Look for distilled water if you can.
The calcium in tap water is calcium carbonate and is not readily available to our plants like say calcium nitrate.
It's funny because i did awesome (for a beginner) the first two grows: one was seed starter soil on the top 2" then FFOF below in 2 gallon fabric pots, the second was a transplant from seed starter soil to coco brick (the cheapest one you can get at menards....was like $2) in a 1.5 liter hempy with perlite in the res.
I read a post from someone that knew the chemistry of it and it made sense to me. something about how r/o or distilled not having certain minerals in it will strip it from the soil to get it back or something like that. All I know is, when i see spots or purple stems, it usually gets fixed with a dose of cal/mag. I use r/o and FP. but you knew that.lol and I have seen many people with the same look after using distilled.Just throwing it out there
That may be the case but I would never water my plants with straight RO water. RO is simply a blank slate where the added plant food brings things back into an ideal balance (hopefully). The minerals in my tap water absolutely conflict with the elements in my plant food rendering some elements unavailable to my plants.
Your pH isn't an issue and neither is your ppm.
8.4 is kind of an issue, ph down isn't the healthiest thing to drown your plants in... But really my question was re: the rust spots and if that was a sign of needing calmag because of the low ppm water?
if you added DGFP, it should bring your ph down. Adding more should bring your cal and mag up. I do find when I see those spots that a watering with cal/mag will fix it. But I could just need to do the same and up my feeding amount. But it's rare I see it and I have been seeing great success going the way i have, so if it ain't broke.............
At 35ppm, your bicarbonate levels are going to be very low which is why I said your pH is not an issue.
it's the distilled water, I guarantee it. I said before, I see the same thing and fix it with cal/mag
It's not a calcium or magnesium issue in the sense that you need to add more than what DG supplies (I use RO water, Promix, and DG w/no calmag. Why would that only work for me in both hydro and promix?), I think you're under-watering your plants and therefore under-feeding them too. I think your nutrient dose is fine but you need to do a better job of getting those plants established in those pots. You said you took those pictures on a watering day? Then why isn't your medium moist? You have a decent amount of root/moisture stress going on and you need to rehydrate your medium with a better watering technique. If you need training wheels, go buy a watering can from a garden store, the kind that poor out through a shower head and water with 16 ounces of water as needed. I promise that if you yanked that plant out of that pot, you'd see a highly under-developed root system.
Mine is harder.Mine is EC1.6 or 800PPM. I use RO for feeds but NOT to water in between. In fact I mix RO with my tap even for feeds after the first feeding to avoid calcium and other deficits. chuckestevez is telling you. Listen. Don't use RO or distilled water exclusively.I would luv to use tap instead of RO. It comes out of my faucet at 700ppm tho! I don't think that's good
Chuck, those lower leaves are not deficient in calcium. Also, calmag bottles are often derived from calcium and magnesium nitrate. If something greened up that's from nitrogen. Do you have a better picture of a 'calcium deficiency'?
