You never give plain water in coco, it's just bad for your plants. If you feed too much or are getting nute lockout you can flush your coco with 25% nute solution to break down salt buildups and such but never just plain water. Because coco has nothing in it by default you don't want to wash all your nutes out and leave the plant to starve until your next feeding which is why if you have to flush your medium you use 1/4 to 1/2 strength nutes.
HMM. I am in my 5th week of flower and have been feeding them around 1100 ppm since 3 weeks before flip, I never have to correct for buildup. I would think if your medium is retaining so much that you are not getting enough runoff every day or you are letting your coco dry out which will cause the salts to dry out and build up. That is why coco users are to do sufficient runoff every day, to push the salts and such out while replacing them with new food. You could lower your feed to say 200 PPM, flush out your coco until you get around 200 PPM coming out and than just give them a normal dose of nutes. Carry on from there but if you are getting that kind of buildup in your coco you need to get more runoff every day so you don't get the buildups you are getting IMO.
Your meter is not working correctly.Most dont check runoff but sometime around week 6 or 7 leaves start showing signs of build up.Small corrections weekly will avoid this especially if your strain like mine is a 10 week.
Not sure if its diff coco brands or the fertilizer but Ive always had more ppm going out then in.I shoot for 3-400 ppm more then that its time for less.I run off every day but i use less nutes if i once a week to a heavy runoff with less ppm.I think it stays more balanced then.Ive had many coco grows and used diff nutes ,always have more ppm in runoff even if i feed 2-3 times a day to runoff.
That makes no sense. If you are feeding 790 ppm nutrient solution and only 380 ppm runoff is coming out then your plants would have to be pulling 410 ppm of nutrients out of your feed. That's not happening. You started the post off with asking "how this whole ppm malarkey works", I think something must be off with your whole process of checking it.
Why cant they take 410 of the nutrients is this to high amount or too low, aside from my meter being off I just submerge it in the water and wait for the number
Yes. If you are thoroughly soaking the coco it would be impossible for runoff not to be close to the input EC/ppm.
I was just interested as my pen came in the post the other day, I would say the plant is good a little dark leaves with light patches begining in the veins but the flower is going quick better everyday I will take a picture later
I totally disagree. When I'm growing new strains, measuring runoff ppm is a wonderful tool to help determine how much a certain strain likes to feed. As an example, when I grew Slurricane and Wedding Cake side by side given identical feeds, the runoff from the Wedding Cake plants was substantially higher ppms compared to the Slurricane. This helps to guide me towards correct strain specific nutrition in future monocrop crows with those tested strains.
This is true, I did this for a minute and it was no good I track my grows very meticulously and take pictures daily, the crops that I gave feed/water/feed/water definitely suffered vs plants that were fed a milder food solution daily. A good alternative if you want to still feed that full strength (feed chart) mode would be getting into compost teas and doing feed>tea>feed>tea. This is what I do now in coco and it works wonders.
Runoff doesn't work like that, a Res does.
I disagree. You can most certainly know how much to feed your plants potted in coco based on runoff readings. It does not only apply to systems with a reservoir.
So if I observe some strains eating more than others based on consistent differences in runoff ppm, that means nothing to you? My plants are all happy, but I'm trying to dial in specific strains that I run over and over.
Exactly. Years of growing in coco has taught me that.
Years Experience wont beat these people who watch too much YouTube growers and follow bro science instead of scientific instruments and measurements.