s boring. Poking on the iPhone to see what the Pulse is reporting and then taking pictures once or twice a day and that’s about it. Or is it the calm before the storm?
