Grow Mediums New to hydro. RDWC Nutrient advice?

[derek420colorado]

I'm going to have to disagree with everyone saying you have to do all these res changes. There are plenty of journals out there where people grow nice plants and do zero to almost no res changes. All they do is top off with just water or nutes. Granted I don't have personal experience but I have done more than enough reading and there is plenty of evidence out there.

Ok so lets break it down to the science of WHY you need to do rez changes when growing in a DWC or RWDC system. It is all about salts, you see all the nutrients we use have a certain amount of residual salts in them. When you do not change your rez regularly the salts build up and prevent your plants from being able to absorb the nutrients correctly. I have my formal education in Botany and Horticulture so I would like to see anyone who has successfully(and by successfully I mean top quality herb with monster yields, as that is the point with Hydro) grown without doing regular rez changes. Now you can get away with not doing a rez change I am sure, however your plants will NOT reach their full potential plain and simple.

I would also add that there are waaaaaaay more folks with evidence here that doing regular rez changes is the way to go. When you say there is plenty of evidence I would like to see where you are getting your info because it is just flat out wrong. There is one caveat to this, it is if you are using 100% organic and NO synthetic nutrients, which is very hard to do you might be able to get away with not changing your rez regularly. If you use totally organic methods of hydro then you probably could go the whole time without a rez change but as you are a beginner I would not recommend it. And here at AFN we only care about helping you get the most out of your grow, so if you are being fed bad info I would like to see who is doing it and I will break out some science on them if need be. Also as far as the nutrients go, I have never used AN but I have used Canna and they work great. I have seen almost all positive things about AN so I am going to give them a shot. I hope this helps and I hope you change your rez if you decide to go with DWC. Just check out some of our grow journals to see, mine is in my sig. Sending good grow Karma your way

 

[Hal 8999]

I am not hurt or fuming. Everybody does not get along with one another. No sleep lost or tears shed.

 

[Anasazi]

Ok so lets break it down to the science of WHY you need to do rez changes when growing in a DWC or RWDC system. It is all about salts, you see all the nutrients we use have a certain amount of residual salts in them. When you do not change your rez regularly the salts build up and prevent your plants from being able to absorb the nutrients correctly. I have my formal education in Botany and Horticulture so I would like to see anyone who has successfully(and by successfully I mean top quality herb with monster yields, as that is the point with Hydro) grown without doing regular rez changes. Now you can get away with not doing a rez change I am sure, however your plants will NOT reach their full potential plain and simple.

I would also add that there are waaaaaaay more folks with evidence here that doing regular rez changes is the way to go. When you say there is plenty of evidence I would like to see where you are getting your info because it is just flat out wrong. There is one caveat to this, it is if you are using 100% organic and NO synthetic nutrients, which is very hard to do you might be able to get away with not changing your rez regularly. If you use totally organic methods of hydro then you probably could go the whole time without a rez change but as you are a beginner I would not recommend it. And here at AFN we only care about helping you get the most out of your grow, so if you are being fed bad info I would like to see who is doing it and I will break out some science on them if need be. Also as far as the nutrients go, I have never used AN but I have used Canna and they work great. I have seen almost all positive things about AN so I am going to give them a shot. I hope this helps and I hope you change your rez if you decide to go with DWC. Just check out some of our grow journals to see, mine is in my sig. Sending good grow Karma your way

Totally understand what you're saying but I don't agree with you. We don't know if people are growing top quality bud or not but there is plenty of evidence that proves this works. Again I have to mention the lucas formula because it is a prime example of what I'm saying being correct. Anyone who researches lucas formula will learn that there are tons of people who grow great plants using the method and there is even a lucas add back calculator just so you can top off the res without changing it.

You can claim all these people are somehow not growing topshelf but that seems unfair to me. I no longer use lucas formula but it did give me my best yielding plants. To be honest I'm surprised none of you know about this shit. Just researching lucas add back you will get all type of info.


