how to turn ph base (powder) into ph up liquid

So i bought ph base thinking, its like a diy powder to make ph up,but according to the directions its meant to be added to the nutrient mix. My concern with that is, its gotta be easier to over add the powder. So i wanna make the liquid out of base, cant i just mix it with a little water? anyone have an idea of the mixture , i.e 1 part base to 5 parts water? i did google "how to use powdered ph up" but no results
Thanks in advance...


PS. why doesn't this sub-forum have any stickies?

I use potassium hydroxide flakes as pH up, but currently don't make a liquid stock solution for lack of a suitable bottle. The material is highly caustic, and more dangerous in a concentrated solution than solid flakes due to risk of spills and leaks.

I suppose you could take an old pH up/down bottle with a childproof cap and make a 1-2 molar solution of KOH and use that as a base solution.

I'm not sure what the ingredients of "pH base pH up" are.

churchhaze said:

I use potassium hydroxide flakes as pH up, but currently don't make a liquid stock solution for lack of a suitable bottle. The material is highly caustic, and more dangerous in a concentrated solution than solid flakes due to risk of spills and leaks.

I suppose you could take an old pH up/down bottle with a childproof cap and make a 1-2 molar solution of KOH and use that as a base solution.

I'm not sure what the ingredients of "pH base pH up" are.

Click to expand...

Hey thanks for the reply, I hate when I get 320 views, and one reply... Oh well I guess I'm the only one in the world whose tried doing this... Ha ..


anyways to my helpful friend who replied, I ended up basicly doing similar to what you recommended... Here's what I did, took my old ph up bottle, a small funnel and tablespoon. I filled my old bottle up 3/4 way with 0 TDS reverse osmosis water, then I took and added five TBS's of powder, then shook it up, i waited about 10 minutes, then if when I came back there was no powder on the bottom, then I added 4-5 more scoops of power and shook. Repeating this process till I had powder on the bottom of the bottle. At that point I topped off the bottle with more filtered water. Thats it.

I could be slightly off here; but I'm not sure what the upside is for "commercial" pH adjusters anyway.... not sure why you couldn't make Kalkwasser (pickling lime & water) or just use baking soda & water.... for pH down I've been using diluted pool acid & RO (about 40-ish:1)... of course I could be all wrong and would gladly hear polite rebuttal

Baking soda contains a lot of sodium. Sodium competes with potassium and raises salinity in general.

What you use as pH up/pH down should be based on what you ultimately want to be in your nutrient solution.

Potassium hydroxide is KOH. The K+ ion stays in the solution and the OH- takes a free H+ to become water.

With pH down, you either want to use nitric acid (HNO3), or phosphoric acid (H3PO4), or sulfuric acid, (H2SO4). Your pool acid might contain a large amount of chlorine, for example, which is not useful.

If you want to raise N while lowering pH, use nitric acid. If you want to raise P while lowering pH, use phosphoric acid.

"pH adjusters" are food.

(I actually do have calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2 too, which i think is the Kalkwasser you're talking about, but rarely use it over KOH, unless i'm specifically trying to boost calcium)