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Yes, high EC reduces the uptake of water. Actually, it reverses it when bad enough. If the EC of the solution is higher than that of the root, water will be drawn out. I got that from "Gardening Indoors with Soil and Hydroponics," by George F. Van Patten. Page 168. Also, this is why it is important to occasionally flush your medium for optimal growth. Salts build up in the medium making the EC too high and leading to dehydration even if your solution seems fine.
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This is good to know, I don't have a EC/TDS or PPM meter, but I mix my
nutrients according to the directions, and now I am starting to mix them weaker. My problem is that sometimes I don't keep up with replacing the water that the plants have drunken up. That leaves a concentrated
nutrient solution to what water is left. I was adding 3 gallons of fresh water to my tomato plants every day, then after about 5-6 days I wanted to check the pH, so I pulled the lids up only to find there was only about 5 gallons of water in what was a 15 gallon reservoir. So I know that the water that was left was highly concentrated.
I also flush all my systems with fresh water in between every nutrient change to flush out the old nutes and salts. I don't have any more FloraKleen so I just use fresh water, then dump that before adding the new nutrient solution, and occasionally I flush it more than once.
P.S. that sounds like a good book I'll look into it. I also want this book "Hydroponic Strawberry production" by Dr. Lynette Morgan. But none of the library's have/or can get it, including the collage. Unfortunately all I can do is buy it and it runs about $60, that's a bit steep for me right now.