dirt and water, what it means to me?

kingrow1 help me !!!!! or anyone who has friendly knowledge bare with me i think u can help and i apologize now for the long post.....Hello, I stumbled upon a post of yours and wanted to get furthur comment from the source. I have a Hanna ppm meter which is great. I have blue lad ph pen which gives me fits but I trust it. I have been aerating a five gallon bucket of water ( an air pump from a previous dwc grow ) and circulating it (a 250 gph pump from a previous aero grow). I have some experience with hydro and I did swear by dwc but I have some colleagues who have had some incredible results in dirt, but i feel they are just lucky, very lucky! i have begun a grow fox farm soil. 3 gallon maxi pots with the bottom 75% ocean forest and the top 25% of the pots are light warrior. I made sure the soil was moist and then placed the pots inside of my grow tent so that the water would dry out a little bit. A few days later i place some seeds that had soaked in a cup of tap water for 24 hours just under a tiny layer of light warrior and blasted them with super spectrum hps for24 hours and misted often (with the water from the butcket described above) until 12 out of the 13 showed their little green faces shot up like daisies and for the past 3 days they have been getting 18/6 of hps enhanced spectrum. the strain ia m working with now loves this bulb during veg!!! well it is day 5 and the beginnings of the first sets of 3 leaves are poking out. -day 1 "24 hours in water"<> end of day 4 " first set of 3 are coming out" anyway....the ph of the water after 48 hours of circulation and aeration was 8.6 and i have been giving that to my plants this entire time. i just added ph down today and i have got it for now staying around 6.3. should i give them the 6.3 juice or dump it out and start aerating and circulating new water immediately? the lights come back on in a few hours so if u don't get bak to me i am going to just mist them with tap water. i plan to use the entire general organics line but only in minimal amounts while i veg. ok now for some questions< should i ph my water after aerating and circulating? what should my ph be? if the water will not change the ph of the soil can i get away with not buying a soil ph meter? if i am aerating my tap water does this mean i will need to use the cal mag, i have heard that tap doesn't need it but filtered water does and i know plants like it and the GO feeding schedule says to give them their calmag sup then entire time? i am sure i have more questions but can we start here? this post will also be in the journal headed "dirt and water, what it means to me?" so if you can answer my question or we can learn from experience, other people will be able to learn too! this internet shit is so cool

pH in soil is an entirely different animal than in Hydro. If you are in soil, stop obsessing over your pH going in, because the soil is gonna buffer it to the pH of the soil. Most good store bought soils are "limed" and pre-buffered. It's the pH of your run-off that you need to be concerned with. You can get the pH of your nute solution as close as you can get it, but I only periodically check my run off. In soil, it should be between 6.5 and 7. I keep mine at 6.8, or I should say the soil keeps it there.

so in your opinion i do not have to adjust the ph in the aerated and circulated water? and if this is the case i am going to be using the General organics line which states that there is no need for ph adjustment does this mean i can put my ph pen in storage mode (the damn thing was expensive <the ph pen, blue lab> so when i say storage mode it has some critical directions in concern for the storage?) this is my first dirt grown and i honeslt think it is more complicated than hydroponics so if you have some experience and can give me solid info about plant growth in dirt i will be much obliged.

Relax, chill, take a toke. You have just uncomplicated your grows immensely. Store your pen with the cap on, just realize you'll have to re-wet and calibrate it when you use it again.
Not being a huge fan pf the "grow in a bottle" nutes, I can't advise you there. I use organic ferts only. (Manures,Worm Castings, Composts, etc) but there are some great pre-packaged organics out there that you mix in the soil before you plant. From then on, you water. You can supplement that with foliar feeding and teas. It's pretty stress free.
You want to start out with a soil mix that has NO ADDED NUTES. That way, you KNOW whats in there. A good soil will be self buffering, so pH is pretty much a non issue unless you go screwing around with things.
The biggest mistake people make is to panic when something doesn't "look right", then get on the forums for answers. That isn't the problem, the problem is trying each and every "cure" recommended. You have to base your decisions on sound science rather than voo doo.

wonderful! thank you. this time i am 5 days in and doing fine so far if i can figure out how to post pics/actually just take the time to do it, ill show you the set up. i am currently going to continue to feed my plants with the a/c water and no nutes for the next few days. i dumped out the water i had adjusted and measured. my tap it is 7.9 but in about 12 hours it will spike to 8.6 from the aeration and circulation (a/c) .... i am very very interested in mixing soils for the entire grow and supplementing with foiler and teas. General Organics has a foiler spray i will be using this time but in the future i would love to go more further down the spiral or organics as in the methods you describe.

