Coco Nutrients Questions

[Stilg7]

@420autoflower
It's always good to hear positives about GH because they seem to get mixed reviews. I agree with you about the 10 part nute line not being needed but I don't understand the not following charts or graphs. I feel at sometime when you started growing you would've had to look at something to know what to mix and feed at what stages. Either the back of each bottle, manufacturer's suggestions, website, forum, something lol. That or you have an extensive growing background with plants other than cannabis. I would be curious to know how you started and how you became so comfortable with nutes to this point.

Don't get me wrong, I've grown plenty of plants that I thought produced good quality smoke, just not top of the line. My main goal would be to fill a tent with plants that produce at least close to top shelf quality and be consistant in doing it. Unfortuneatly I've yet to do that. I feel like growing cannabis has a low floor. Meaning anyone who tries to grow it will probably have no problem getting a plant to the finish line. That and I feel most growers are satisfied with mid or even worse results. On the other hand I think growing has a pretty high skill cap if you want to get the most out of each cultivar you decide to grow. Let's be honest smoking isn't the healthiest thing to do no matter what it is so if I'm going to smoke something I would like it to be top notch!

Do you have any links to some of your harvests? When I try to look through here it seems you keep most of your posts on one thread and there is quite a bit to look through! That and it looks like you supercrop autos. I thought most HST was a no no for autos. Do you only do that with certain strains? I'd love to see more and possibly start closely watching your grows

 

[Stilg7]

@Lil Dab
Any chance you were able to find that chart? I started watching that video before bed and got about 45 minutes in. Really good information. That Harley guy is an absolute wizard.

 

[Lil Dab]

@Lil Dab
Any chance you were able to find that chart? I started watching that video before bed and got about 45 minutes in. Really good information. That Harley guy is an absolute wizard.

Negative I searched till I was crossed eyed as far as N goes IMPE 250ppm during veg is max sometimes too much then transition down when flower starts slowly decreases down to ~120ppm for late flower my transition week is around 180 then 160 and then 140 to 120.

All of Harley smith videos are very informative and helpful for me when learning nutrients I've watched all of his video's multiple times



I'll tag in @Mañ'O'Green I believe he was the one that shared the diagram. MOG do you have or know what I am even talking about? I remember you sharing a flow chart that showed the entire life cycle of the plant and how the plant needed more and less N and K through the whole grow.

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

Hey everyone, I've been growing on and off for about 4 years now and I'm wanting to take my grows to the next level, I'm sick of growing mids lol. I only grow auto flowers (but now that I have two tents I'm considering switching to photos) and a little over a year ago I came across mephisto genetics. Now that I have grown a few of their strains I want to get the most out of the rest of the Meph seeds I have before I possibly make the switch to photos. I've got most of my information from cocoforcannabis and the consistency of my grows has come a long way. Admittedly my first year or so I didn't follow guidelines as close as I should've. I was too eager and wanted to get to the end product as soon as possible. I quickly learned though, that I could grow a plant easy enough but if I wanted top shelf buds I needed to take growing a little bit more serious. One of my big problems in the beginning was I would feed my plants full strength from very early on. I've learned that starting low and increasing slowly works best. I've also learned that checking the pH of my mixes each watering was very important and the initial check when I made the mix in a 5 gallon bucket wouldn't stay the same, the pH would rise. Then I had to take a look at how frequently I would water my plants and again with coco, I learned that you can water more frequently than I ever thought was possible. I hand water so, I still don't think I water as much as I should, but by just paying a little more attention to my nute strength, my pH before every feeding and my watering frequency, I was able to see marked improvements.

Now I know a lot comes into play when determining the quality of your buds but I feel I have most of those checked off, with the exception of my overall grow environment. I won't touch on that now because I feel that requires the most attention to detail as far as light intensity, temp, RH, leaf temp, VPD charts, air flow etc. Now, on cocoforcannabis' site they use GH nutrients. After my first couple of grows I thought I didn't have enough nutrients. I tend to try to be a bit of a perfectionist and the hobby got the best of me in the beginning... so I slowly pieced together GH's 10 part flora series. I kind of regret doing this but I brought her to the party so we might as well dance. Anyways, according to CFC's feeding chart I have all of the nutrients that are needed except Diamond Nectar. I'm pretty sure that Floralicious Plus is similar but they have different NPK's. A fellow grower I met on another website made a conversion spreadsheet for all of GH's nutes. So I had a formula figured out that would get me the same ratios and ppms as GH's cocotek line. The only problem was the N ppm levels were always way lower than what GH said they should be on their feed chart even though the ratios and ppms were identical. That led me to believe maybe that spreadsheet wasn't entirely accurate. As of late I stumbled upon this information and calculator (https://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/profiles.htm). Although this calculator shows smaller N values too, they are much closer to GH's, usually within 5 ppm. If anyone is familiar with this calculator or one like it, am I right to think I can make a mix with any of the nutrients I have (besides Ripen because I guess that technically kills your plant) as long as each nutrient's ppms are the same as CFC's with the same calculator? Because if the ppms of each nute were the same or relatively close then the NPK ratio would be the same, correct?

