Life without PH Down

My tap water is 7.2 and yes when i add my nutes my ph will drop to 5.6-6.0 depending on what stage they are in and i use less than half of botanicares recommended amounts. And i guess some people have to pay for being more clumsy, i have had the same quality meter for almost 5 years and i think its been that long since i ordered calibrating solution. Get a good product and calibrating, when needed, takes only a minute and is needed much less. I calibrate mine about 2 times a year.
 
My 110ppm 8.0 tap water is mid 6s after 300-400 ppm DG Grow, even higher with protekt. Pretty much depends on what's in your tap water and how much nutes you put in it and what's in your nutes.

Also, if I didn't ph down my water, it would sit around 6.5 - 6.6 and my plants would hate me.

I am happy you can shit nutes and be locked in at 5.8 for a whole grow, but I guess some of us do it wrong and have to "apologize" to our plants for fucking up the nute mix by giving them ph down. Someone must be really bad if they use ph up.
 
Kervork said:
I run drain to waste with coco. I have a standard 40 gallon reservoir and I don't use ph down anymore. This is my fourth grow without ph down.

How do I do this? I'm using a resin provided to me by an organic chemist. The first time I mix my reservoir in a clean tank I throw in about 5 scoops of resin and then turn on a secondary pump to circulate the water around the tank causing the resin to work a bit quicker. The PH drops to around 5.8 where I like it. After I have run through the tank, I refill and repeat the process. The resin is heavier than water and sits on the bottom of the tank like a coarse sand. If it looks like it is starting to weaken and ph is higher than I would like, I throw in another scoop or two. I use my meter infrequently and could probably live without it.

It's not an idiot proofed system. Once I did add way too much and the ph dropped down to around 5. Had to scoop some out of the bottom of the tank and add more water.

I suspect the resin would be more useful to someone who was using a recirculating system with smaller reservoir who was having problems keeping their ph down.

If you are doing a small recirculating or deepwater grow and would like samples to test I can provide some. I just want to know what experiences you have from it.
You will need to be able to recirculate the water in your reservoir to make it work. Bubbles or a secondary pump can accomplish this. Ideally I would prefer people who
have smaller reservoirs of say 30 gallons or less since I have limited test material.
Click to expand...

PH adjustments have been unnecessary for over 15 years for myself personally
many nutes use chelates / ph buffers
PH dependent hydroponics is a thing of the distant past and perhaps only a myth in the first place

peace
 
If you have to use pH up, it means your plant is eating K-, Ca2+, and/or Mg2+ in the solution faster than NO3- or PO4-, so yes, that would mean your solution needs more cations like K, Ca or Mg. KOH (potassium hydroxide) is a great way to replenish that K as the plant eats it, and just happens to bring the pH back to where it's supposed to be. In the case that your nutrient solution is doing this, you needed more K, Ca, or Mg to begin with, or less PO4 or NO3 (probably less PO4). That's what i mean by the nutrient solution being bad.

When I had to use KOH, it was because my homemade mixture at the time had too much phosphate in it and had to be balanced with KOH to fix the imbalance. Now I just use less phosphate and more K by using less potassium phosphate and more potassium nitrate. Btw, potassium nitrate is the main ingredient to the GH flora "grow" bottle everyone hates so much...

Malevolence said:
Someone must be really bad if they use ph up.
Click to expand...
 
churchhaze said:
If you have to use pH up, it means your plant is eating K-, Ca2+, and/or Mg2+ in the solution faster than NO3- or PO4-, so yes, that would mean your solution needs more cations like K, Ca or Mg.
Click to expand...

Not really, it probably means your water is just ph drifting like normal. Pretty sure my little seedlings with their 300ppm water aren't causing the ph to drift 0.4 points over 24 hours. They don't even use a noticeable amount of water or nutes. Adding more chemicals will simply raise my ppm which will do nothing but waste them at best, and burn my plants at worse. There are not enough nutes at that level to have enough ph buffers to stabilize at 5.8. In full veg/flower running 700ppm+, I can see it being more stable.

I'm not a fuckin scientist or expert, this is just my stoner theory based on what I observe in my own garden for the past year. What you say makes sense if you are running high enough ppm to buffer the water, but I don't see how you can get away without ph down the whole grow.
 
Malevolence said:
There are not enough nutes at that level to have enough ph buffers to stabilize at 5.8. In full veg/flower running 700ppm+, I can see it being more stable.
Click to expand...

Once you add the pH down (i'm assuming you use phosphoric acid), does your ppm go up past 700ppm? Phosphoric acid is just another nutrient often included in 3 part base solutions, not always a pH down. If it was included in the base solution, people wouldn't call it pH down, it'd be called nutes.

So clearly you can get to 5.8 with only nutes at 300ppm if you're doing it. The terms "pH up" and "pH down" are meant to imply what the chemicals are used for, but a nutrient solution can easily contain phosphoric acid to begin with. The plant doesn't care whether you call it "wrong nutrients that were pH downed" or "the correct mix to begin with". It's the same thing once you pH adjust it.
 
