Afternoon all any water experts about lol... Right had this problem for many years but I've always just battled on. Whenever I grow in coco I get poor root coverage in my 12lt pots with 4-5 week veg then a 8-9 week flowering, I've got a mate that lives a few minutes away from me we can grow the same strain, same size pots and his root growth is unreal, he'll have roots hanging out the bottom of his pots and if you was to lift the plant out the pot he's got thick pure white roots where as I only have skinny off white roots (using same nutes) we normally yield about the same but my environment is controlled 10 times better than his, he only as one fan/filter sucking air out, no dehumidifier or humidifier and no heater, so his temps and humidity are literally all over the place, mine are constant 21-27oC humidity kept at what level I like, so really I should be yielding more...? I know if he controlled his environment like mine he would smash my results...
I've tried many hydro systems all with a water cooler and most of the time it ends with root rot, my mate a few years ago did nft with no problems whatsoever even with no water cooler lovely thick white roots... I've just scraped a nft system after root rot 3 times in a row in veg.
The only time I've mangaged to do a successful grow was with a home made 2 tub rdwc system, I had to have silly amount of water moving to keep the rot away, I had a 5000gph pond pump pumping water through 4 spray bars in each tub as well as a 90lph air pump with airstones, but even after all that my roots still wasn't strong they was weak off white/brown colour. When I say I've tried everything I've almost tried everything! Heisenberg Tea, Recharge, white shark, voodoo juice etc.
After talking to my mate today we got talking about our water he said his water comes out the tap cloudy with tiny air bubbles in it and he said its not very nice to drink (but his plants obviously love it lol) mines different and doesn't really taste of anything, so I did a search on the water boards website and it turns out our water is sourced from different places even tho we live a few mins from each other. My water is sourced from ground water his from a treatment center, in my water it says average free chlorine is .14ppm so if mines from ground water which I suppose is sort of like a water well does mine contain Pythium and from what I've read you need 1ppm of chlorine to kill Pythium and my water only contains .14ppm
on the waterboards website it says I'm in a hard water area my tap ec is only .3 my mates says moderately hard and his tap water is .5
One more thing if there is water experts out there I have a coliform bacteria count level whereas my mate doesn't, not sure if that matters...?
What I'm thinkimg about doing is, filling a water barrel up adding chlorine to 5ppm letting it bubble until all the chlorine is gone then using that water to feed my plants in coco to see if this improves roots growth, I also thought about putting a fish tank uv light inside the barrel as well because I have a koi pond in my garden with plants in the water and they grow no problem even in the summer when the pond water can be 25oC so I guess this is down to the uv killing the Pythium? I'd love to go back to hydro growing because the plants explode with growth a lot faster than coco but until I get to the bottom of my root issue looks like I'll stick to coco..
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