pH rising uncontrollably please help

I'm growing 12 plants in individual DWC 5 gallon buckets. I've recently started using a shower filter instead of RO water. I wanted to get rid of most the chlorine but I found that the RO water was too susceptible to pythium with the organic nutrients I was using. And picking up water every couple of days was a huge hassle. Anyways I recently got a digital pH meter so that I could keep track of the pH (I kept getting high readings) and I realize that my pH rises from 6 to 8 within a day. Here are the nutrients I'm using:

Liquid Karma
Pro Bloom
AquaShield
Dutch Master Zone
pH Down

I have 1 400W HPS and 2 600W HPS

My room temps go from 60 at night to 80 during the day and the reservoirs go from 65 at night to 75 during the day. I have attempted to put frozen water bottles in the reservoirs everyday to keep temps down but it has been an uphill battle. Any ideas for that would be appreciated too. Thanks.

yea controlling ph in dwc is a bitch but mine doest rise that much from a 6-8...when i add i ph my water at a 5.9 or 5.8 then add nutes cuz when u add nutes the ph lowers a lilttle bit..then the next day it rises to a 6.1 or so then ill add ph down cuz ur ph is suppose to be a 5.2-5.9..and once ur plants get bigger it will b easier to controll the water temp cuz less light will be getting to ur resevoir..when i was in veg i added at least one frozen 2liter bottle in my resevoir a day but i havnt had to do that lately cuz my plants block the light from getting in the resevoir now

I've added some pics of the room and one of the roots so you can get an idea what is going on. Is it going to harm them to keep adding pH Down.

no just dont go under 5.2 and if u do add ph up..when u add i would do what i do and add a lil water in a water bottle then add ur ph that way or just lil drops at a time so it mixs

I had a similar problem with my ph when I did my first hydroponic crop. Turned out that I wasnt keeping my PH probe wet enough in storage solution and I wasnt calibrating it often enough. I thought I had high ph but my meter was so far off and I was over correcting so much that my actual PH was in the mid 4s by the time I figured it out, which caused some weirdness in growth.

If I forget to put the meter in solution, the PH always jumps suspiciously high over night.

You should calibrate it at least once, better yet twice, a week, calibrate it at two different numbers. I calibrate mine at 7 and 4.


Hope that helps

how the hell do u do that? i dont got any more buffer..any way i can calibrate it without buffer?

HomeGrown420baby said:

ur ph is suppose to be a 5.2-5.9

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5.8-6.4

If you go below 5.8 you lock out Phosphorus and Magnesium. Without phosphorus your bud will be small and might not even burn.

I sometime use my ph 'drops' to cross reference my meter to make sure it's operating correctly.

HomeGrown420baby said:

how the hell do u do that? i dont got any more buffer..any way i can calibrate it without buffer?

Click to expand...

Well, if you buy zero PPM bottled water, the PH is at 7.0. I imagine you could use that to calibrate it. Better yet go to a hydroponics store and buy a couple of packets of calibration solution.

wilsoncr17 said:

5.8-6.4

If you go below 5.8 you lock out Phosphorus and Magnesium. Without phosphorus your bud will be small and might not even burn.

Click to expand...

what the hell r u talking about dude? were talking about dwc hydro growing not soil grows