Possible Phosphorus Deficiency??????

fatface

Active Member
im using ionic grow 3-1-5 and some of my lower leaves started looking like the pic. i try to keep my res at ph 5.8,full strength nutes is 4 teaspoons per gallon, im using 3 teaspoons per gallon. sorry i dont have a ppm meter.
i was wondering if the cause was the ionic fert with its low phos,level or does anybody think i should go full strength fert???? the plant is about a month and a half old. sorry my camera is crappy so i use this pic.

 

VictorVIcious

Well-Known Member
Welcome to the forum. Since you dont have a pic or a ppm meter we would just be guessing like you are as to what problem you may have if any. Other than this problem with the lower leaves do the plants look healthy?? If so you may be lucking out. You can't possibly 'control' your nutes without a meter. Ph of the water may be fine, it could still have some sediment. I use ionic nutes, with RO water, still wouldn't consider doing hydro without a meter. YOu need a meter, and did I mention that you need a meter. VV
PS get a meter.
 

fatface

Active Member
the plant is big, the top looks healthy but the bottom looks like the pic. dont worrie im going to buy a ppm meter, when i get some money. i may not be puting enough fert because the plant is the biggest one i have ever had, if i were to flower her she would finish 5 feet tall or more. shes about 2 1/2 feet right now, so what do you think i should try besides getting a ppm meter at the moment. add more fert? what i think i should do is get a ppm meter, i got my eye on the bluelab truncheon.

does ro water help?
 

babygro

Well-Known Member
im using ionic grow 3-1-5 and some of my lower leaves started looking like the pic. i try to keep my res at ph 5.8,full strength nutes is 4 teaspoons per gallon, im using 3 teaspoons per gallon. sorry i dont have a ppm meter.
i was wondering if the cause was the ionic fert with its low phos,level or does anybody think i should go full strength fert???? the plant is about a month and a half old. sorry my camera is crappy so i use this pic.
You can't grow in hydro without an EC meter - otherwise you're just guessing at the nutrient concentrations. Also your Ionic grow seems low in P for some reason.

RO water will simply remove 98% of the total dissolved solids from your water, meaning you're effectively cleaning it of dissolved salts. This can be useful if your tap water is hard and has a high EC which contributes to the overall feeding EC.

Example. You're in a hard water area and your tap water EC is 0.6. In hydro you shouldn't be feeding at a level much higher than 1.0, 1.1 EC with a maximum of 1.5 in flowering. So 1.0, 1.1 EC minus our existing 0.6 EC dissolved salts = 0.4-0.5 EC, which represents the total amount of nutrient dissolved salts you can add to your water as nutrients.

If you use an RO machine you can remove pretty much all of the existing dissolved salts from your water, so that 0.6 EC can come down to less than 0.1 EC, so that means 0.1-1.0 = 0.9 EC of nutrients.

You need to increase your nutrient feeds, but you can't until you know what your base tap water EC is - you must get an EC meter. The other thing to bear in mind when using RO water is that it filters it so much itll take ALL the dissolved salts out and that means the useful ones like Calcium and Magnesium. This is why many people mix RO water with tap water to put some of those useful dissolved salts back but not at such a high concentration.

So back to our example of 0.6 EC, if you mix 2/3 RO water with 1/3 tap water you'll end up with an EC of about 0.2, which should contain more of those useful salts, but also allow you to safely fertilise at a higher EC reading of 1.0 EC.
 
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