Also, the reason it's hard to bring pH down with a low ppm nutrient solution is because of all the calcium carbonate in the tap water that needs to be neutralized first. If neutralized with nitric acid, the nitrates substitute out with the CO3 and become Ca(NO3)2 and CO2 which leaves the solution. This is why I use slightly less calcium nitrate in my own mix, because I have so much CaCO3 that needs to be neutralized with nitric acid, I already have a lot of Ca(NO3)2 to begin with after pHing.
 
Wow I need way more reading time! I do have issues with ph dropping quite rapidly halfway through a rez change cycle. I use my tap water to raise it back up till the refill. My tds goes up as well, say from 650 to 700 over 3 days. If I use PH up it only stays up for 24 hrs and then seems to drop. Is there a reason for this? Am I too hot should I be lowering the nutes? This is why the beads tweeked my interest. As it is now I am keeping the levels pretty constant with a top up every 3 days. I try to maintain 5.8-6.0 40 days into flower. image001.jpgJust a side note my blue lab meter goes out of calibration (-.3) about every 3 weeks and it is the second one I've had.
 
Just curious, but how much K do you have in your mix compared to N and P? I'd suspect your plant is pulling out potassium too fast as a first guess. Assuming nothing is precipitating out and your pH up is made of potassium hydroxide, you'd think it's eating the potassium from the potassium hydroxide.

A lot of people (lucas formula users) could really be using a lot more K in my opinion (guess which bottle they should be getting it from... "grow"). I've been using a slightly higher K than N and P recently for veg and the stretch, and it's been working out really great. I think the hoagland solution is actually 3-1-5.

Really nice looking plants btw.

waterdawg said:
Wow I need way more reading time! I do have issues with ph dropping quite rapidly halfway through a rez change cycle. I use my tap water to raise it back up till the refill. My tds goes up as well, say from 650 to 700 over 3 days. If I use PH up it only stays up for 24 hrs and then seems to drop. Is there a reason for this? Am I too hot should I be lowering the nutes? This is why the beads tweeked my interest. As it is now I am keeping the levels pretty constant with a top up every 3 days. I try to maintain 5.8-6.0 40 days into flower. View attachment 2668431Just a side note my blue lab meter goes out of calibration (-.3) about every 3 weeks and it is the second one I've had.
Click to expand...
 
I'm interested simply because it's a self-buffering system and adding another failsafe to your system is always good. Many noobs around my parts will find it useful also, so it's a like plus rep from me bongsmilie Even though I find pH Down to work just fine for me, I might just give it a bash seeing as the rest of my land is certified organic I like the idea of the resin. I'd move to organic hydro if it wasn't for the godawful smell...
 
Just curious, but how much K do you have in your mix compared to N and P? I'd suspect your plant is pulling out potassium too fast as a first guess. Assuming nothing is precipitating out and your pH up is made of potassium hydroxide, you'd think it's eating the potassium from the potassium hydroxide.

A lot of people (lucas formula users) could really be using a lot more K in my opinion (guess which bottle they should be getting it from... "grow"). I've been using a slightly higher K than N and P recently for veg and the stretch, and it's been working out really great. I think the hoagland solution is actually 3-1-5.

Really nice looking plants btw
Click to expand...

I'll check tonight. The stuff I use is made by Highgrow, which is mixed locally and also overdrive 2 weeks before I flush. I have added it a bit early this grow as it is the last one for the summer so I thought why not lol. And yes thankyou I have had some good success so far for only starting hydro in the fall. Still lots to learn though lol. I guess the secret is to mix your own nute solutions and I am not really sure I would be inclined to do that. Am I wrong or is it just additives to the premixed products? Thanks for your interest!
 
Sorry to highjack the thread Kervork but like I said I will look into the beads as it does sound like a solution to not having to fuck with the ups and downs of PH. And obviously that is a big issue with growers or there would not be a market for the "expensive" PH perfect products. Here is the nutes I use and yes the up is potassium hydroxide @ 17%. image001 (2).jpgimage003 (2).jpg FYI I decided to lower my TDS this refill and as of last night it was 510 @ .5, I typically run between 650-700 and it holds pretty steady, climbing every day by 15-20. Since last night it has dropped by 30 to 480. Again very sorry to highjack the thread!!! Just need this last grow to be epic as it has to last a few months lol.
 
Your seedlings shouldn't be in 300ppm solution in the first place. :)

Enough nutes in distilled water will make the pH right.

Maybe 1600 will burn them, but how would it be a waste of nutes to have it higher if they're not taking them up quickly anyway? If they're not taking up nutes or water, it means you can go longer without changing the tank.

Malevolence said:
Not really, it probably means your water is just ph drifting like normal. Pretty sure my little seedlings with their 300ppm water aren't causing the ph to drift 0.4 points over 24 hours. They don't even use a noticeable amount of water or nutes. Adding more chemicals will simply raise my ppm which will do nothing but waste them at best, and burn my plants at worse. There are not enough nutes at that level to have enough ph buffers to stabilize at 5.8. In full veg/flower running 700ppm+, I can see it being more stable.

I'm not a fuckin scientist or expert, this is just my stoner theory based on what I observe in my own garden for the past year. What you say makes sense if you are running high enough ppm to buffer the water, but I don't see how you can get away without ph down the whole grow.
Click to expand...
 
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