bicarbonate of soda as ph upper ?

[puffader]

hi was wondering if i can use bicarb as a ph upper and what other household items can be used safly without harming the girls

 

[jawbrodt]

Here's my advice....only use it if it's an emergency, or it will load your soil with salts if you don't flush periodically. It's a much better idea to use PH Up for aquariums, and it's really cheap, less than $5 a bottle. Baking soda will add alot of dissolved solids to your fert mix, whereas the PH Up won't. I used baking soda to adjust my fert PH recently, and it added over 900 PPM to the mix. When I use the PH Up(API brand) it only adds about 30 PPM. That was enough to convince me to stick with the API stuff.

 

[jawbrodt]

Oh yeah, vinegar(I've heard arguements for both cider and white.lol) or lemon juice can be used to lower PH, and are relatively safe, I'm told. I'm not sure what else you can use to bring the PH up.(other than lime) Maybe someone else has some ideas?

 

[romano]

I think most nutes /sup. lower ph .My tap water will raise it and increase over a day or so(I start w/distilled). Very little ... start with a gal of distilled and add 2 ounces of tap may be enough to raise ph .If you have a phmeter or indicater , try experimenting with using nutes as the "adjuster" , Example . From seed I use drops of GH nutes per gal of distilled . I use like 5-10 drops to start and can go all the way to about 45 drops without checking or worrying about ph. Some nutes/additives (like hygrozyme) can change ph slowly over a day or so you may want to figure these out by testing ph a couple of times or so untill your familiar.
You will get to a point where youll say added a dose of hygrozyme to your base and you will know 2 drops of up will level it . this is not true w/my tap ,,again it is unstable. Distilled stays very stable for me .

 

[grow4joe]

tap water will up your PH..

 

[jawbrodt]

My tap water is only 6.8. What's the PH of that water you guys use to bump up the PH? It must be fairly high?

 

[Bluebirdz]

wot my tap water come bk 8.2

 

[jawbrodt]

Holy shit.

 

[puffader]

Holy shit.

thanks for the help i think il go find some aquiriam ph upper , by the way i read up on the ph of tap water and in uk should be between 6,5 and 8,5 mine here is 7,2 , i let water sit for a few days then with my nutes in it drops to about 5,6 this seems a big drop is this normal ?

 

[romano]

That sounds normal to me .The more used the more it drops.

 

[jawbrodt]

thanks for the help i think il go find some aquiriam ph upper , by the way i read up on the ph of tap water and in uk should be between 6,5 and 8,5 mine here is 7,2 , i let water sit for a few days then with my nutes in it drops to about 5,6 this seems a big drop is this normal ?

Yeah, sounds about right. I use Dynagrow, and mine ends up at 5.2-5.4 after mixing. I use a syringe to add the PH Up, so that way i know exactly how much I added. Now I know that if I add 180 cc, the PH will be 6.5-6.7, so it makes mixing fert nice and quick.