topping up resouvoiur

[denske]

a quick question,, when do u guys top up your resovoirs,after each feed, or when a litres gone?? over to u guys,

[wassily]

It depends on the size of the res, but I'd do it when about 50% is gone.

Check your nutes for any relevant notes regarding topping up.

[happyherb]

yea i guess it depends on how big it is ,i use one of those black brains and put about 10 liters in most everyday to top up to make sure it's not to low at any time ,hope this helps .happyherb.

[Guest Field_of_Light]

mine auto tops up after each feed.....and at the end of the week I turn off the resevoir which feeds into my feeder tank so I can flush and avoid excessive wastage of the nutrient water.....helps avoid the salt stressing the plants....

 

You can always get a cf trunction to tell you just how much your nutrient level has dropped and how much dissolved salts you have in your system if you are really keen on monitoring the water quantity and quality......

[Guest weekprik]

do yourself and your plants a favour and buy a truncheon, this will tell you excatly how much water too add, I recently brought one and tested my nutes which were made up as per instructions and the nute mix was far too strong, i had to add 4 litres of water to bring it down a bit, now its on about 800-900PPM, as they are fairly new rooted clones,

my brother doesnt test his nutes at all, doesnt test ph or PPM but has always got a great crop, he says he know how much to put in by the way the plants act,

 

but for me being new i ph test and truncheon test everyday and adjust it everyday if needed.

[Luke Skywalker]

I have to agree, the Truncheon rocks, and can help you work out what's going in, and coming back out of your pots. Anyway, as to the topping off, well, the plants will use more water than nutes, so top off the tank everyday at a set time with fresh, ph adjusted water, and then test the e.c. to work out how much nutrient you have to add. After two weeks though, the nutrient balance tends to go out of whack, so dump the lot, and flush with ph water until the drainage comes out the same e.c. as the fresh water. That will help to keep the salt levels down in the media, and provide a good, stable environment for growth. I also use a float valve and a second, "feeder" or "header" tank, which provides fresh water to the "nutrient" tank when the levels drop after feeding. This means I only have to refill the "feeder" tank once a week or so. This still means you have to do e.c. testing regularly, and fortnightly dumping and flushes are still required, but this kind of double res recirculating system can really cut down on the lugging of water.... One of the crappiest jobs for the indoor hydro cultivator, as most of those who have done this will attest... Oh, and weakprik, if you let the nutrient solution lose half its water, then unless the plants are sucking craploads of nutes the concentration of that solution is going to be sky-high! I'd advise if replenishing reservoirs manually, to never let the amount of water drop more than 20% of the total capacity, because otherwise you end up with wildly fluctuating concentrations of nutrients and ph levels, and this is anything but good for plants. Anyhoo, this is all just my humble opinion of course, don't take any of this personally....

[Guest weekprik]

yes totally agree, 20% max, i try to keep it the same level all the time, but I work everyweekend and dont get a chance to check it till monday, by then its dropped a fair bit,

"

ph adjusted water, and then test the e.c. to work out how much nutrient you have to add. "

 

I disagree with this statement, I believe you should NEVER add nutrients to a nutrient mix, WATER only, then change the whole mix every 2 weeks,

 

Although the truncheon tells you the concentration it does not tell you that more of one or the other chemicals have been used up, what i mean here is the level might be low due to 2 of the chems being used up, EG the plants might have sucked most of the N or P but the level of K might be right, so the total solution is lower than it should be but the K is right, then you come along and top it with more nutrient to bring it up to say 1200ppm, this nutrient mix is now going to hurt your plants as it is out of balance, too much K.

all nutes have N-P-K but also Ca, Mg, S, Mn, Cu, Bo, Fe, Mo, Zn so its the same for all of these.

 

My point is only add nutrients when doing a change and inbetween use ph correct water, If the nute mix becomes too low in the PPM dept it means the nutes have been used up and the mix is overdue to be replaced, if it is at the right waterlevel.

[Luke Skywalker]

A good point there, and I'll think about that. I never had any probs with the method I described, but I suppose it could get quite unbalanced by the time you do the flush and reformulation, couldn't it? I've often wondered when someone will make a multi spectrum nutrient analysis tool that can be used in the home to work out the concentrations in solution of the macro nutrients. (I'm not greedy, I realise that it's unlikely to get one of these, let alone one that measures macro and micro nutrient levels!) Oh well, we can only dream. Until then, I wonder how others run their systems? How do you top up nutes? Or don't you? And what concentrations do you advocate and use? Keep them coming guys and gals....