Welcome to the Growery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!
|
 Some of these posts are very old and might contain outdated information. You may wish to search for newer posts instead.
|
 TomCollins
Registered: 10/06/09
Posts: 2,943
Last seen: 1 year, 2 months
|
 Re: unstable pH  [Re: hamloaf]
#690224 - 10/22/13 05:56 PM (11 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
I definitely don't have phycho's expertise and knowledge, and sorry if I sound like a fool I'm very stoned atm... but I have the same exact thing you do when using just plain water and have experienced this as well with the Hydroponics of Holland 3-part. I've dealt with this issue during all 3 of my grows, two of which were flood and drain like yours, the other was hempy (which is a bit like a manual flood and drain.)
There is nothing wrong with my water. LOTS of growers in my area...I live in the 'Dam and I talk shop with the guys from the Dampkring pretty frequently and we've talked about the water here in the municipality... Magash might know those Kiwis... anyway these PH slides aren't unusual here.
From my understanding, this isn't a bad thing necessarily..... it's advantageous in fact if you control it carefully.
As you can see from the chart, there is no PH level for hydroponics where all nutrients are available, but there is a significantly large interval in which cannabis can uptake most of the nutrients it needs. So in my opinion, a PH slide of some type in hydroponic applications is very beneficial. Why would it not be?
What I always do when I fill up a fresh 100ltr tank, I bring the PH down pretty close to 5.5, with the expectation it will become 10x more alkaline within the next 12 hours. I readjust 3-4 times in a 72 hour period, and then it will become stable. This process of recalibrating will bring your EC up slightly.
With the hempys, I would do the same thing, except I would collect the runoff and recalibrate it and then re-water the plant until the runoff was the same PH as the water I was pouring in. This was done every other day - granted with fresh water each time, which is why this was a recursive process from beginning to end.
There are certain nutrient brands out there that have some added ph buffering qualities. At the moment I'm using PH-Perfect 3-Part from Advanced Nutrients. Using this, my PH stays very stable from the first time I calibrate it... however, when I use overdrive with the stack, it stays stable for a week and then I get PH slides down! This is easy to deal with as I just add a few jugs of fresh unph'd water and then every other day I throw in a jug with nutes mixed into it.
So if I were you, I'd take advantage of these slides - I believe if you recalibrate several times over a day or two, and your water will become stable.
So yo could try it.
|
 phychotron
Medicated
Registered: 02/17/11
Posts: 1,995
Loc: Earth (mostly) 
|
Re: unstable pH [Re: phychotron] 1
#692948 - 11/10/13 01:09 PM (11 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
Lets do some experiments to get to the bottom of all this.
Set up 4 gallons of tap water. Label them: Tap, Tap-AIR, Nute, Nute-AIR.
Without pH adjust
Two plain tap water-one with an air stone, one without. LOG their pH over a few days (every few hours if possible, all at the same time for better analysis).
Same with the nutrients. Mix the two gallons together so that they equalize, not just two separately mixed gallons with different concentrations. Then after a few days turn off the air stones and see what happens compared to the non-air.
Repeat but with the pH adjusted from the beginning, so you might need 8 gallons and more air stones or do it again in a few days. And when you get the Cal-Mg you can try a similar experiment to watch it in action.
The idea is to get some graphs of the pH over time and also to compare to the direct effect of the air stone. Keep good records, try and take readings at set intervals like every 8 hours so you can sleep and still not effect the time-scale of the graph.
Heres an example of how much easier it is to read the data in graph form.
I did that little experiment in response to someone on youtube who compared two pH- products but didn't compare strengths, only that they were both pH down. As you can see Advanced Nutrients pH- works much quicker than the Gen. Hydro pH-. You can tell with the blink of an eye, but with numbers you have to mentally consider how they compare to one another.
Notice that Time in your case will be the bottom axis, so make sure to note the time and date, and maybe now its clear why you would want consistently timed readings. If you have excel (google doc's has a free spreadsheet program that lets you share with anyone) it would be best, then I could make the graphs and we'll see what happens.
--------------------
Any help given is for educational purposes only. Its your responsibility not to break any applicable laws
 Bamboo Bongs I make | Perfect Dry and Cure | Grapegod under LED
“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” ~ Albert Einstein
| |
|
|
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
Edit 
Reply 
