Botanicare kind question

tommy217xxx

tommy217xxx

Well-Known Member
hey everyone, I have 12 plants in an ebb and grow system. Two 30 gallon rez's and I'm growin in hydroton. Using tap water. I'm using the botanicare kind system under the enhanced group.

I've always been told to run my nutes at half strength but that doesn't get my ppm' stop where the chart says. Should I run the ml/gal as listed or add nutes to get the ppms to the listed under?
 
OGMMJ

OGMMJ

Active Member
I am currently running the same nutes plus botanicare additives in an LP aero setup, I went on bontanicares website and actually used their nutrient calculator (very simple) then since I am still in early veg stage and like you have heard to not run full strength so where it asks you what size reservoir you are using I just simply put half of the actual size, so I have 10 gallons and I ran the calculator for their reccomendation for a 5 gallon mix: make sense? In doing so I ended up with a ppm of 345-350 which was right what I was shooting for.

If your question is simply should you pay more attention to ml/gallon or the ppm I would say the plants will care more about ppm. High ppm on early plants will burn.

I would always start with half what is recommending and go up from there, remember what is labeled on the back of the bottle is different then what bontanicare will reccomended when used combined with other products of theirs.

Hope this helps.
 
tommy217xxx

tommy217xxx

Well-Known Member
I usually have to go double the ml/gal to get even close to the listed ppm's. Does that sound right?
 
Jimdamick

Jimdamick

Well-Known Member
tommy217xxx said:
I usually have to go double the ml/gal to get even close to the listed ppm's. Does that sound right?
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Probably right. I personally just use a meter to determine the best ppm for my plants. Everybody's tap water has a different ppm, so the recommended amounts do not fit all situations.
I run high PPM mostly, but for some strains that don't need it I drop down. 4 week plants I run at 750-800 ppm and 6 to 8 week plants I've found 1200 ppm to be fine for most plants. Like I said I run high, but do not have any burn issues at those ppm's.
 
OGMMJ

OGMMJ

Active Member
Currently trying it out for my first time but I have almost the whole line of kind and additives

Base
Grow
Silica blast
Hydroguard
Pure blend pro tea
Liquid karma

Picked kind over pure blend because I'm using RO and heard that the kind already has ca and mg, I believe the base has +5% ca
 
ThaMagnificent

ThaMagnificent

Well-Known Member
I'm using Pure Blend line in veg on an ebb and flo table. My seedlings are 2 weeks old. I'm having an issue with the PH rising each day when I check it. I set it to ~6-6.1 and then when I check it a day later it's back u p to 6.8 My EC is .7

Any ideas?
 
OGMMJ

OGMMJ

Active Member
ThaMagnificent said:
I'm using Pure Blend line in veg on an ebb and flo table. My seedlings are 2 weeks old. I'm having an issue with the PH rising each day when I check it. I set it to ~6-6.1 and then when I check it a day later it's back u p to 6.8 My EC is .7

Any ideas?
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Usually a rising ph indicates something funky growing in your water, do you have any slime? Are you running sterile?

I assume with pure blend line you would not be running sterile so are you running any bennies?
 
whitebb2727

whitebb2727

Well-Known Member
I don't know.

I do know I got some BOTANICARE, dynagrow and rxgreensolutions samples.

I think my next grow will not be organic water only.

I will run these side by side.

I have always liked dynagrow. I'm impressed with rxgreensolutions. I will give kind a fair shake to.


I prefer organic but I project that I'm working on requires me to do a synthetic run.
 
OGMMJ

OGMMJ

Active Member
ThaMagnificent said:
Tap water that I just changed out 2 days ago. I have a 25gal res with 4 air stones. Could it be the hydroton???
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If your going to consistently change out the water that often you might be okay with out running any bennies, but personally I would be preventative before reactive, i missed out on that one part of the nute recipe (actually just hadn't arrived in the mail yet and was anxious so started without hydroguard) running RO water and was slimed I think within 48-72 hours. :wall:

I'm now messing around with different mixes in my cloner half RO half tap water, with or without the hydroguard, rinsing with bleach water between res changes vs just rinsing with tap water, ( I have a belief that if I rinse the cloner with a bleach solution it would just kill the bennies in the hydroguard) I actually just finished changing my water in my cloner/seedling bucket (ez clone sprayers) before typing this, checked my ph and it was 8! With little seedlings in there that's a no go.... washed with bleach solution and rinsed throughly then did a gallon of tap and a gallon of RO and ph'd down to 6.5. We will see how it looks after a few days now with no hydroguard in the cloner bucket.

As far as tour hydroton I have never actually used it but my closest buddy runs flood and drain tables with them and I have also read a lot on here that if not properly rinsed and cleaned and soaked in ph'd water that YES the hydroton I fact can cause ph swings.

Was that brand new hydroton when you started or have you used it in a previous grow? Also did you wash it throughly? Heard it will also run off redish water until throughly cleansed.
 
