Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

when you say PPM meter what are you measuring the parts per million of ?

if its nitrates can you tell me where you got it

and a TDS of 450 is better than the drinking water we have here

Hey Dan - a lot of us have a lot of calcium in our systems, because we use CACO3 in different forms to buffer the pH. So looking at your figures, does this mean that we should expect poor flowering and fruiting performance?

LOL, I had a conversation with my MIL over XMas break about Cream of Tartar, and we couldn't think of any recipes that used the stuff except for the cookies we were eating...

450 is total dissolved solids from my TDS meter. The other figure was nitrates. Theres just a whole lot of something in my water and its not nitrates.

No, I don't think so. It just means you can't remove the calcium to further maximize the shift of growing to flowering. I have always used premixed formula so I have no first hand experience using only nitrogen starving. However, everything I read seems to say its only the nitrogen starving. In hydroponics positive charged calcium levels to high would cause problems by bonding to other nutrients so the levels of calcium are lowered as well. I am not sure this is a problem with natural forms of calcium. I can't help but ponder if plants can absorb these other forms of calcium when they say only positive charged calcium atoms are take up by plants..

Well.. I'm rambling on.. I would not expect poor flowering. The idea is to increase flowering beyond natural flowering and then to promote fruiting beyond natural amounts for max production. However, if you are deficient in things like potassium or micro nutrients then there could be a problem. I will post a description of nutrients and their functions..

Play dough

I looked high and low for CoT before Christmas to make up a recipe of fudge I'd found in a 1950's cook book of my mums.

Stuart

pre-Christmas in the bakery ingredients section of the supermarket is a VERY busy time