green king

So here's my understanding so far: the high ph of my tap water cause the cal & mag to fuse. By lowering my ph to 5.8 the ions cal & mag separate and can be utilised by the plant. But now there is too much calcium available to the plant so it locks some of the calcium up and by doing so locks out the magnesium. This means that the total amount of calcium needs to be lowered EITHER by reducing the ec of the tap water or having a nute fertilizer with reduced calcium. Is this correct?

mattdreads

in a nutshell. yes

and if I said somewhere that the ec is the cause of them fusing, then I apologize for the misunderstanding.

5.8 will not be enough, though it'll help. 5.1 is what I used.

this last grow around, I had my veg plants in tiny pots. they did fine at 5.7-8, but started to show a mag def after they'd been growing for a few weeks. I lowered my ph to 5.1 and kept it there. the mag def pulled out within a couple days.

I was a dipshit and kept giving 5.1, because I hadn't fully understood the canna representative when he explained it to me in our passing. it didn't do anything wrong until I'd been in flowering a bit when I realized that they were looking like the ph was a bit low.

mind you, they rebounded wonderfully when I started giving the low PH. 5.1.

so I can't give you an exact number of how many times you need to water with a low ph to fix your problem. I gave it every other day for...about 3 weeks. if you could just flush it with the low ph, so you end up with a bunch of run-off, (25+% of you pot size), then I would think you'd be able to start again with 5.8 right afterwards.

I'd like to assure you, I'm not here to hurt your plants and would never advise something that I haven't done myself. I can understand it's difficult to trust some jackoff you don't know when it comes to your ganja but killing or testing things out on you it is not my vendetta here. maybe I can give you peace of mind with proof by picture.

this is when I started thinking...gotta do something about this. look at all the leaves carefully, they're starting to pull yellow inbetween the margins of the leaf (veins)


this is within 48 hours of giving the low ph to unlock. much greener.


because I kept on the low ph, they started to turn a neon green colour later...I'm looking for those picture somewhere in the hundreds that I have. probably a [edit]lack[/edit] of food due to low ph.

the actual formula from canna is to test the run off water, take that ph number, add half of the difference between your run-off number and the feeding water number to the run off. so you give 6, get a run off of 7, add .5 to seven and you get 7.5. ph down to half of that total, so 3.2-3.

that's what youre supposed to do'to completely 'reset' you medium according to B-cuzz, Plagron, Canna...all the leading cocos makers. I did that too, and it worked, but it worked fine with 5.1 as well.

the high Ca may or may not give you an issue later. every plant is different....if we write one rule for all strains, then there wouldn't be so many hundreds of books, each with different methods.

your goal in this game is to take what you can from what everyone says, and apply it the best you can to the situation you're growing in. listen to your plant first and foremost. you did, and that's why you're here trying to figure out what it's saying.

good growin to ya.

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green king

So even at a ph of 5.8 the mag and cal fused together in your grow?
I had been running at a ph of 6 but on my last watering I dropped it down to a ph of 5.2. I think I will do this until I see some positive change since my plant leaves look a bit like yours. I've also ditched the mineral water & when I can afford it I will be getting Vita Link Coir Grow for hard water. Cheers for the help so far, my understanding seems to have come a long way recently

mattdreads

5.8 unlocks it for you, yes, but the build up of salts in your cocos is bringing that up probably much higher.

5.2 is fine, and indeed, just wait for some positive change.

glad to help someone helping themselves.
-Matt

CropReport

There are some great communicators in The Garden, but you, MattDreads, are brilliant sometimes. You just tied together a lot of moving parts and made perfect sense of several issues that have plagued me. I love this place. -CR

green king

Well next watering I will check the ph of the runoff. The thing to aim for I suppose is to feed my plant with a ph of 5.8 & have a runoff of 5.8. I'm not sure that I actually have a mag deficiency since the older leaves seem to go yellow all over the leaf (except the veins) whereas yours were mainly going yellow at the edge. I'm still wondering about wind burn cos I have a big fan blowing directly on my plant (on the lowest setting). I've moved it further back now but tell me does your fan blow directly onto your plants?

mattdreads

it certainly does, and on full blast as well, only 30 cm or less from some of the tops. lol

a bit close, but no yellowing. cold can cause yellowing, but I'm pretty sure your plant was just over fed. it'll come around with straight water.

you don't want the ph total to be at 7 or up idealy

as example:

ph of feed water - 5.8

ph of runoff - 6.4

a difference of .6

add 50% of the difference (.6) to 6.4, or whatever your number is. in this case 6.7, which is just fine.

green king

So your plant is constantly moving from the wind blown onto it is it like mine has been? I moved my fan so it was only blowing air above the plant and so it is actually not being moved by the breeze.
Today I watered with an ec of 1.1 and a ph of 5.8. The ec r/off was 1.2 but the r/off ph was 6.4. Clearly on my next watering I need to water with a much lower ph so the r/off will be 5.8. Also since the ec r/off wasn't that much higher does this mean that it is almost using as much nutes as water and is not being overfed by much?

green king

So wind burn causes yellowing and not brown tips then?

green king

What do you mean by the ph total? Do you mean the number derived by adding 50% such as 6.7 in your example?