Recommendations for stabilzing pH in hydro?

uh..yep... I'm not totally lost

chabnock said:

the ph you need is different between Hydro and soils, and even flood and drain and some of the other hydro systems

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kindprincess said:

you don't want to trick the plant for more roots at that point, you want it to make buds.

kp

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Ok, so what about root cultures? Can you still use enzymes and stuff in the resevoir?

SmokerE said:

Ok, so what about root cultures? Can you still use enzymes and stuff in the resevoir?

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sure you can, enzymes like cannazyme help to eat away dead roots and such.

superthrive contains hormones that make the plant grow roots. it's a great product. but, it can take away from flower. i stop using it after week four.

kp

Well, that's too much of a pH rebound. So you have urban tap water. What nutes are you using, and what for pH Down? Some nutrients don't have any pH buffers. I would suspect the PUR filter, probably the first thing to omit.

HTH

SmokerE, that was a great idea~!

I have a very basic bucket setup where when I go to change the ph I have to take the plant off to allow easy access to the nutes beneath. Any easy methods that the pros use?

I almost never have to adjust my ph in my res very little here and there my plants drink and eat proportionally. I use Fox farm nutes in a 50 gallon res.I fill with my water add my nutes then ph balance the solution to 5.8 it might drift to 6 in a week or 2.I top off every 2-3 days with about 10 gallons of fresh water and then chek ph which is usually right on.

Wiggla said:

I have a very basic bucket setup where when I go to change the ph I have to take the plant off to allow easy access to the nuts beneath. Any easy methods that the pros use?

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Wiggla, I have a Water-Farm for my mother. What it is, is a 5 gallon square bucket, with a shorter bucket that fits inside of it with a bunch of holes in the bottom. there is a Hallo that drips water in the grow medium from the rez in the 5 gallon bucket below. Which only holds 2,5 gallons because the plant bucket sits inside of it.

What I did to increase my res volume, and also make it much, much easier to change out the nut water is this. I drilled a hole in the side of the rez bucket at the bottom, and then placed a fitting in this hole that you can put a 1/2" hose on. I then took another 5 gallon bucket and did the same thing. I then connected the two buckets together with a 1/2" hose with a shut off valve between them. When I need to do a Water change, I take the hose off the extra bucket and drain all the old water. I then replace the hose, and mix a full 5 gallons in the extra bucket. When the PH and PPM is correct, I open the valve and half of the Nut Water flows into the plant Res. As the plant drinks water, more of the water drains from the extra res to the plant res. It works great. i do not now have to lift my plant out to change the water. Plus I doubled my res volume.

Chabnok thank you sir. That is the answer for what I should do. Simply drain the old solution and pre-mix new solution in an extra bucket then allow pressure/gravity to fill the first bucket back up from the full pre-mixed bucket. The plant doesn't have to move one inch so once you set an lst or scrog it's set till the end.

mine wil be at like 7.4 and i keep adding the ph down, itl drop to like 4 or5 for a bit then go back up im having same problems

I have the same problem. I use General Hydro's Flora series and PH down. I have to add PH down to my reservoir every other day. I try to get it to about 5.5 so that 2 days later it's at about 6.0. I've been blaming the fact that I didn't pretreat my rockwool beforehand. I have found, however, that just filling the reservoir up more so that it has more to draw from keeps things more even.

Cugine said:

I am constantly having to add pH down to my solution. Di yiu guys recommend anything to stabilize the pH? I am using filtered tap water (through a PUR filter) so I'm guessing that may be part of the issue.

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The best thing i've found for a ph stabilizer is those aerogarden tablets, if you add 1 tab per gallon of water after you have the ph where you want it it will stay there for weeks! I dont know whats in them and their not much good by themselves for nutrients but they will stabilize the PH.

on the grodan web site they recomend cutting a lemon in half and tossing it in your reservoir. This is if you go vacation. with some practice you can nail it with this as a time release. Idk tho personally.