green king

So do you pull the ec of your tap water down to 0.5 since it sounds like you expect a mag deficiency in your grow? Surely if you lowered your base ec your plant could make use of the magnesium since the ions wouldn't fuse and a deficiency wouldn't occur.
Also, is the reason for adding less nutes to tap water of ec 0.8 because the tap water already contains chemicals present in the fertilizer, such as magnesium etc or trace chemicals so adding less nutes means that there isn't too much of certain chemicals. I only know my Canna A + B contains n-p-k, I'm not sure what else it contains

CRAZYTRAIN

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mattdreads

remembered correctly CT I've read it recently, so it's fresh in my mind

canna a+b is your base npk. there are supplement line on top of that that you can add, such as advanced nutrients, house of garden, or aptus.

if you want to forget about ec, go with Hesi nutrients. it's all about ph then.

bringing the ph down is what unlocks the calcium and magnesium, but we still have a lot of build up with all that extra shit in the water.

you will run a higher ec then the average person, and that's alright, because what's bringing your ec up for the most part gets flushed through. canna is not so great for hard water, because indeed by shorting the nutes, you give less to your plants. which is usually not so bad, but not ideal

but it does build up, and yes I will start seeing signs of a lock out, not because of the water, but because of the build up. that's what you need to get rid of. if you could water each and everytime with a run-off of 25% then the problem would be much less.

hesi nutes is what I'll be going with next grow around, hesi with aptus suppliments.

if it's raining, then yes, I bring my ec down to .3 or 4 even. distilled is expensive. also, I aerate my water. goes from a .74 from the tap to .6 - .65 with an aeration stone in there. it always sits for at least 24 hours before I water with it.

green king

Surely you can tell that you have a salt buildup by the ec of the runoff water getting higher and higher can't you? So is it correct that you grow outside then because of the mention of the rain?
What if I boiled my tap water, wouldn't this bring the ec down, One last but important question: why does ec become irrelevant when using Hesi nutes? Surely you need to test to make sure the solution isn't too strong?

green king

If the ec of the tap water was lowered there would be less calcium but also less magnesium but still the same proportion/ratio of cal to mag. Would this clear up the deficiency if the ec was lowered say by mixing distilled water in or is the problem to do with the ratio/proportion of cal to mag since concentrations would be lowered equally?

CRAZYTRAIN

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mattdreads

it's not about EC, it's about the ph. your ph is off because of the type of minerals in your water, not because of the high ec number.

you have a high ec number because of the amount of salts, and a high ph because of the type of salts.

you could have a much lower ec with a much higher ph if you had a higher amount of sodium in your water

the ph is what makes Ca and Mg fuse.

so what you do is bring the ph down and unlock those making them available to the plant. but those are still in your water, but the plant can now utilize them because they're seprate.

then you add your nutrients in there, and it brings the amount of Ca up another notch but it already has a lot of Ca...

now that it's at the proper ph, it's the plants job to handle the high amount of Ca, which is what makes the plant itself lock it out and gives you those nasty spots.

which is why hardwater nutes don't have as much Ca, because it's already in your water. and why you need to give less nutes because otherwise you give too much of one thing and lock out a whole bunch of others.

adding distilled will not bring your ph down, or very little if it does, because it doesn't change the type of salt in your water, but it does dillute it which means for you less build up and making it so you use much less ph down to get to the desired ph. and you can give your nutrients at normal schedule without worrying about having an imbalance of Ca.

Hesi nutrients is an organic line of nutrients specially engineered just for cocos. how it works exactly, I'm still reading up on that. but the ec doesn't need to be checked because of what they used to make the fooding. I assume it doesn't bring your EC up hardly when adding it, but does give the food needed. doesn't meant hat if you give too much that you wont get lock outs, but that's what they have a schedule for. I'll know when I buy it in a few weeks. tired of using so much bio-bizz. lol

I go through liters and liters of that stuff.

hope this clears things up a bit. if I need to be more clear, just ask.

green king

So do normal nutes contain more calcium than mag as a rule then?

green king

Its just in a previous post you said that the high ec was causing the mag and calcium to fuse. I assume you meant ph instead of ec?

green king

So would bringing my ph down from 6 to 5.8 make a significant enough difference in unlocking the cal and mag and making them available or would I need to lower it even further?