Sorry I am kinda late chiming in on your thread @FlyingToast. Not sure if you read the thread that Moe mentioned previously, but that was me struggling using AN nutrients, if you get a chance it might be worth a read that could give you a heads up on anything you might face with your grow.
It's been a while, but as I remember it, I used the AN as directed and my ppms were right where I wanted them to be. I might have missed it but are you using RO water? You generally want your starting ppm (ec) as low as you can get it before adding anything. That could explain why your EC is so high at the start. Sorry if I missed your water source and that associated data.
As far as PH, AN nutrients are designed to expand the plant's usable range of PH from 4.0 to 8.0 if I remember right with no lockouts. This will go against everything you learn about hydro. It did work for a while for me but I had problems that were too much and ended up switching mid flower to GH and thanks to Moe and Aman was able to manage a pretty decent harvest. If you stick with AN, get familiar with their 24/7 helpline and use that for help beyond what you might get here. For me, in the end, the AN guy wanted to blame my meter which was showing major dives in the ph that was only getting worse. At the end, I was changing the res every day because of runaway downward ph.
When using AN, PH your water first and then add nutrients. DO NOT adjust ph after adding nutrients. I'd have to look at my grow journal to remember everything 100% (it's been a while) but I do know you cannot add any ph adjusters after you have mixed nutrients in the res. That was my problem, the ph would dive on me and there was nothing I could do about it but watch it and then change the res, at the end it was every day because I would wake up and the ph had dropped to 3.0 overnight.
You can ignore your ph with AN as long as it's between that range of ph 4-8 (double check with AN on that to be 100%). However, if things get out of that range, you cannot ignore it IMO. I do believe had I ignored the <4 PH and followed the AN guys advice, I would have lost the plant.
Best of luck and hope this helps.
thank you very much for taking the time to write to me, what you say sounds very useful, and i did read your thread, and i will again.
i wrote that i dont use RO water and that my tap water ph is 0.3 EC (i don't know about ppm i don't have a ppm meter only EC)
The other guys on this thread made AN ph perfect nutrients sound like if i follow the schedule i will have no issue whatsoever, and a range of 4 - 8 ph is very very nice to have, leaves a lot of room for swings, when you had those PH fluctuations, how was your environment ? did you ever find out why your ph dropped to 3 overnight?
also if those nutrients are dialed ppm wise and ph wise why would i need to get familiar with the AN help line? are that many issues caused by those nutes?
i can follow the AN schedule to a t,and my overall conditions are fully controllable and almost perfect (very good led light,temps,rh,co2,air,watertemps,sterilization etc)
as i said before, i am looking for an easily repeatable headache free strategy to go with every time, im trying to find an easy working recipe that over time and with minor adjustments will bring me some consistent A grade flower
my second option would be to switch to good old trusty
general hydroponics nutrients, do you think i can succeed with AN or should i switch to GH from now to get acclimated to those? im still very early so i'd like to stick with something and make it work...what's your opinion?
