Originally Posted by redi jedi
After a bit more research, it would appear you are correct about the additives in municipal water. I have a friend with the water department that I'll be looking up later to discuss with further.
Hmm, learning something new every day!
"if I give up my vices, all I'll have left is my penis. I play with it enough as it is."
Guys thank you very much for your help. I use municipal water. I put in my res only water, fixed the PH four days ago and left it with my air stone only. Yesterday I checked the PH and it was 7.8 again... I fixed the PH for one more time and today it s again 7.6. I ll try with distilled water tomorrow and see. The bad news is that due to the ph problems all my little trees died and I have no seeds... Fucking PH. Fucking economical crisis... Fucking life...
What is the problem?? Your plants will use a various Ph range to uptake nutes. Not all nutes are available at one Ph level, the fluctuation actually helps in the uptake of ALL nutrients. If you adjust your ph every time you water you are fine. In hydro I set my ph at 5.6 and in a day its 6.3 so if I water every day I allow my plants to go through the whole range before feeding again the next day.
Your probally doing more good than you know.
yes a range is ok but 7.3-7.8 is not ok at all. dont settle for ph swings, after the first two days of a new res your ph should stay stable. i check mine every 4-7 days and rarely have to adjust. fix what is causing the swing.
the problem is that my plants are dead as i said earlier. If they where still alive with a water of this ph level I wouldn't have start this thread. I don't expect everything to be perfect but this is totally shit. The ph raises too much by itself.
Have you been getting any snotty looking crap in the water? I had the same ph problem and it was bacteria/algae. PH would rise to near 8 in a matter of 3-4 hours every time. there is a great thread on this subject at this site about beneficial bacteria being the fix to this problem. My plants growth stopped, massive deficiencies and all i could do was stall the algae. cleaning/sterilising does nothing. I dont know if this is your problem but maybe worth looking into?
This has been my problem since I moved to california. i actually had to give up dwc and hydro and go back to soil, it got so bad.
1st) There is definitely a buffer additive in municipal tap water. SOMETHING causes the pH to rise -rapidly- if set out over 24hrs. <edit: i think i found what i was looking for: http://www.apswater.com/article.asp?id=30&title=Hard_Water_and_Water_Softe ning> I asked the guy at my local hydro shop guy if he had encountered this problem, and he does. His only solution was to use RO with a little bit of tap (like 5 to 1), so as not to lose all the micro mineral benefits of tap, and then adjust the pH daily.
2nd) the white snotty algae is (as far as i've been able to research) a low-light anorexic bacteria that results from a) organic matter in the water (like adding nutes) and b) low light exposure. Their "waste" is ammonia, which causes the ph to continually rise. H2O2 (3% grocery store kind) actually makes this problem worse. (high % pool h2o2 may be a better choice, but i haven't tried.)
i have yet to find a real solution to keeping the pH balanced from buffered / pH rebounds of municipal city tap water. I'd love to go back to hydro, but it's too much work if i have to check and adjust twice daily.
Last edited by DrDank; 09-02-2012 at 05:06 PM.
I really need to change my signature.
Posting Permissions
5Likes
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks