Eternal PH Rising

My friend is having the same problem. He starts with good filtered tap water with an ec of around 200. He has been checking PH daily and adjusting with citric acid because it doesn't react with calcium carbonate and salt out. Anyway, every day it climes from 6 to around 6.8 WTF is up with that?

Strange thing is, only the tub closest to the CO2 hose is doing it - the one with girls a week from harvest time. Could the CO2 be causing this? There is tons of air circulation in the room.

The only thing I can think of is that it takes about a week for the acids to fully react with the bases and reach equalibrium. Maybe it takes a week or more of titrating with acid to create a stable buffered solution.

This is a DWC system.

I am having problems with my passive hydro (Hempy Buckets) as well. I have pH'd down to 5.0 and flushed and flushed and flushed.. i check the runoff [pour water into the top of my party cups, and catch the immediate runoff in another cup] and the pH is up to 6.4-6.5.. doesnt make any sense to me. Literally within seconds my 5.0 RO water passes through the cup and comes out as 6.5. Talk about frustrating...
Best of luck, will be following fo sho.

passing c02 through water will stabilize and lower pH not raise it

IMO your tap water is fine. With that said IMO your problem is that your res is not light proof and if your seeing algae you need to fix this asap. This will definitely make your PH rise and you will never find a stable range. Also you need to check your res temps, if they are higher than 70 you need to get them lower and add more H2O2. You can also cut a piece of mylar to cover your net pots so no light can get in that way. Light and warm water will reek havoc on your hydro plants, keeping those 2 things in check can save you a world of trouble. That is where I would start with fixing your problem. Good luck and happy growing.
KnB

Also I think that the only thing that has saved your plants thus far is running tap water which helps to fight bacteria and algae naturally because of the chlorine/chloramine. Just my opinion though.

TheGreenHornet said:

I am having problems with my passive hydro (Hempy Buckets) as well. I have pH'd down to 5.0 and flushed and flushed and flushed.. i check the runoff [pour water into the top of my party cups, and catch the immediate runoff in another cup] and the pH is up to 6.4-6.5.. doesnt make any sense to me. Literally within seconds my 5.0 RO water passes through the cup and comes out as 6.5.

Click to expand...

Why are you ph'ing down to 5.0?

I haven't checked runoff in any of the few hempy buckets that I've grown but never had a problem as long as ph was around 6-6.2 going in.

Cheers