Purpose of a ppm meter?

i may sound dumb here..

i do know what it does, but do i need it?
been collecting all the stuff for my first grow. when doing my reading it seemed i would need one so i ordered
the bluelab ppm meter. when looking at the directions on the back of my nutes i dont see anything about ppm. just measurements.
all i see is people suggesting what your ppm should be at online, and on the meter there is 3 diff unit readings.
i want to use this thing and do everything as right as possible. but if i dont need it then thats cool too.

fyi
i will be using hempy buckets
botanicare pro grow and bloom
and tapwater.

thanks guys.

bluelab? no you're not dumb. a meter measures electrical conductivity on the water and tells you the amount of tds (total dissolved solids) . EC is the only true reading and all others are based on EC and converted. different meters use different conversion factors so ppm will vary from meter to meter but EC will always be the same, I use bluelab and use the ppm reading, I don't know what conversion factor it uses really.

did you get the guardian, I love my guardians, go bluelab!

i use pbp, start off with about 5ml per gallon and see what your ppms are. you can always add more.

The purpose is to be able to tell how much your girls are eating. You want to find the sweet spot where they are using water and nutes at about the same rate (ppm's stay at about the same level). If ppm's go up your feeding too much and need to lower the amount of nutes your giving them. If they go down more than slightly then you need to feed them more. ppm and ph meters are a must when growing hydro imho.

It was my understanding that if using organic nutes u can't use a meter to get EC lavels not that I know WTF Im doing lol.

so basically i have to try to balance ppms and nute measurements? i guess i got to get growing just to figure it all out.

any other botanicare nutes you guys suggest? i dont want to get to technical. but im hoping i get enough cal mag from my tap water.

also what unit measurement do i use? 500 700 or ec?

I run the full line of botanicare pbp and have a great recipe in my thread, my 3 stages of flower. many have tried it with great success and fantastic aromas.

EC is the standard measurement and to get the TDS they multiply that number by .5 or .7. If you know what your conversion factor is your golden. My meter does both EC and TDS so no issues. And if your meter does both it really doesnt matter as they are the same thing really but lots of guys talk EC. So lets say you have a EC reading of 1000, with a .7 conversion factor, your TDS would be 700ppm and a .5 TDS would be 500ppm. Same thing just different number and I dont know why lol. But as Tallen said it is a good way to monitor how the plants r taking up nutes and how you need to adjust the mix to keep things somewhat stable. Yes just plant the shit and learn as you go but again keeo things on the lower end and add as needed, you cann't take it out once its in lol.

thankyou this is what i was looking for.

So do you have a PH meter as well? It's probably more important than a EC meter lol. Also I meant to say that the seed company that your stock came from will most likely have nute info for that particular strain available online. Good luck!!!

I would definitly go with superstoners nute recipe,the guy knows what hes talking about and their are ALOT of people who will testify to the fact,I bought hes nute recipe and will implement them soon.I have also seen the affects of his recipe,check out his thread.