ThaMagnificent

ThaMagnificent

Well-Known Member
OGMMJ said:
If your going to consistently change out the water that often you might be okay with out running any bennies, but personally I would be preventative before reactive, i missed out on that one part of the nute recipe (actually just hadn't arrived in the mail yet and was anxious so started without hydroguard) running RO water and was slimed I think within 48-72 hours. :wall:

I'm now messing around with different mixes in my cloner half RO half tap water, with or without the hydroguard, rinsing with bleach water between res changes vs just rinsing with tap water, ( I have a belief that if I rinse the cloner with a bleach solution it would just kill the bennies in the hydroguard) I actually just finished changing my water in my cloner/seedling bucket (ez clone sprayers) before typing this, checked my ph and it was 8! With little seedlings in there that's a no go.... washed with bleach solution and rinsed throughly then did a gallon of tap and a gallon of RO and ph'd down to 6.5. We will see how it looks after a few days now with no hydroguard in the cloner bucket.

As far as tour hydroton I have never actually used it but my closest buddy runs flood and drain tables with them and I have also read a lot on here that if not properly rinsed and cleaned and soaked in ph'd water that YES the hydroton I fact can cause ph swings.

Was that brand new hydroton when you started or have you used it in a previous grow? Also did you wash it throughly? Heard it will also run off redish water until throughly cleansed.
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I have a 5 gal bucket that I drilled holes in the bottom of. I ran a bucket full at a time under the water for like 5 mins then dump it in a big tote. I did notice I still have a ton of runoff from the hydroton when the flood table fills up, but I'm not sure how else to clean it other than like you said let it soak

and YES it is reddish runoff
 
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OGMMJ

OGMMJ

Active Member
ThaMagnificent said:
I have a 5 gal bucket that I drilled holes in the bottom of. I ran a bucket full at a time under the water for like 5 mins then dump it in a big tote. I did notice I still have a ton of runoff from the hydroton when the flood table fills up, but I'm not sure how else to clean it other than like you said let it soak
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Yeah I would let it soak in a bathtub or something and would consider putting some kind of sterilizer in the water, either h202 or bleach but rinse throughly if you do. Also the 5 gallon bucket with holes will prolly do the trick just maybe more like a half hour let water blast through them.

Also I have read that bontanicare pure blend and airstones don't get along, possibly read into that and see what you think and maybe look at flooming or a Venturi for alternative aeration methods if you feel the airstones could be a culprit. I believe the porus stone gives bacteria a place to "hangout".

Rising ph can be fine if it is rising because your plants are "eating" more then they are drinking (in which case up your nute strength, which will lead you to dialing in your particular strains) but if they are drinking more then they are eating your ppm/EC will rise which will in most cases cause your ph to lower seeing as the majority of nutrient concentrations are of a low ph, but if the ec/ppm is staying roughly the same and the ph is constantly rising, especially if it's rising more then .2 or .3 a day you I would say you most likely have some sort of bacteria growth. I am currently going through my learning curve since I built an entirely new system (stinkbud) and a rising ph would not be fine with me unless my ppm/EC was dropping at the same time.
 
OGMMJ

OGMMJ

Active Member
rkymtnman said:
what is the EC of your water only?

that EC is a bit high for such young plants. I go for 0.2 to 0.3 for seedlings.
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Hey rkyman as I mentioned I'm just now starting to get the hang of ppm and ec and have a few different meters to compare contrast with and until today I was running off ppm of a conversion rate of what I'm assuming is .5 but now I have a meter that measures both ppm and EC in us/cm and my ppm is measuring 365-375 and EC is measuring ~0715 which is .715 EC correct?

Question is using RO water I was under the impression that 3-400 ppm for 3-4 week old plants or so was a little on the low side of what I see most people running, plants are nice and green, am I headed the right direction? Thinking once they get 3-4 nodes I will up it to more of a 700-750ppm so an EC of roughly 1.5.
 
ThaMagnificent

ThaMagnificent

Well-Known Member
OGMMJ said:
Yeah I would let it soak in a bathtub or something and would consider putting some kind of sterilizer in the water, either h202 or bleach but rinse throughly if you do. Also the 5 gallon bucket with holes will prolly do the trick just maybe more like a half hour let water blast through them.

Also I have read that bontanicare pure blend and airstones don't get along, possibly read into that and see what you think and maybe look at flooming or a Venturi for alternative aeration methods if you feel the airstones could be a culprit. I believe the porus stone gives bacteria a place to "hangout".

Rising ph can be fine if it is rising because your plants are "eating" more then they are drinking (in which case up your nute strength, which will lead you to dialing in your particular strains) but if they are drinking more then they are eating your ppm/EC will rise which will in most cases cause your ph to lower seeing as the majority of nutrient concentrations are of a low ph, but if the ec/ppm is staying roughly the same and the ph is constantly rising, especially if it's rising more then .2 or .3 a day you I would say you most likely have some sort of bacteria growth. I am currently going through my learning curve since I built an entirely new system (stinkbud) and a rising ph would not be fine with me unless my ppm/EC was dropping at the same time.
Click to expand...
That was my first build. I built the veg system and then figured out it would be a hard to fit to put 3 of them in a 9x5 for flower so I switched to a 3x3 ebb and flo for veg and ebb and gro buckets for flower
 
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