Yeah...and it's not even that there's no "right" or "wrong" way to do it, it's also that it can be such a pain the ass to figure out how to get that last little improvement.

Say you're 90% of the way there, to get that last 10% sometimes you have to try more than twice as hard, and spend more than twice the $.

Trying to improve my setup is always in the back of my mind. It never ends. Right now I'm thinking about switching to a water cooled co2 burner, so my ac doesn't keep costing more than running another 2 lights. And my "certified" lumateks are still killing my expensive bulbs, so I'm contemplating swapping all of them over for hydrofarm phantoms. And the strain I'm currently growing isn't quite as good as I wanted, so I'll probably change that too. And then I'll probably move, and have to rebuild my entire setup over again. Uughhh.

But all this stuff, you don't need to learn it all at once. It takes time.

I'm actually quite surprised that Labrat doesn't technically "flush", although 300pppm might as well be a flush. Most people will criticize if you say you don't flush for at least a week. I don't care, if the bud doesn't burn harsh, it smokes smooth, that's what counts. And we all do different shit with our ppm too. I think it was Rebel Dawg saying in the hydro section how he goes way up with the ppm, and then flushes for 2 weeks, different than me. I have been slowly raising my ppm throughout the grow but not to his peak numbers, and then flushing for less time. And some of us change our nutes every week, or 2 weeks, some don't the whole grow. Some of us think the higher the ppm you can get your plants to handle, the better, some of us think the lowest is better. When I started out in aero, Earl influenced me, he was all about the lowest possible ppm. Then when I went to dwc, I started pushing it way up, now I'm kind of going back the other way. A lower tds allows the plant to uptake more water, makes the buds heavier, and makes the plants fall down away from my hot, bright lights, which is exactly my growing style, they all rest on a screen of chicken wire.

The leaf removal thing just depends on what you're trying to do. Me, I'm trying to get the most light to hit the actual buds, while not reducing the overall surface area hit by the lights..

There's Always shit to learn, it never stops. For exampe, I found myself wondering the other day if I keep pulling leaves off during the flush, am I actually being somewhat counterproductive, since the plant is pulling some nutrients from those leaves to fill in the buds that last little bit? So I then just tried to fold/tuck the leaves out of the way as much as possible, instead of pulling them off.

What is the tds/ec of your ro water?

I normally say ro water "effectively has no pH", since the tds is so low. What that means in the real world is 1st, do not ever dip your pH probe in ro water unless you want to damage it (they all say right in the instructions to not immerse in distilled/deionized water) and 2nd, with such a low ppm since it practically takes no pH up or pH down to change it, that's what I mean by "effectively has no pH".

In other words, your ro water may be 8.0, "alkaline", but if all it takes is like 2 drops of pH down to get it to 5.5, how alkaline is that really?

That supposed pH of 8.0 is Not going to shock the roots whatsoever. When you said "plain" water, do you mean tap water? Don't flush with tap, use ro, you add that at 8.0 pH, less than 10ppm or whatever it should be, check it a few days later, it'll probably be about 50ppm, at that point it may not damage your probe, but the pH is still irrelevant.

Thanks Harvey for that great info.

I ONLY use water from my RO filter, never tap water or anything else.

My sand point well just collapsed last week and we went a few days with NO water, it sucked, that well water was 580PPM of god knows what, which is why I bought the filter system to begin with.

We are now on city water, but we still never drink that unless filtered first.

the filter I use is from aquasafecanada.com, it's the maximus 2 system combo, take a look if you want to know more about it by clicking[url=HERE]http://www.aquasafecanada.com/store/home-reverse-osmosis-systems/maximus-ii-system-6-stage[/url] .

They are based in Victoria, and I've been happy with it thus far.

It puts out alkaline water because it has some "resin bead" filter stage that adjusts the water to a high pH for good health supposedly.

The water comes outta my filter system usually at around 26PPM, but since I think the filters need changing soon, it's coming out at 35PPM now.

I'm not sure of the "exact" pH of my water straight outta the filter, or even what "exactly" it is in my hydro system right now actually.

I only have a crappy swimming pool pH test kit that goes from 8.2 to 6.8, so I adjust my pH until it reads just around the lowest range, then add a couple more drops for good measure, assuming it's "hopefully" at 5.5 or so.

Not a very scientific way of doing things I know, but when your on disability and a very tight budget trying to even afford groceries, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

I've noticed that by adding the "Aqua Flakes A&B" nutes the pH seems to self adjust to around where it should be.

The PPM was at around 1300 last week, and I was starting to get leaf burn, so I dropped it down to around 800.

Now, after talking more about it on this thread, and preparing for the coming flush next week, I today dumped half the rez and topped up with straight RO filtered water, and the PPM is around 560PPM or so.

I might just dilute it down further depending on people's recommendations.

The one really weird thing I've noticed about my system is that instead of the PPM's going down as the plant supposedly consumes the nutes, it goes UP instead over time.

