Grow Mediums questions about nutrient strength in coco

[Noob420]

hello everyone,
I am starting my second grow in coco and looking for a little help with nutrient and supplement strength.
I will be using botanicare grow, bloom, ripe and silica blast. I will also be using gh cal mag, and bio root. My question is that for cal mag and bio root do I follow the bottle, or would I start with low and work up from there.
Thanks for the help.

 

[Duggy]

You can usually go full strength with additives..though its never any harm to introduce them gradually to be safe ...

 

[Noob420]

@Duggy,
Thanks I just got my blueberry auto to sprout yesterday. So far she is looking good and will be upping her additive solution next week. I used half strength just to get her started.

 

[Duggy]

Love some Auto Blueberry...

 

[Roark]

What duggy said.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

You should check your EC in order to be sure you are feeding your plants properly. You don't have to do it all the time, just in the beginning until you get a hang of the nutrients (and water) you are using and later on if any problems arise. Usually, feeding schedules provided by nutrients manufacturers are not adapted to small personal grows so you shouldn't trust them completely except for the ratios and timings of the different additives. However, if you are using organic nutrients/additives, the EC will not help you much as they often contain little or no salts. Check your plant's health (vigor, color, general aspect) and adapt your dosage.
Also, different strains may have different needs, even different phenos of a same strain. "Listen" to your plant's needs and adapt your feedings accordingly. As a rule of thumb, I'd say that less is always better than more when talking nutrients so take it slow and up the dosage if needed.

 

[Noob420]

You should check your EC in order to be sure you are feeding your plants properly. You don't have to do it all the time, just in the beginning until you get a hang of the nutrients (and water) you are using and later on if any problems arise. Usually, feeding schedules provided by nutrients manufacturers are not adapted to small personal grows so you shouldn't trust them completely except for the ratios and timings of the different additives. However, if you are using organic nutrients/additives, the EC will not help you much as they often contain little or no salts. Check your plant's health (vigor, color, general aspect) and adapt your dosage.
Also, different strains may have different needs, even different phenos of a same strain. "Listen" to your plant's needs and adapt your feedings accordingly. As a rule of thumb, I'd say that less is always better than more when talking nutrients so take it slow and up the dosage if needed.

Ok thank for that's makes perfect sense. I will feed minimal until the plants start to show that they want more food. Do you have any experience with botanicare nutrients?
Thanks and have a great one.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

Not necessarily minimal, careful is right. When the plant is small a 0.4 to 0.6 ec, then up to 0.8/1.2 in veg and up to 1.6 or even up to 2.0 for very hungry mamas during flowering (but a nice 1.2 to 1.6 is plenty for most plants.).
Keep you ph between 5.5 and 6.0, water with nutrients and 10/20% runoff every day past seedling stage and all should be fine.
Sorry, but I have no experience with botanicare, I use H&G coco plus a few supplements.
Have a nice grow, mate.

 

[dankle]

My meter calculateds in microsiemen units. (lol) Is EC typically measured in units of S/cm?

So an EC of 4500 uS/cm = .45 S/cm = .45 EC

What would the comparible acceptable range be measured in TDS? I'm getting a reading of ~1100 TDS using organic guano tea