RO water, EC readings, and mixing nutes - procedural question

mackdx

Well-Known Member
Originally posted in the DTW section with no response...


  • After several seasons outdoors, I am in the process of setting up my first indoor grow running DTW in coco and have a question about calculating nutrient levels.

    A few weeks ago I picked up a Bluelabs EC pen and have been playing with it. My drinking water comes from a whole house RO system with a 250 gal tank in the basement (raw well water has salt, manganese, calcium, iron, hydrogen sulfide, etc). If I test the product water, I get an EC reading of around 0.2 to 0.3 (170ppm on the 500 scale). I understand that trace minerals are helpful for plant health, but what is left in the RO product water are likely not the NPK sat building blocks they require for health growth.

    Presuming I want to mix nutrients (H&G Coco A & B in this case) to hit a specific target, do I use the initial EC reading as a "zero baseline" and mix to hit a target that has an EC reading greater than what I really want?

    For example,

    Initial EC reading of RO water = 0.2
    Desired EC reading of nutrients = 2.0
    Add nutes until meter reads 2.2

    I am probably over thinking this and should be reading the plants, but also want to understand the process as it should be employed.

    Thanks!​




 

BROBIE

Well-Known Member
True, read your plants . Since your EC is that low, disregard it's value. Use like you say, 2.2 if RO is .2 . The Canna site agrees: click here

How is it that you have RO water with an EC of .2? True properly filtered RO water should have no salts in it.
 

mackdx

Well-Known Member
True, read your plants . Since your EC is that low, disregard it's value. Use like you say, 2.2 if RO is .2 . The Canna site agrees: click here

How is it that you have RO water with an EC of .2? True properly filtered RO water should have no salts in it.

Thanks for the feedback

My unit uses a Filmtech XLE4040 membrane which is a high production membrane. My guess is it (in part) achieves the higher production by loosening up the rejection rate a little. Plus, the feed water is unbelievably bad for a drilled well.
 
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