Why do you not use your tap water? Distilled water, like your ac water, has no mineral content. Unless the tap water is extremely alkaline, I'd use that. You just have to get rid of the chlorine in it. Generally let it set out over night with an aerator. (Air pump and bubble stone) If ya really wanna get anal about it (like me) use rain water.

The hares right, i dont pH but at 8.6 i might be tempted to bring it down to pH7 or 7.5 just to be on the safe side. PPm your tap water and give us the reading, hanna is way more accurate than bluelab but both are good.

I didnt see that you added 30percent min perlite to your soil??

Peace

out of the tap the water reads ph7.9 and ppm 260 .....and jack the a/C water i speak of is made by using a bubbler from a previous dwc grow in which i had a beautiful experience and a small pump to circulate it, if no circulation the small air bubbles can create algae even with no light getting to the water. i fucking hate algae and mold and bugs and dust and mites and well i have had many problems but i have always overcame. so the tap water gets the bubbles for 24 and the ph goes up to 8.6... i am using fox farm soil. the bottom 3/4 of the bucket are ocean forest, and the top layer about 25 % is light warrior. i have been keeping my plants slightly moist but now i am letting them "search" for a little water. i still have the same question> should i bring the ph of the A/C water (A/C means aerated and circulated) coler to neutral? i don't trust my tap water to drink let alone to give to my plants. i don't like to purchase bottles of distilled and in the past i have always used this A/C technique to remove chlorine and anything else that would remove itself in the process.

Sorry Johnyutah, I thought you meant a/c (Air Conditioner) condensate water. My bad. Theres a thread where a guy is wanting to use that.

Your rise in pH sounds like it's biological. Bacteria can raise pH by excretion.

now we are talking something that sounds more like it could actually be the problem!!!! changed water today in the 5 gallon had a little algae on the hose. i had the same problem when starting my seeds from dwc the air bubbles create film on the bottom of my net pots but when i lowered the level under the bottom of the "nets" the problem went away. the reason i have the circulating pump inside of the bucket was to keep the water " more than" agitated so in thought no bacteria would grow. i have a lid on the bucket and some small holes drilled in the top so that air may escape but no light may get in. my biggest fear when starting in dirt was problems with water. in hydro it seems idiot proof just clean res, mix, adjust, let plants drink, top off, and repeat. as long as water is ok no problems. i have waited till its cold enough to kill the bugs outside in hopes they will not find a way inside to my plants i am switching to dirt as a challenge and experiment

Jack I have cleaned my bucket and am goingnto do away with the pump because the hose bend out of the water and that is where goo is collecting. The whores are getting tap splash for now but hopefully in the next 24 hours I can have some nice cool aerated water to spray over them!! But more info on any of my post will be appreciated in the mean time...

Thanks again I like this rollitup thing it's my new thing

Are you the same Johnny Utah from Newgrounds?

Nope I am notnthat guy who's that guy.?

Are you the Johnny Utah that went to Ohio State, was the quarterback but messed up his knee and moved to Cali and became a surfer?

Nope not that one either, I saw him once faced on some blotter talking about some algorithm shit

he's a flash animator who specializes in dick jokes, he's really talented in both animation and in being a mighty good purveyor of dick jokes.

Water is still fucked.... Got a ph test kit to make sure merger was not lying to me and it's not. I really don't understand why the ph goes up when aerating, i have never realized this was a problem before.

I wish I could upload PDF files. I have a lot of good ones that will help you understand buffering. In the immediate, did you look into a place where you can get some? Anything that one uses in an aquarium will be fine for your plants. I'd try and do something pretty quick, not wait on your kit to arrive. I hear Hydro is pretty unforgiving and will go south within hours.

My tap water has a ph of 7.9 and after aerating 5 gallons of it in a 5 gallon bucket the ph of the water rises to 8.6? why does the ph rise? And another question I have is after aerating, is it ok to remove air stone and let water set undisturbed with a lid until I am ready to us it?

If you are adding nothing to the water, the only answer that makes any sense is that you have some kind of bacterial action going on in there that is raising your already high pH. Try adding some 5% H2O2 as a disinfectant. I have no idea how much, but since there is nothing in there, I'd dump about a quarter of a bottle in. Let that bubble overnite. Why is your pH so alkaline? You in Colorado or AZ?
Or you could bleach out any bacteria, then clean the shit out of everything.