Btw dereck I appreciate you being able to discuss things in a respectful manner even if we don't agree. You're still one of my fav peeps here

 

[derek420colorado]

For sure, there is more than one way to skin a cat or grow great ganj lol. I am kind of familiar with the lucas formula and from what I remember that is more about cutting out the gro portions of 3 part nutrient series and just using the bloom and micro. Also my definition of top quality herb is different than most, yes I am sure if you don't change your rez you will have sticky buds. But what I am saying is that if you do you will have more of those sticky buds, and there may be folks on the net that have been successful and you may have been as well. I am reffering to this site alone and I can only remember of a couple of folks who do hydro not doing rez changes and that was because they were using 100% organic. So I went and did a little digging and it says per the lucas formula that I found it suggests a rez change after you have topped off with the same amount of water as your system holds. So I still stand behind my empirical data on the subject, however I will never tell someone not to grow how they want to, that is your choice. I have had lots of folks tell me stuff and I didn't listen, sometimes I was right and got to be like hahahaha I told you so and sometimes I had to learn hard lessons. Either way, my only advice is stick to it. Don't let anything discourage you from growing if that is what you like to do. Here is a link to the site I found this on.

"Top off the reservoir daily using a pH corrected water (water you have pH adjusted to your preferred range, usually between 5.6-5.8 in hydro) as required to maintain a full reservoir level. After adding back an amount of water equal to the amount of your reservoir capacity you should change the reservoir and put in fresh solution. For example in the same system when you have added in 20 gallons of water total in topping off your reservoir daily, it’s time to change the reservoir.

I recommend having a separate “top off” reservoir that you have the appropriate amount of pH adjusted water pre-measured (in our example’s case, 20 gallons). When that reservoir is empty you know it’s time to change your system’s reservoir."

 

[Anasazi]

I've never seen that site before but it is not pulling all the info from lucas correctly. At this link (4th post i think) you can see where lucas directly posted what you quoted. He stated it was his old method of growing and now he is doing what I've been saying all along in this thread. I'll pull the quote for everyone who doesn't want to bother going to the link.


Here is what lucas said directly after he posted what you pulled from that website all of which is at my link in lucas actual post and not from a website that is pulling his information.

An alternate reservoir management strategy I now prefer, is to add nutes to the reservoir in the addback water. The goal is to bring the reservoir back up to 1300ppm. In this strategy, I feel a single res change at harvest is sufficient.

Despite the obvious concern that this non dumping approach allows toxins to build up, I never experienced toxin buildup. this surprised me and caused me to alter my thinking about plant metabolism. It seems they do not excrete toxins the way organisms with digestive tracts do.

Now here we have one of the most famous growers on the web clearly stating that you don't need to do res changes and he in fact doesn't do res changes. We're talking about a grower who still has a shit ton of people to this day still following his feeding methods to produce great results.

To think I got attacked over this info when it was there for all to see. Kind of pisses me off, people coming at me like I have no clue what I'm talking about when I spend so much time pouring over info for the simple fact that yes i am not a pro grower. That means I put in more effort to actually learn different shit and see what can work best for me. It means I'm not an old stubborn grower who refuses to accept that there are other ways to get great results.

Blue came in here and tried to keep the peace or whatever but frankly that is a cop out to me. It wasn't a clash of personalities it was me being attacked for disagreeing with the popular opinion. Call a spade a spade, I got attacked with rudeness and insults and had my posts deleted when I didn't do a damn thing other than DISAGREE.

That last bit not directed at you derek i'm just speaking in general lol. This thread ruffled my feathers for real. Disappointed in the community and the staff as well. Shit is lame. I know i'm not going to get anyone admitting they where wrong over this so w/e. Just sucks to lose a little love for my fav growing site because it's not so safe to go against popular opinions.



http://www.cannabis-world.org/vanilla/discussion/892/ask-lucas

 

[derek420colorado]

That is what I was looking for actually was HIS words not someone elses, the thing that he is wrong about though is about the toxins. It doesn't have anything to do with toxins per se as it does salt. I have seen it a bunch of times where my plants were getting locked out and I couldn't figure it out, then I changed the rez and voila back to growing again. And as I stated before I am sure you can get away with just adding water back into your rez and not doing an actual rez change but I have had bad experiences by doing that. Another thing that was interesting is it looks like that thread is 10 years old. So I will tell you this, if you do start seeing a lockout problem and your pH is correct and there seems to be no other explanation you might want to change your rez. I hope it doesn't happen and you are able to get some monster sticky buds because trust me if I get data that suggests I don't have to do a rez change every week and I can still get monsters I am all the way IN!

Also I am sorry if you felt attacked, there are some folks on here that think there way is the only way. I am not one of those folks lol I am willing to try anything that helps me become a better grower, that is why I am giving you my advice based on my 10 years or so of growing cannabis. Again I think that you can achieve a full harvest by doing it without the rez change, but me personally I change mine because I have seen the best results that way.

