Runoff Ph Too Low, Don't Know How To Fix It.

  • Thread starter cottageman
  • Start date
  • Tagged users None
cemchris

cemchris

Supporter
3,346
263
I don't flush with straight water and I cant just not flush, that's how you get nute lockout and kill the plants. They're not completely fasting and I have been flushing once a week for 3 years and this doesn't happen. The deficiency is already there when I flush, me flushing is the only way to know what is wrong in the medium. Not flushing til the end would 100 percent kill the plants, ive tried to skip weeks without flushing and it causes lockout. Even the an and heavy feeding charts say to flush once a week. The deficiency is already there when I flush.

Lockout isn't caused from not flushing. If your nutes are fine then all of a sudden aren't then it's something else. I use pure salts and never flush rockwool till it's done.

Your feed time/dry time like @4plant said is what is most likely causing the swing. Not sure how loose rockwool reacts to dry cycles. Not sure if its as consistent as cubes for dialing in water times. Pretty sure it is. In cubes tho as they dry the ppm's go up and the ph swings. You have to find the medium where they are dry enough but not too much. A lot of issues/lockout ect all come to water times. It's a lot less forgiving then say coco on this front for yield. Mess with the watering times some.

"Climbing EC indicates the need to increase frequency of irrigation (more water) by raising the probe setting of the starter tray or increasing the irrigation run time. Remember, the idea is to balance amount of water needed by the crop with that needed by the crop plus leach. Maintaining the EC of the media slightly above the delivered solution shows that you are a good manager of nutrient solution delivery." Remember these are people that are also doing leaf analysis for specific crop inputs of ferts at different times and adjusting accordingly. They are that dialed. If you are less dialed/don't tweek on the fert front you will need more runoff to account for extra nutes that are not being used by the plants. Like the example you saw with too much fulvic/humic, which in turn also increases nute uptake. A double whammy. When you have to result to flushing it out to get rid of buildup in the middle of a run you have more room to adjust the watering times/dry cycle to get where you need to be. Now I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the way you are doing it just there is a better way to really dial it in where that extra step isnt needed and get better results.


People have been running rockwool in acres and acres of glass houses for years and years and years. There really isn't anything new to bring to the table with it. Lots of really good info out there if you look outside our hobby. Once you get it dialed you can get to almost no runoff (5-10%) at all and be golden. Just once you get there it has to be really dialed or you can fry a room if a timer fucks up on you. Not like that has happened to me more then once.......
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom