How to Measure Nutrient Solution with Accuracy

All cannabis growers know that it is very important to give your cannabis plants the right measurement of nutrients or fertilizer solution. This is a common knowledge that shouldn’t be ignored by novice or expert growers because this is one of the best ways to ensure that your cannabis will not encounter any kinds of damage that is caused by certain diseases.

Additionally, if the nutrient is too low or too high, the cannabis plants will suffer from nutrient deficiencies which is a bit tedious to fix. So if you want to optimize the growth of your cannabis plants, you need to make sure that you will use the right tools when measuring the nutrient solution.

But what are the possible tools to be used to get the most accurate measurement of nutrient solutions/s? Let’s see some of the short and precise tips that you could consider for the sake of your cannabis plants.

Tips to Get the Accurate Measurement of Your Cannabis Nutrient Solution

Some of the novice cannabis growers would rather use the included measurement tool/s to their purchased fertilizer or nutrient solution. But what they didn’t know is that these measurement tools, which is the eyedropper and pipettes, are not giving accurate measurements.

Maybe some of them would not even realize this because both pipettes and eyedroppers are showing measurements up to 3 mL or milliliters. And for starters, this is pretty accurate to use when measuring nutrient solutions, that’s why most of them would always encounter a nutrient issue to their cannabis plant.

However, these measurement tools always come with +/- 10% uncertainty. That means if you need to add 6.5 mL to your growing medium or reservoir and you will use the pipettes or eyedropper with 3 mL measurement, the total nutrient solution that you will add in your cannabis plant would result to 6.05 mL or 6.95 mL.

The difference may be small, but this small inaccuracy may result in a big trouble in your cannabis plants. So to avoid these things, you need to consider the use of a syringe and graduated cylinder to perfectly measure the nutrient solution that you will add up in your growing medium or reservoir.

So here’s what you need to do when using a syringe and graduated cylinder.

Syringe

If your growing medium or reservoir needs 3.5 mL of nutrient solution, you need to buy a syringe that has a 5 mL measurement because you need to get 5 mL of the solution instead of 3.5 mL. Then after pulling out the 5 mL of your nutrient solution, you need to tip over the syringe facing upwards since you need to reduce the solution to 4.5 mL while releasing the bubble of the solution.

Then if you are now sure that your syringe is showing 4.5 mL, you can now transfer the solution inside the syringe into a small cup together with the water. If the mixed solution results to 1 mL measurement, it only goes to show that the 3.5 mL requirement is now achieved with great accuracy because 4.5 mL minus 3.5 mL is equivalent to 1 mL.

In other words, the syringe is being utilized to measure the difference of your measured volume that’s why the result is very accurate.

Note: Always remove the bubble in your solution to get the exact measurement of the liquid.

Graduated Cylinder

You need to get the right container when using a graduated cylinder to get the most accurate answer. For an instance, your growing medium needs less than 10 mL, you need to buy a 10 mL graduated cylinder. If the growing medium needs more than 10 mL, then you have to buy a graduated cylinder with 25 mL measurement.

So let’s just say that you are using the 10 mL graduated cylinder. You have to get your small pipette when getting a nutrient solution since you can’t directly plunge the graduated cylinder. After filling your graduated cylinder with the help of the pipette, you need to place your graduated cylinder to any flat surface so you can perfectly read the exact measurement of the solution.

When getting the measurement, you need to read the measurement below the meniscus which is the curve on the surface of the liquid. So if you think that the nutrient solution is already in 10 mL, you can now transfer it to a cup and prepare it to be used in your plant.

Note: Use a plastic graduated cylinder because the glass graduated cylinder may contain toxic materials which may associate into your nutrient solution.

All in all, before giving your plants the nutrients, you need to ensure that you will use the right tool when getting your nutrient solution because the wrong dosage of nutrient (less or excessive) is extremely bad for the overall health and growth of your cannabis plants. And no matter how small is the difference on the measurement, never underestimate it because even if it is just a .5 or what not, it can still leave a bad impact on your cannabis plants. That being said, always do your research first, ask for suggestions via expert growers or cannabis community just to get a guarantee that you are always on the right track of growing a cannabis. So get your measurement tools now and start exploring the right way of feeding your cannabis plants!