topping off res

[hgih]

hi once again another question i was wondering what you guys with the 40+gal res tanks do do you constantly top it off with fresh water and adjust the tds to desired level or do you top off keeping it full for a week or two and then drain for fresh water and nutes thanks

 

[DLA]

hi once again another question i was wondering what you guys with the 40+gal res tanks do do you constantly top it off with fresh water and adjust the tds to desired level or do you top off keeping it full for a week or two and then drain for fresh water and nutes thanks

I don't know what a 40 gallon as opposed to a 10 gallon would make topping off different other then the volume. I have large res's and mine are topped off with water from my RO system and controlled by a float valve(auto top off). So water is only added. Remember that nutrients do not evaporate so to add more nutes with every top off would take you out of specs for your plants.

 

[hgih]

but not adding nutes would bring my nute level down wouldent it? i remeber reading somewhere that you should top off with fresh water and add nutres in to bring it back up to the desired level thanks again

 

[DLA]

but not adding nutes would bring my nute level down wouldent it? i remeber reading somewhere that you should top off with fresh water and add nutres in to bring it back up to the desired level thanks again

The only thing that will reduce the nutes is the plants feeding on them....nothing else. Look at it like a salt water tank since nutes are similar in their behavior in water. If you put 1 cup of salt in a 1 gallon container and fill it with water when it evaporates you will be left with 1 cup of salt. If you were only supposed to have 1 cup of salt each time you added more to the original mix you increased the ppm.

That is why we change our nutes every few days to weeks because there is no way to refresh nutes, we were just adding more. Hope that made sense.