How often to clean out res and change nutes

[Naycha]

Run to waste is watering your plants and discarding the runoff.

 

Recirculating is feeding the plants and having the runoff drain back to the res to be used again.

 

Naycha

[merl1n]

Naycha is correct Refer, its just recycling the nute back to the resi.

Couple of advantages with recirc, less water and less nute = less $$$. But this depends on your watering regime. For instance, I water 15min/hr 24hr/day. Now if I was run to waste Id be using more than 200ltr/day, but that 200ltr now lasts me about a week. If doing run to waste you'd water it less often

Couple of disadvantages with recirc is if you are using coco or unwashed perlite then the shitty bits of coco/perlite run through your system. I'm not a coco user but Ive heard of blockages in recirc with coco. The perlite dust acts a bit like grinding paste on pumps. Another problem can be root rot, if you run multiple pots and one pot gets root rot, again it spreads through the whole system.

 

Merl1n

[refer24]

Yea sorry thats what mine is

 

i use clay balls,i havent had any problems like that yet

 

i guessed my watering at 5 times for 15 min every 24hrs.should this be less?

 

cheers

Edited December 14, 2012 by refer24

[merl1n]

Hi Refer,

Look, everybodys systems are different. Some ppl would say I water too much. Personally I don't care, it works for me and thats what I want.

If your regime works for you, then that's what you do.

When I said I use perlite and clayballs, I have a layer 4-6in of washed clayballs then 8-10in washed perlite.

Now I say 'washed', both the balls and the perlite have a dust on them. To remove the dust from the balls I fill a bucket 3/4 of water then pour in the clayballs, pushing them all down below the water. I leave these overnight and the dust forms a sediment on the bottom of the bucket. Using an old plastic coke bottle I scoop the balls out of the bucket into my pots, being careful not to stir up the sediment. The balls are made from an expanded clay and they float. Anything that sinks, both balls and sediment I throw out.

 

As for the perlite, I use a similair theory but a different process. I pour the perlite into my pots and using a spray fitting, I hose the perlite. I use the spray fitting as the dust from the perlite is not good to breath in, so rather than the full force of the hose where the dusts gets stirred up, the spray wets everything gently and reduces the dust. I bung the outlet from the pots and fill the pot until the floating perlite reaches the top, then force the perlite down into the water. I again leave this overnight. My system is 2 x 50ltr pots one inside the other. The sediment is in the lower pot which I wash out. I also wash the outside of the interior pot as some sediment sticks to the outside of the pot.

 

You dont need to wash your grow medium, but your pump/s last longer if you do, IMHO

 

Merl1n

[refer24]

Thanks Merl

 

Yea i give my clay balls a good clean and wash before using to repot.when i pull a plant out i just boil them to kill any germs in there and reuse them.sometimes i get a small amount of stuff in the bottom of the res on the first res change other than that its all good

 

Yea i might just leave it watering 5 times atm i started off with 3 when she was smaller.

 

Thanks alot for the info

[Stix87]

hey im in clay balls and run my pump 24/7 with no dramas done it with 3 or 4 whole grows so far

[lookinggoodguys]

So far my current grow I haven't changed my res since the beginning of veg, now coming up 4 weeks into flower using Lucas method and some h202. I just added some monster bud into my nutes after week 3.. I have 2 air pumps and 4 large air-stones in my res. My ph is sitting nice and PPm Ec is stable. I just keep adding mixed nutes into my res, so far no issues and flowering quickly.

 

 

I'm starting to think you should treat your res like a fish tank. Plenty of oxygen and keeping everything in check you should not need to change the res from start to finish. If I do want to change refresh nutes I only dump 3 quarters into a beer barrel and keep a quarter in the res. I then reuse the old nutes back on top and water my vegging plants in my tent. So far it's working and res is crystal clear and no waste.

Edited July 28, 2015 by lookinggoodguys

[merl1n]

Hey LGG,

                I have heard of this before and using h2o2 to do the sterilization bit for ya. But personally that h2o2 is a bloody powerful chemical and the less chemicals I use, the better IMHO. Also I look at my system a bit like a fish tank. Fish can't last too long swimming around in their own shit. You can use stuff to make their shit sink to the bottom but still the shit remains. I would much rather flush to get rid of the shit (the salts) than be flushing that crap around and around.

 

This is my personal opinion

 

Merl1n 

Edited July 28, 2015 by merl1n

[lookinggoodguys]

Hey LGG,

I have heard of this before and using h2o2 to do the sterilization bit for ya. But personally that h2o2 is a bloody powerful chemical and the less chemicals I use, the better IMHO. Also I look at my system a bit like a fish tank. Fish can't last too long swimming around in their own shit. You can use stuff to make their shit sink to the bottom but still the shit remains. I would much rather flush to get rid of the shit (the salts) than be flushing that crap around and around.

 

This is my personal opinion

 

Merl1n

 

I do agree. The one thing that kind of made made me think not to change the res was when I was reading about Ph fluctuations and how the plant regulates this in the root zone. I only try not to dump full res due to keeping the some of the existing water the plant is use to kind of like fish plus adding in fresher water to dilute the crap. Mainly try to limit the shock to the root zone by the plant having to adjust itself to new water plus doing other things unknown. I could be full of it shit but so far haven't had to waste any nutes down the drain or seen any bad reaction by the plant. Still only early days and just wanted to try not doing a full change as everything seems to be in check. Plus atm we have colder weather making temps in res lower and stable.

 

Hydrogen peroxide binds and turns into oxygen so by that reaction will not leave any chemical in the water plus only at 3% which is quite weak.

Edited July 28, 2015 by lookinggoodguys