As it stands right now in the current community of growers I would say that current standard practices say to change your rez, you do not have to by any means I just think that is what most folks do based on the results.

One of my main questions still stands though, why are you so opposed to changing your rez? I understand that there are people who have done this successfully but why? I mean what do you gain by not doing it? I try to make sure that everything I do when it comes to growing is for a specific purpose, not just because someone said it worked or didn't. Just curious as to why you put so much stock in information that is easily identifiable as the exception not the rule? Apart from lucas and folks that follow his methods I don't know of many others that suggest not doing a rez change but once a grow. Again I hope you aren't feeling attacked because that is not my intention, I see this happen a lot though people get information and run with it and fight for it like it was their mothers namesake or something. So it is more of a psychology question than a growing one. What I mean is what gives you so much confidence in what one person says versus another on the internet?(and I am totally asking this in a non assholish type way I am honestly inquisitive about this topic) are there more pictures, is it the way he answers questions you know stuff like that.

 

[derek420colorado]

And honestly if you are dead set on trying something like not changing your rez but once I am down to watch just to see if it will work as advertised lol Cause like I said if you can grow a 1lb auto plant of super sticky buds without changing your rez I am all the way in! I am going to do some more investigating on ole lucas though because there is something that still just isn't quite right. I don't know what it is yet but I think I am missing something with the way he is describing doing things I just don't know what it is.

 

[derek420colorado]

For some reason it wouldn't let me register a username and password for that site :-(

 

[Grim Reefer]

Id just like to say i wasn't attacking anyone nor was i saying anyone was wrong. I clearly said that i was advising someone new to RDWC to change their res as they have no experience and if you have no experience then things will likely go wrong if you dont change the res. I also never said anything about my advice being set in stone, i was just giving advice as i have had plenty of experience with RDWC. All i wanted to do is make sure the user had clear advice and didnt go away reading this thread and then make a ton of mistakes because he read what people with no experience had told him to do.

@Anasazi i just want to be clear i never attacked you personally or did i give you any stink or dis-respect. We dont all have to agree with each other all the time and i wasnt knocking any of the info you had but just skewing the user in the safe direction. I hope you dont feel so harshly about other people disagreeing with you in the future as when your on a network like the AFN you will find that not everyone agrees with each other. That doenst mean you cant get along,you should just take it on the chin and be happy you can debate about such things like this on a forum so great as this.

 

[Anasazi]

Id just like to say i wasn't attacking anyone nor was i saying anyone was wrong. I clearly said that i was advising someone new to RDWC to change their res as they have no experience and if you have no experience then things will likely go wrong if you dont change the res. I also never said anything about my advice being set in stone, i was just giving advice as i have had plenty of experience with RDWC. All i wanted to do is make sure the user had clear advice and didnt go away reading this thread and then make a ton of mistakes because he read what people with no experience had told him to do.

@Anasazi i just want to be clear i never attacked you personally or did i give you any stink or dis-respect. We dont all have to agree with each other all the time and i wasnt knocking any of the info you had but just skewing the user in the safe direction. I hope you dont feel so harshly about other people disagreeing with you in the future as when your on a network like the AFN you will find that not everyone agrees with each other. That doenst mean you cant get along,you should just take it on the chin and be happy you can debate about such things like this on a forum so great as this.

Your post confuses me to be honest. I'm not sure why you are speaking to me as if I did something wrong when I in fact did not. I was the one who disagreed first. In what way did I take someone disagreeing with me harshly? It sounds like your post should be aimed at Hal and not me. Also you made direct comments about my experience in your posts. it was obviously directed at me considering I was the person with the opinion you didn't agree with and I was the only person to mention my experience. You obviously tried to discredit me. Please don't insult my intelligence man. I know how you really feel considering Hal pm'd me with more to say after I went to sleep.

I wasn't even going to mention it but your post seems so misguided to me that I don't even know what to say. It's like you didn't read the thread or you are just choosing to ignore exactly what happened. Can't believe you come in here with this post trying to be all professional and high roadish after you came at me in a hostile way to begin with. You obviously weren't as bad as Hal but you sure as hell aren't innocent. Shit is not worth my time man I'm done replying to this thread.


Next time how about I tell you to shut up and call you a rookie when you are trying to post a valid opinion. Even after I provide proof there is no apology or even admitting wrongness surely not any humbleness happening either. Just more bullshit and head burying.