i will be filling up my NFT 424 2moro and was wondering if i could get a few pointers as to what the PH and EC levels should be.....
i have a blulab trunchon and a PH kit (That has a card with different colours from ph 6.0 to 7.6 and 2 small bottles that say "ph 6 - 7.6 acidity" and a bottle of ph down)
if the optimum grow ph is 5.5-6 then what am i supposed to do with a fecking scale chart that starts at 6?

any comments please.

Roach

get a ph pen roach, woth there weight in gold

cant get one for a month mate so any consructive advice would be great

Ive used a ph test kit in emergencys and always get it to the piss colour on the chart and you wont be far out.

Get a pen asap tho..make it alot easier.

p&q

yeah that'll do for now...thanks fella
any ideas as to ec ? for seedlings?

http://www.uk420.com/boards/index.php?showtopic=33278

Good place to start, the thing with plants is the way one grows may not be right for another.

It's all down to trial and error and don't be too scared most plants are very robust and can easily fix themselves in Veg. stage!

Play with your plants and see what they do/don't like

I give my seedlings pH 5.5 and EC 1.1-1.2 (background EC 0.6). Formulex is a good baby feed - doesn't burn at recommended rate (5ml/l).

And get a pH pen I know you can't atm, so if your scale only goes down to 6 on the pH test kit that'll have to do....not really ideal but better than nowt imo.

GN

agree with GN - start with the standard dose of Formulex, and a root stimulator if you have one - no worries if not....once they get going start with low doses of nutes and work your way up - hydro is fogiving, if you give to much you can take out and add just water to water it down - you will see what your plants say as to how much they can take

Z

Whats backround EC? ta mate

Sorry meant to start new thread

oh hi there rilversizlas yeah come and hijack my thread anytime no probs

was only playin with ya anyways mate

The EC of my tapwater...it's an indication of how much shit is in your water (some is good, like Ca and Mg, others are bad, like chlorine). It means your plants can't get all the nutrients you feed because it's diluted with the shit in the water. The reason why you need to know this is that if you have really soft water, like EC 0.2, it's easier to burn your plants with the same amount of nutrient that you would use in my hard water of EC 0.6. Make sense? So if you want to give your seedlings EC 1.1 and you have hard water like me, when you mix it up to EC 1.1 only EC 0.5 of that is actually nutes - the other 0.6 is the shit. This is why using RO water or rainwater kicks so much ass...no shit in there for the plants to have to eat...just pure nutrient goodness.

You can push the EC up a bit to compensate for the crap in your water but be careful.

GN

ok thank mate thats starting to make sense now GreenNinja just dipped my trunchon in the sink and its reading 0.7 nearly the same as yours.
roach

Hello mate

My background ec is also 0.6 but what I do is take half of this into account when taking a reading..

So for an ec of 0.6 the bluelab shows 0.9 for 0.9 the bluelab would show 1.2 ect ect ect:

Goodluck!

p&q

cheers mate but thats just confused me even more tbh what does all that mean? yep looked at it again and im baffled.

You're meant to test the background ec of your water, but then only count half of it when measuring your actual ec with nutes. So if your background ec is 0.2, you deduct 0.1 from the reading with nutes and so on.

So if you want an ec of 1.2, and your background ec is 0.6 (as in p&q's example) your reading on the truncheon after adding nutes should be 1.5 (1.2 + 0.3).

ok so my backround EC is 0.7 - what should my trunchon read after nutes are in the NFT?
how am i supposed to know what EC i want anyway? i can tell this will take a while to get my pea sized brain around

3.5 more than your target ec


Depends how old the plants are.