Then I check my reservoir and notice the water level is down, so I top it back up and the PPM's are back where they started.

I "assume" this is from evaporation of the nutes solution, but the system is pretty sealed, no open ports in the tube to keep the humidity high in the PVC tubes, and the cover is on the reservoir all the time. Weird.

Maybe the plants are drinking the water and expelling it through the leaves as water vapor?

Anyhow, I keep an eye on it and make sure nothing unexpected happens.

I have changed my nutes once every 1.5 to 2 weeks, and just dump the old nutes in my garden, my plants seem to like it.

I've never flushed yet, and this is (obviously) my first grow. I did not flush between veg and flowering.

I actually added 5 more 26W (100W equivalent)2600K CFL's to the system, but they are at the bottom of the plants facing up, which will hopefully give enough light to the bottom buds to get them to do something.

I'm still not sure if I should go that extra week past the harvest target date or not, since I have 3 different strains that seem to be maturing at different levels.

I'm just not sure what I can do to get my buds to mature more in the coming 1-2 weeks until harvest, any suggestions?

I was thinking of brewing a batch of beer and putting the fermentation output (CO2) into my grow to give it something to breath, hehe.

So, what do you think?

Harvey, you said something there that really caught my attention:

That should be something every new grower hears, and many experienced ones need to heed. (!)

At what point is it 'too much' ? Do you really need that top-shelf liquid chicken poop and guano mix ? Probably not. Guess what I am trying to say is, be happy with your best efforts, but there is no need to go over the top.

Just something I wanted to say...

Yeah..it's really an exponential increase in cost/effort the more you go for that last 1 or 2 percent.


NScooknet, I recommended before that you remove everything after the RO membrane in your system, I still stand by that. Obviously it's not a big deal, but there's just no purpose for it to be there. It's 26-35ppm of unecessary who knows what. My ro system puts out about 4-7ppm, depending. When I turn it on, it starts out high, maybe 400ppm, then quickly drops to about 12 or so, then slowly creeps down to about 4-5ppm after putting out about maybe half a gallon. I always dump that first bit of water, and then run the system until the 45 gallon containers are full.

Btw, you're doing a hell of a lot better than me, my first few grows were a total disaster. Lol.

And yes, the water level drops and the ppm rises because of transpiration. There is no "ideal" for this, it can go either way, your ppm can drop, or rise with the solution dropping. My ppm always rises in my flowering tubs, stays about the same in my veg setup, and usually drops in my cloners as they take root.

I can also kind of tell when to start my flush by what the plants are doing to the nutes too. For example, last night I noticed my pH in one of my tubs went from 6.05 to 4.56 in 3 days, 6 weeks in, I was getting ready to start the flush for the last 2 weeks, but I'm not going to do that now. They're obviously still pulling a lot out of that solution, and I'm not going to cut them off just yet. I'm guessing a lot of K, since that's what I add in the form of pH up. ? As soon as the pH stops dropping like that and the tds goes to near the initial target once topped back up with h2o, I'll know they're almost done "feeding", and I'll start the flush.

Just dropped by before hitting the hay. 13 hours in a combine left me bagged ans sore. Now I can add blazed to that and not so sore.

Your getting some good info and like Harvey was saying about TDS, lower may be better in some circumstances.

High heat and low humidity means your plant is drinking lots of water and transpiring it out faster. With high TDS it would take in more nutes with that water than it can process and cause burn. When running at the top TDS if your level gets low the ppm goes up and might push it past what the plants can handle. Burn again.

With high humidity, the plant can't transpire water fast enough and may not be able to get enough nutes to grow as fast as it could. A higher TDS would be better there.

There are so many factors that influence how to grow pot at it's maximum potential that I'd need to write a damn book. Probably already have. lol

A lot of it, like Harvey said, is to get that extra few percent out of your plants and can cost you more in time, trouble and cash than it's really worth.

But how many people are willing to do that for a hobby they love tho eh.

Get the basics down and don't sweat the small stuff. In the game of life it's all small stuff.

So when you talk about spending more at the end before harvest to get as much as possible, what exactly are you referring to?

Electricity, nutes additives??

I've put some lights along the bottom of the plants to give the lower buds more light, do you think this will help, or is it a waste of electricity/money?

It's "only" 4 x 26W anyhow,won't be that much more electricity for a couple weeks I guess.

What do you think?




Exodus Cheese:







Smaller lower buds:









Compare to the upper buds below:




Big Bang bud still white:

Awwww...they're so cute !

I would rather they be huge and meaty than small and "cute"....LOL

Well, started the flush today, harvest between Sept 20th - 22nd.

I ended up bypassing the final stage of my RO filter, the "polish" carbon filter that was adding some PPM's to the water, it "was" around 26 or so, and now that it is no longer in the system, the output of my RO filter is ZERO PPM's.

The water is however around pH of 8 or so, should I have lowered the pH to around 5.8 or so, or is this ok?

I don't want to shock them too badly.