[Freshwater]

Originally Posted by T'Mater

So how often are you all changing your nutes? And when you change your nute's do you completely drain your tanks and start over or ?

Personally I "change" or fill my reservoir right before the pumps run dry (or try too), there is usually about I dunno, 2-4 inches left in the bottom of my res. I go through my res. pretty quick 4-5 days depending on weather. I do not drain my res...I refill,

check PPM of filled tank...(usually 100-200 ppm) ((From residual nutrient))
adjust my dry Nutrient for a target of 900-1000 ppm.
Add pre-dissolved nutrient to res.,
wait...then test ppm...target achieved

Add addition supplements (Silicone, Kelp) 200-ish ppm gain.
Open Beer...

Oh...and set P.H.

Originally Posted by T'Mater

I tend to change mine about 7-10day's. Is that too soon? And when i change, i completely empty my nute tank and like i've mentioned before, run pure water through the system for at least 15mins.

What kind of water are you running? I had assumed R.O. but I'm not sure if you are running tap/well water.

I drain and clean my reservoir every 4-8 weeks

OK, so nutrient lockout aside, crystals from salts on emitters aside, are you having any problems with the "general health" of your reservoir? Anything fuzzy, goopy, stringy, or oily growing in there? Any bugs?

Are you using H2o2? (hydrogen peroxide)

There is one other step I take when filling my reservoir, When it is down to a couple-few gallons, I will start the filling process which generally occurs over night when the pumps are not running. I add enough H2o2 for a full 30-35 gallons of nutrient, but...there are only a couple-few gallons in the tank. H2o2 is an oxidizer, and a great alternative if you don't want to use bleach when cleaning out a system.

The primary use for it is to help oxygenate the roots of the plants, but it also has a side effect of keeping the reservoir VERY healthy. I add a toxic amount to my reservoir, wait till it fills...or once I get my R.O. water holding tank installed...fill slowly over an hour. It cleans any algae of the pumps, side walls, delivery lines, air stone etc.

Once the reservoir is full, it is diluted to delivery strength for the plants.

So no, it's not too soon... just about right, but if your plants are not drinking it up, and the health/PPM/P.H. are fine you might want to try 2 weeks.

It depends, PPM is a finicky thing...the longer your res. runs, the more individual nutrients the plants uptake, so running your res. longer can deplete individual nutrients from your res. while your PPM looks fine.

Example - Your plants are in a 1000 PPM nutrient system, for whatever reason the plants are going extra crazy for Potassium, and sucking it out to zero, your PPM goes down to 800, you add more dry nutrient to kick you back up to 1000, but your plants are now deficient in K2So4, suck the potassium out of the newly added dry nutrient, and you now have an on going cycle of nutrient fluctuation and/or deficiency.

So now your PPM is within target range, but one individual nutrient is low...While others are increasing.

All this is just my opinion, and my understanding from waaay tooo much time researching this crap on the net, and in books. A bunch of it is from hands on experience as well. Hope I'm not too long winded.

Todd