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Reply With QuoteIn the heat, we go with less is more philosophy.
In the heat, we go with less is more philosophy.
An expert is someone that learns more and more about less and less, and eventually knows everything about nothing.
Originally Posted by BeaverHuntr
I have always started at half of what the bottle says and use more if needed!
I am running Biotanicare products! I use them all at half strength except for the Liquid Karma!!
"We find that the appellants have demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on their claim that, as applied to them, the Controlled Substance Act is an unconstitutional exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause authority..."
It's useful to note that unless you're using very pure water, you're always going to have some starting concentration of salts in the water; just because it's RO doesn't mean PPM = 0. An old membrane (with a home unit) leads to higher dissolved salts.
It is more useful to remember that less nutrients are better than more. Wait until you get the basics right before you start going nutso on trying to jam as many nutrients as you can in there before you start poisoning your plants. Trying to kill cannabis by not giving it enough nutrients is much more difficult than by giving it too much.
These are not the same thing.
Distillation: the separation of water from dissolved solutes (salts, etc.) by vaporizing the water, and condensing the vapor.
Deionization: the use of ion exchange columns to remove dissolved solutes. I've used these before to make ultra-pure water (better than 3 megaohm resistance; distilled is anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000 ohms, while "perfect" ultra-pure water is 18.3 megaohm resistance); the only problem I've had with them is a trace of fluoride making it through somehow. Never did figure out how, but it was in the low part per trillion level, so it wasn't important to us- just a nuisance.
Reverse osmosis: the use of pressure across a selective membrane to purify water.
Of the three, RO produces the lowest quality of water; a well-tuned system will produce very high quality water, but it still pales in comparison to distillation. However, RO water (unless the membrane is very old or punctured) is still more than good enough to produce exceedingly high quality of water for horticulture.
So, while your meter may read 0 ppm, I can assure you that solutes still make it through an RO membrane, and that as that membrane ages, the concentration of solutes will continue to increase- membranes are not immortal, and must be changed. For example:
Chloride: rejection rate of 94-95%
Calcium: 96-98%
Magnesium: 96-98%
Sodium: 92-98%
All of these ions are of interest because they are common to water in the desert southwest; feed water at the consumer level (that which runs through an RO system) can have total dissolved solids levels at several hundred PPM.
If your meter is reading 0 ppm, then it is probably reading water from a relatively new membrane and/or the meter doesn't read very low levels of solutes; these meters simply aren't designed for good resolution at the low end of conductivity. I'd be happy to run any samples of RO water you might have on an ion chromatograph to show you this.
@YTHOR - OK now you are just showing off...ion chromeotoegidraft thingy. Nice post.
You sound like you know your equipment. I was wondering when you measure the resistance of the solution, is it by the traditional DC voltage method or what because I understood the EC/ppm sticks use AC?
I haven't had to use the handheld meters for a very long time; I really don't know what state of the art is at the consumer level. As an analytical chemist with extensive experience in water quality, I have access to much better stuff- for example, meters that can show the resistance of distilled water (at, say, 250,000 ohms/cm) that drops like a rock just by sticking your finger into the sample as it is being tested.
Conductivity meters have their place, but ultimately they don't tell you what ions are present, or in what relative concentration. Any nutrient solutions I prepare are made on a weight basis (X grams of ammonium nitrate, Y grams of boric acid, Z grams of molybdic acid, etc.), so conductivity doesn't really measure into it at all.
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