GH FloraTrio Help / fertilizer help

[BudzPow]

So I have a DWC with 2 plants running in it, they seem to be doing okay however my EC is no where near where it should be. If I mix the nutes at 1/2 strength on the bottle per gallon of water I end up getting .3ish on my EC meter. I even ordered a new EC meter just to make sure it was correct. I have to run the nutes 3-4 times the recommended full strength dose on the bottle to get 1.0-1.2 on the meter.

I premix my nutes in a 5 gal bucket.
Hydroguard
cal/mag
Silica
pH down

What am I doing wrong here because it doesn't make much sense to me. If I run even full strength on the bottle of nutes and dial everything in within 1-2 days my pH tanks 1-2 points (that's what got me really looking into this issue).

Roots are white as can be, nothing funky there.

EDIT: The pH doesn't drop until a couple days after I put in the reservoir.

[Catfish22]

Hey BudzPow , I am in coco but using same as you for nutes
I dont mix by EC, I use pH but the ArmorSi will send that pH down especially if you are using even full strength nutrients. I use 1/2-1/4 strength of any of it except of course calmag is full strength.

I think NebulaHaze has a tutorial and nutrient schedule for gh trio in hydro on GWE.

[BudzPow]

I should clarify the pH down occurs once I add it to my main reservoir. I can dial it in perfectly in the 5 gal bucket. From reading around, the pH drops tell me there isn't enough nutes in the solution, seems I might have a bad batch or something of the nutrients.

[dphipps1020]

This is why I stopped paying attention to my PPM levels, because it doesn't always make sense to me. Now I just use half strength (1/4 strength for seedlings) and observe the plants' reactions, and then adjust from there. Sometimes that means I feed twice before a plain watering, and sometimes it means plain water twice between feeding. It really depends on the plants since they all have different needs. Learn to read your plants, they will tell you what they want if you pay attention to them and read the leaves.

[DW2]

Howdy BudzPow, What are You using for Your water supply, R/O, distilled, or tap water? I use the city's tap water, lots of minerals in it. I let the water set of one to two days after I fill the gallon jugs because the water coming out of the tap is aerated and the pH will change as the O2, N2 (air is over 70% nitrogen), and other gasses come out of solution, so the pH will change some what over time.

[BudzPow]

Howdy BudzPow, What are You using for Your water supply, R/O, distilled, or tap water? I use the city's tap water, lots of minerals in it. I let the water set of one to two days after I fill the gallon jugs because the water coming out of the tap is aerated and the pH will change as the O2, N2 (air is over 70% nitrogen), and other gasses come out of solution, so the pH will change some what over time.

I've been using tap water, however I do have a whole house filter set up.

Also last night I got the EC to .860 in 1 and .840 in another reservoir and today they dropped roughly 40 points, which is good and tells me the ladies are getting the right nutrients. I've been slowly adding more nutes (as to not shock the ladies to fast) according to the EC and not the dose on the bottle. If I follow EC I have to use 8x the nutes to get to the correct levels as recommended by the GH EC levels, so I think I got a bad batch of nutes.

The ladies also are starting to resist the sunburn where as before the top leaves were starting to yellow, they are regaining color so I will double the nutes and go from there.

[Catfish22]

If I may ask, which nutrients are most important to resist
the electric sunburn?

[FlyingDutchPaddy]

I might ask about the mixing order of the nutes.

I use the gh flora line as well with silicon, and use pH down before I mix in everything else.

typically I use this order:
water
silicon
pH down
(fulvic acid)
(Seaweed)
calmag
micro
gro
bloom

pH does not really change after adding the nutes, remains within .1 from the pH set after compensating for the silicon.

I should mention though, I have fairly hard water from a well.

something else: how often do you top up the reservoir with fresh water?
could be that the plants are drinking a lot…
ive had autos that drank about 3L water per day in their last weeks

[BudzPow]

I might ask about the mixing order of the nutes.

I use the gh flora line as well with silicon, and use pH down before I mix in everything else.

typically I use this order:
water
silicon
pH down
(fulvic acid)
(Seaweed)
calmag
micro
gro
bloom

pH does not really change after adding the nutes, remains within .1 from the pH set after compensating for the silicon.

I should mention though, I have fairly hard water from a well.

something else: how often do you top up the reservoir with fresh water?
could be that the plants are drinking a lot…
ive had autos that drank about 3L water per day in their last weeks

I typically go
micro
gro
bloom
calmag
silica
hydroguard
ph down

The pH fluctuations happen before I top anything off.

Today I got the EC to the range it should be. The ladies seem much happier, I'll check the fluctuations for the next couple days before doing anything else to them including top offs and see how they progress. I think most people either don't check EC or their nutes are fine and fall within where they should based on how much they add. For me 8x the nutes gave me a reading of 2.1 EC, which when added to the reservoir seems to have settled it at 1.1-1.2 but I have to check after it mixes for several hours.

[Catfish22]

You need to add silica and shake it good, then cal-mag and shake, micro and shake then gro and bloom and yes, shake. Then check pH and adjust.

[FlyingDutchPaddy]

I think, that the mixing order you’re using now could be improved upon.
Did some digging on the GH site and found this page; https://generalhydroponics.com/category/nutrients/

The 3rd & 4th topics are of interest I believe.

Iirc, they recommend a mixing order of nutes so that the different compounds don’t react with each other in unwanted ways, reducing their availability for the plants (with a side effect of lowering the EC).

Could you try that for next water change, start with 2x usual for recommended nute strength but change your mix order?
What does the EC do then?

[FlyingDutchPaddy]

I’m curious, do you see a sort of crystal like / powdery sediment on the bottom of the bucket?

[BudzPow]

I will give that a shot FDP but I don't notice any sediment other than what the hydroguard produces, definitely no crystals.

[BudzPow]

Well I feel like an idiot! The pipettes I was using were marked 30 mL instead of 3 mL. Decided to use a measuring cup and noticed quite the discrepancy. All is well with the nutrients.

[Catfish22]

A syringe works best. You can get very precise.

[BudzPow]

Yeah got one on order now that I've realized my blunder.