How much difference does changing PH make?

As the tiltle says, i'm always looking to get better at growing and the most recent step i've taken is to get a PH meter with PH up/down solutions as I suspected my tap water was a bit off the desired level due to slight discolourations of my leaves. I just took it and it was 7.9, nothing major I know but I have a couple of questions:

1)How much difference to yield/health etc will changing the PH to the desired level make?
2)What is the preffered level for cannabis plants?
(I realise optimum PH needs will vary from plant to plant due to habitat bur I grow nearly 100% Indica all the time)

Thanks for any help

MJ will not grow well at all at 7.9 pH. Ideally, in soil, a pH around 6.0 will serve best. I suspect your water is quite hard as well and the dissolved minerals will also disrupt your plants metabolism. You might want to consider bottled water.

But the direct answer of your question is that pH is very important to the health of your plants. Control of it is vital to getting a good grow. Hope this helps.

Bobby9 said:

As the tiltle says, i'm always looking to get better at growing and the most recent step i've taken is to get a PH meter with PH up/down solutions as I suspected my tap water was a bit off the desired level due to slight discolourations of my leaves. I just took it and it was 7.9, nothing major I know but I have a couple of questions:

1)How much difference to yield/health etc will changing the PH to the desired level make?
2)What is the preffered level for cannabis plants?
(I realise optimum PH needs will vary from plant to plant due to habitat bur I grow nearly 100% Indica all the time)

Thanks for any help

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That's great help thanks. You say using bottled water might be an option but surely if I alter the PH using the up/down solutions that will be ok yes?
So I could see a visible difference in my plants in terms of health/colour and maybe even yield if I went down to say 6PH?
My palnts are by no means sick and I have healthy, lovely smelling good yields every time, just at that stage where I am trying to fine tune my set up with a few grows under my belt, cheers.

if your ph is off,your plants wont be able to suck up nutes evenly,so some nutes will lock out others or you get more of others

6.0 is kind of low for soil you wantto shoot for 6.5-6.7

guudbud said:

6.0 is kind of low for soil you wantto shoot for 6.5-6.7

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What do I know? I do hempy buckets lol. But anything's better than 7.9!

ph is very important. if not adjusted your plants will suffer

guudbud said:

6.0 is kind of low for soil you wantto shoot for 6.5-6.7

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I can agree with the 6.0 as to low part but I'll cut you more slack with a range of 6.2 - 6.8. I seriously doubt your tap water is actually 7.9 though.

I would use bottled water because the problem with hard tap water is that the pH up and down will often not even change the pH of hard water. It even says it on some of the pH adjusting soultion bottles, it will say something like you may need a water softener or other type of bottled water for the pH of the water to actually change.

i use filtered tap water thats been set out for a day to evaporate any extra chems in there (mainly chlorine) add my nutes then correct my ph 5.8 for hydro 6.5 for soil

So about 6.5 for soil seems to be the average for most people?

frmrboi said:

I can agree with the 6.0 as to low part but I'll cut you more slack with a range of 6.2 - 6.8. I seriously doubt your tap water is actually 7.9 though.

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I agree with the soil range of 6.2-6.8, but completely disagree with your assessment of the tap water. I've seen muni water supplies coming out of the tap at 8.4. It's not that difficult to achieve.

I prefer about 6.8, if I can achieve that.

Bobby, BEFORE you go messing around with your pH, find out what the SOIL RUNOFF pH is. Often the soil will buffer the pH down to where it needs to be just fine. And if yours does the same, then you've wasted time and energy playing around with your water's pH. It is very difficult to buffer water down, I usually recommend filtering through peat moss rather than trying to simply add a chemical (an acid in any form). This is because if the water is well-buffered, and I'm going to guess that yours is, it'll just bounce right back up and leave you where you were before, but now with more chemicals and a more tangled mess to untangle.

Test the run-off, if it's coming out in the mid-to-high 6 range I bet you're golden.