soil ph tester

so i need a little help from the pros. i recently bought a digital ph tester (the one with the long metal probe on it) and i have been reading a lot of stuff on rollitup about how inacurate they are. i was testing my soil with it and it said it was 5.8-6.0. i wasent happy with that but i still stopped feeding just to prevent nute lock. i went to ace hardware and bought one of those soil ph test kits with the tube that you put the soil sample in then put the little capsule with powder in there then mix with water and that said my soil was 6.5 witch is perfect for soil.so i guess my question is are those soil ph test kits accurate. if not please give me some info on what i should get so i can get my ladys some food. and if my ph is low is it ok to get ph up and mix with water then water the plants with that. will that bring my soil ph back up.any info will help . holla

The forums seem to say that the best way to test soil ph is to measure the ph of the runoff after watering.

...those soil pH test meters are garbage...just add some rapid dolomite lime as a top dressing , 1 tbls per gallon of soil, and water in as normal. The dolomite lime will fight to keep your pH "in range"...you should pH everything you put into your plants @ 6.3- 6.5 ( you can get a liquid pH test kit really cheap and they are accurate)

alright brotha...scrape up a hundred bucks and buy this http://compare.ebay.com/like/360208831017?ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes
first off...not feeding your girls isnt gonna prevent nute lockout if your ph is off. dont test your run off....who actually does this?...its more important to know what is going into the soil than what is coming out. ph your nute mix before you water...dont bother testing your soil ...and soil likes 6.5 to 6.8 ideally.

honkeytown i looked at the link you put up and ive seen one of those before. i know you can test the ppm with that but can you test the water ph before i water with it. or should i buy a general hydo ph test kit

they have different ones bro that are multi meters....that one just does ph...i paid 200...which was too much for my hanna tri meter..but i love it. and yes its for testing the water..they sell soil ones but dont use em. also..ppm is a fuct scale to use cause there are different scales for it...kinda complicated...test ec homie...much more accurate and tells you the same thing...this is a link to the multi meter http://cgi.ebay.com/BLUELAB-TRUNCHEON-METER-EC-CF-TDS-PPM-BLUE-LAB_W0QQitemZ250595828554QQcategoryZ43555QQcmdZViewItem

what is ec. damn i sound like such and amature. so i can just stick the tip of that thing into my water and it will tell me the ph

you can get digi PH meters for 20 bucks. no need to pay 100 for something made for hydro. that just makes it needlessly expensive.

si senor just dip it in.....tds stand for total dissolved solids....you can find this with ec which is electrical conductivity or ppm...basically what its doing is converting those measurements for you. All PPM PENS actually measure the value based on EC and then convert the EC value to display the ppm value, having different conversion factors between differing manufacturers is why we have this problem communicating nutrient measurments between one another. the scale used to convert is between .5 to .72. when you read ec it gives you a very clear number vs ppm. so get a truncheon that tells you ec....ec is telling you how much conductivity is in your mix...nutrients have metals in them...so basically its a good way to tell how strong your feeding is. but ppm is not great. ph really is the most important thing tho...like i said...doesnt matter how much you feed or dont feed...they can still lockout hope that helps and isnt too confuzled