First grow GG#4

Sorry one more. My guess is I fed them nutes to early in the new ocean farm soil maybe, and without checking ppm (whatever the hell that is lol) I gave them to much nitrogen too early? That’s my best guess off of what I have read, but I’m kind of lost

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Straight H2O (RO, Distilled) does not conduct electricity, it’s the minerals, salts, etc., within the water that actually act as conductors for any electrical current that passes through water.

EC = Electrical Conductivity (the ability to conduct electricty)
PPM= Parts Per Million (of the minerals, salts, etc., within the water doing the conducting)
TDS = Total Dissolved Solids (of those minerals, salts, etc.)

So when you use your PPM pen, it sends out a little electric current between its electrodes, through the water you’re testing, and measures the electrical resistance between those electrodes, creating an EC reading. Then depending on what part of the world the meter was made, runs those numbers through a formula, deriving a PPM of TDS of whatever is in the water. (There really is no way to actually count PPM of TDS unless one was to evaporate all the water, and actually count what was left, so instead, it’s just mathematically derived from the EC reading.)

As growers, we use this information to determine how strong or weak a nutrient solution is. It’s important to know the EC of the water you start with, which is why some growers use Reverse Osmosis (RO) water, which has little to no EC. The downside is that it won’t tell you the ratio of nutrients in the solution, or what’s lacking, or is too strong… it just gives you the total of everything in the water. A PPM pen is an invaluable, inexpensive tool that really gets your finger on the pulse of the overall nutrient levels your plants are subjected to.

Sorry I can’t help on the health issues, I just pick away as I go too. Hope the PPM thing is easier to get now though. :smile:

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Thank you for the explanation!