TLDR: I guess to simplify, does anyone have a GH nute feeding schedule that uses the whole 10 part flora series in coco coir/perlite and gets consistent top shelf results? Or does anyone have a way for me to accurately convert the GH nutes I have to the GH nutes used on CFC's website?
Thanks for reading, any and all help/info would be greatly appreciated.

@Stilg7 you may be looking in the wrong place to bring your quality up! If your plants are living to harvest then the nutrients are not that far off. The one thing that took my growing game to the next level was my lights and the use of spectrum timing. Get the Photone App it is inexpensive and will give you good information even if it is not perfect.

Make sure you are getting enough light. Then supplement the veg cycle with blue light, this will keep the plants shorter with better internode spacing. If you can run UVA during the entire grow. Then in early flower add more red and far red, then in late flower UVB. I use these lamps and pucks:



Now to answer you nutrient questions:

First read this:

Tutorial - A word on Nutrients

The proper use of “salt” based fertilizer to grow Auto Flowering Cannabis. Salts: Natural and man made any chemical compound formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, with all or part of the hydrogen of the acid replaced by a metal or other cation. Learning how to use salt based...

www.autoflower.org

When I ran GH I used this schedule at 50-60% strength for autos drain to waste:

 

[Stilg7]

@Mañ'O'Green
Thanks for all of that information! I was wanting to get a really good understanding of nutrients before I tackled my grow environment because I feel that has the most variables and those can be hard to control at times. I grow in a 4x4 tent with a ViparSpectra KS5000. Here is a review of it from CFC (https://www.cocoforcannabis.com/grow-light-guide/viparspectra-ks5000-par-epar-tests-and-review/). I'm not too knowledgeable on lights so I'm not sure if my light is adequate or if I would need a supplemental source.

The only thing I have to test light is a lux meter (Dr. Meter LX1330B). I've read about VPD and even though that takes into account the temp and humidity of the canopy, I thought that if that was optimal then the light would be. Regarding VPD I read that leaf temp is important so I ordered an inferred temp gun (Etekcity Lasergrip 774). I'm not too familiar with DLI so I'll have to look into it and the Photone app you provided. I'm assuming VPD and DLI are probably equally important, correct? If I do decide to go with the app, did you purchase the phone attachment they suggest? Also, I have an iPhone 11, is it new enough to take advantage of the app. And would I only need to purchase/unlock the LED option?

And as for nutrients I came across a helpful post from another site that explains calculating nutrient ppm. I will leave it here for others who might be interested in my post (https://www.rollitup.org/t/understanding-and-calculating-nutrient-ppm.995409/). The fifth reply on the post linked mentions the calculator that I referenced earlier in my post. So I think with the calculator from the website I mentioned, the information on the rollitup thread along with the thread you provided, that should give me a good idea of what I'm looking for. At the very least a good starting point.

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

Go get the Photone app now! Read all of the information on their web site.

Photone - Grow Light Meter

The grow light meter app to measure PAR / PPFD, DLI, lux / fc, or Kelvin with your iOS or Android phone. Including PPFD meter and DLI conversion for plants.

growlightmeter.com

Your light is being measured at 11 inches from the canopy for the par values in the review? That is suspect to me do you run your lights at 11 inches from the canopy?

Your spectrum has plenty of blue and not enough far red IMPO

I have been studying nutrients for 7 years and I still do not know all there is to know, so stop concentrating on just that and follow the vendors chart at 50 -60 %. The only thing I would consider adding to the GH line is AN's Bud Candy just once two weeks before harvest. Make sure you are fertigating to ~20% run off to waste every day that you fertigate with coco as the medium.

If your starting water is >200 ppm you will have problems with controlling the PH, remember the PH down will either add potassium or Nitrogen to the nutrient count so if you have to add a lot of that it can throw your balance off. My starting water is 80 PPM and I still have to consider how much PH down I am adding.

VPD is important but in reality in a tent it is not realistic that you can achieve accurate control. Just shoot for 80% RH 80°F for seedlings, 60% RH 68°F night to 78°F day in veg and 45% - 55% RH in flower. Cooler nights in late flower will help bring out the colors down to as low as 62°F.

DLI is critical to a good crop, like I said, better light upped my game from mediocre crops to FIRE.

