Long day in the RDWC office ...

Home built RDWC system that has never failed me. But lately I've been having the crazy pH going up everyday thing. The pH will start at 5.8 and by the end of the day its at 7.5 The plants droop and basically look mag deficient. So been trying to fix it, tried this, tried that. No slime on the roots and nothing that is obviously amiss. So I went down and got some calibration solution for both meters (ppm & pH). The ppm meter was way off . So in the middle of all this I knock my pH meter into the rs and low and behold, its not water proof Then I got the digi-cam out to take some pics to post and the stupid thing is busted.
In the end though I think I have it figured out. I use Floranova in RO water (muni water smells like rotten eggs and the quality report clearly says it has crypto), I've never had any problems with Floranova till lately so I doubt its the nutes these problems rarely are. Be that as it may The Floranova is lacking in Cal-mag so I add some. the ppm meter being off was cuasing my calculation to be off. All that being off was stopping the pH buffers from working. So I added more cal-mag and the plants look better already(4 hours).
Even after 25 years of growing it still raises my blood pressure when shit like this happens. ok thanx for listening to me vent.

You should know what happened.. You got f@#$ed up and gave them too much nutes, causing the ph to swing. Surprised they didn't burn.

uh no thats not it... its was not enough cal-mag not too much... I haven't burned a plant in twenty years...

If that's not it, then what do you think made the ph go crazy?

So you're thinking without ppm meter you didn't give enough nutes?

Yeah the PPM meter was reading to the high side by 100ppm So when adjusting everything I was mixing weak sauce.

Oh I see.. naturally I thought you would over dose without using one at all. Sorry I misunderstand things sometimes.. I have this thing.. Where I smoke.. And I forget.. Wait what was I talking about?

No problem. I'm not the best at expressing myself in writing, so I can be hard to understand at times.

r1tony said:

I tried a mini-rdwc and went back to just 5 gallon bucket dwc.

Less mess, less work, less hassle and same results.

Click to expand...

Some people think it's less work to RDWC.. lol..

But yeah I agree, it's definitively easier to maintain plants on a single rez per plant setup. I think RDWC is for commercial grows.