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-   -   Good but cheap nutes? (http://www.hydroponicsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2972)

FalseFlash 07-26-2013 06:00 AM

Good but cheap nutes?
 
My tomatoes are feeding too much for me to keep up, they are sucking up close to 40 gallons per day. The 55 gallon tank would be full in the morning, then the next morning it would be almost empty!

The tomatoes I'm growing are giant belgium, they are pretty big but yet still green. They are taking forever to ripen, biggest tomato's I've seen yet. This is most likely the cause. I only have 14 of them growing in the system, nothing else. They are pretty tall, maybe about 5-6ft.

To be honest I kinda want them to just be done with already, it's becoming a lot of work and starting to be costly. Buying nutes in the gallons is just not enough anymore. So, do you have any suggestions and cheaper alts to flora series?

Stan 07-26-2013 08:45 AM

Something doesn't sound right here. I can't see how 14 tomato plants can suck up 40 gallons of water per day. I grew 10 beefsteak and 1 watermelon plant 2 years ago and I was maybe losing 3 - 5 gallons a day. My tomatoes were gigantic on that grow. It sounds to me it's more likely a leak somewhere on your system.

FalseFlash 07-26-2013 10:00 AM

I thought there could of been a leak too, but there is no sign of any.

Stan 07-26-2013 10:26 AM

Is your 55 gallon tank in the ground? I would also check the tank. Again IMO their is no way 14 tomato plants can be drinking 40 gallons of water per day. I had very large tomatoes as you can see from the picture below and a small reservoir that fed them.


http://www.hydroponicsonline.com/for...m-dsc03928.jpg

FalseFlash 07-26-2013 11:05 AM

Yep, tank is in the ground. Pulled it out a couple days ago and no leak.

Let me explain it in more detail.

The tank can be filled in the evening the day before and I go out in the morning and see not much changed, if there was a leak I would have noticed a big change in water level. So I leave it for the day, check it around 7PM and see that all the water is just about gone (sometimes I wait until the next morning but that's always turns out bad because the pump is sucking air).

We just recently got out of a big heatwave too, was 105-110 for a good week. Now were 85-90 (82 as of 11AM) during the day, but has been in the 60's at night now.

Could that be the cause?

Stan 07-26-2013 09:31 PM

Not sure if it could've been the heat since your reservoir in in the ground. I can tell you the last 3 weeks I had high temps with heat index of 102 and I did notice I had to add extra water to my reservoir more than usual but not a drastic amount. My reservoir is above ground. I usually keep a floating thermometer in my reservoir just to keep tabs on the temps. Reservoir temps were going up to 85 degrees on some of those days. I started to put 2 frozen gallon containers in the reservoir in the am and pm just to keep the temps down which also slowed the water from disappearing. I also put 1 of those reflective shields you see people put inside the car to prevent the sun from heating up the car and it worked pretty good. The last 3 -4 days have been in the upper 70's lower 80's and everything is back to normal with water consumption.

Rio_Grande 08-08-2013 02:29 PM

On the nutes topic, and I think you have a leak somewhere too lol, I am small time at the moment running 20 gal tanks. Not knowing if this was gonna be for me I wanted to go cheap and ended up with a good product in my limited experience. If you go on ebay the shop urban hydroponics out of Cincinnati Ohio sells small bags of their nutrient. I spoke to the guy and he uses masterblend calcium and Epsom salts in the lettuce one I use. He also has others made with masterblend as a base.

I don't know the guy other than buying his product but for lettuce it seems to work.

I am going to try the tomato blend this fall.


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