 

[Stilg7]

@Mañ'O'Green
I don’t run my lights 11” from the canopy. I try to keep them roughly two feet from the canopy and run them low. When the leaves start pointing upwards I’ll turn up the dimmer. That’s probably bad practice on my part but it’s something that’s helped me quite a bit getting my plants healthy through veg and into flower. I did see that he mentions that you could keep the light 16” away from the canopy the entire grow and just adjust the brightness for the different stages of growth. I don’t know if that would work though because 16” at full strength seems like it would be too much for them to handle from my experience. I feel like it would be harder to control temps and humidity that close too. Do you think that would, or should I say should, work like he suggests on the light review? Or at least use that as a guideline until I have time to read over the app’s website. And are the far red pucks you mentioned above what you would suggest for me to supplement with?

I use RO water that’s ppm is usually around 5. When I pH my mix I get it to 5.8 and let it rise until the reservoir is empty making sure to not let it climb above 6.2. I never knew that about pH down. I use GH’s and I assume that it would do the same thing. Is there a way to know which nutrient it increases? I only ever use at most 3mL per batch of nutes to get my desired initial pH. Is that a significant amount? I’d really like to know more about this if you could elaborate.

Seeing how informative your posts are I’m probably going to get MegaCrop and cal it a day as soon as I’m done with my current GH nutes. Thanks for all the great information, much appreciated.

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

Stop guessing about your DLI, 16" is just enough PPFD with your lights at100%. I believe you are starving your plants for light.




RO water is hungry and when exposed to air will grab Co2 and the PH will become acidic as low as 5.4 PH. The best practice is to add 50 PPM of calcium right away and let it sit overnight before you mix your nutrients. It will be much more stable and need less PH buffering. I use Soluble gypsum ~ 3g per gallon.

GH PH down is phosphoric acid when it reacts with the calcium in the nutrient mix it converts to phosphorus lowering the calcium and raising the phosphorus.

You can also get PH down that is Nitric acid which converts to Nitrogen and lowers calcium.


I use the nitric acid in veg and the phosphoric in flower.

You do not need to stop using GH. It is better to stick with what you know until you can get a FIRE crop by adjusting the environment. Like I said before if your plants make it to harvest then your nutrients are not that far off.

 

[Stilg7]

@Mañ'O'Green
Ok, hypothetically let's say I had the Photone app and it was giving me a reading that was optimal for late flower. But the tops of my colas were showing signs of stress (dry and hard, looking like they want to fox tail) or the leaves of the canopy were showing issues. Would that be a strain that is sensitive to light and I need to raise the light(or lowered the DLI)? Or would that mean because I have my DLI dialed in, the plants can take up more nutrients and more efficiently. I could be under feeding at that stage of the plants life causing another set of issues that I was thinking were light related but they aren't. I guess the real question would be if my DLI is dialed in and my plants are showing signs of stress, is it safe to say at that point it's not light related? And not to forget, my temps and humidity should be within the values you said they should be as well. But if the DLI, temps and humidity were all within range, would it then be safe to say it would either be a strain, nutrient or pH issue? Because from my experience with my light even at around 2 ft from the canopy at full strength my plants can show signs of stress that I feel are light related but as you stated before, yes i am kinda giving it my best educated guess. I did see that when you did your calculations for my light that you input 18 hours, I typically have my lights on 20 hours a day to maintain temps, especially during this time of year where I'm from.

The reason why I'm so concerned about my nutrients is because the line that I am using isn't designed for coco, GH has a line specifically for that. That and the mixes I've been making are ones that I modified based on a spreadsheet that may not have been accurate. But I know I can use the Flora line in coco I just need to modify the numbers slightly because like you said in your post coco has different needs compared to other mediums. Maybe the formula offered by the manufacturer is in fact suitable for coco but I wouldn't know for sure unless I could know if the ppm would fall in the parameters you showed me above. My main concern is it would be too low in Cal and if I tried to just add more Cal then I could be too heavy in N because CaliMagic has N in it. I just prefer to know how and why things work. I don't know why but it's just how my brain is wired. So without concrete information out there to convert my line to be sutiable in coco I have to figure that out on my own. And now if my DLI were to be optimal then I would want my nutrients to be too because I'm sure they will take up more of them and if my mix isn't balanced for coco I could be causing a lot of issues during those critical flowering periods. I feel like this is a valid concern and I don't understand why it would be overlooked.

Do you have an idea of how many ppm we are talking about when adding GH pH down? How much + nitrogen and - calcium per mL? Even if you have an approximate answer it would be very helpful. Because like I mentioned coco needs it's Cal and like Harley said in that video, cannabis will take up all nitrogen provided to it. And I've never had an issue with my RO water being acidic so should I not worry too much about adding Cal before making my mix? The only thing my mix's pH might do is rise slightly above 6.2 up from 5.8 and that's only when it's a mix I believe is KoolBloom heavy (I'm not too sure on this I'd have to pay closer attention my next up coming grow) or when the mix lasts longer than my normal 3 days. I use an aeration stone in my 5 gal bucket mixes, does that affect the mix in any way?

Thanks again MOG

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

You are not listening to me, You cannot light burn cannabis with LEDs unless you are touching the plant. I will not respond until you get the app.