Hello, I'm day 4 into my first Hydroponics grow and starting on day 2 I started noticing a steady increase in PH. This PH fluctuation appears to be killing my plants and I'm worried I'm going to lose them if I can't get the PH to stabilize. I am running a DWC system, my nutrient bath is 1.75 gallions. I have 6 3 inch net pots with Hydroton in them and 2 6 inch air stones pumping air into the bath. I had rinsed the Hydrolite until the water coming out of it was clear without any brown stuff, however I did not soak it for any prolonged time. I was also using RO water at this point. After a day and a half of chasing the PH just to see it steadily rise back up I decided to replace the nutrient solution. Last night I set up a new nutrient bath in a new tub, when I added the plants into it at 11pm last night the PPM was reading 70 and the PH was reading 5.96+/-. When I woke up this morning and checked again at 9:30am the PPM had risen to 95 and the PH was up to 6.75. I lowered it back down to 5.98 but I'm confident if I check it in a couple hours it will be around 6.1-6.2. How can I stabilize this PH so that my plants can recover, as of now they're getting worse by the hour. My plants 16 hours ago: View attachment 152843 My plants now: View attachment 152842
dude wth a 1.7gal bucket come on.........seriously? You had might as well kill all of those cause you arent going anywhere in that tiny of a bucket. Good luck man and btw, with 1.7 gal, when your plants get about 4 weeks older, all 3 of them will drink that in a day. Possibly within 8-10hrs
Surely you meant 17.5 gal? I hope... Get the ppms up to around 200. Ph will stabilize as they age, and you increase the nutes. Edit: Until then, you need to stay on top of it.
What are you using to lower the PH? Whay are you putting so many plants so close together? IN order to get informed help, you need to give us mor einfo. Peace
Yup, I'd buy a few more totes. Two per tote. Actually, I'd only have one plant in 17 gal. One big one...
OK...first, as said, 1.7 gallon buckets are useless...you need 4-5 gallons of fluid PER PLANT, minimum. And this may have part of the issue involved in it. Second, are you pHing the water fresh, then with nutes/minerals added, and comparing it to what's in the solution you're adding to? Adding nutes and minerals to properly balanced water changes the pH. Third, any pet store carrying aquarium products, many hardware stores, and quite a few gardening stores carry "pH buffer", which is a product you add to water/solution that stabilizes pH to an extent. Worth trying. Most are baking soda or potassium bicarbonate (also used in cooking, and harmless) based. Fouorth, are you mixing gallon to gallon? If so, this means each gallon will have at least a slight difference in ppm/pH....you're better off storing a reservoir of water, 5 gallons at least, open to the air, testing the day you plan to use it, keeping it pre-mixed with your guano/casing mix and minerals mix, adding nutes only to the amount you remove for immediate use...this means you retain a uniform and stable pH and ppm across all plants.
I meant to say 1.75 gallons, I am working on doing a very small grow, with the plants only getting to about 1-1.5 feet before flowering them. I don't have room for anything larger until I move this summer and I wanted to do a small low yield grow for practice. That way I can learn about these kinds of issues before I scale up and invest more money/time. I bought a pre-assembled kit and the box isn't big enough for anything larger than the basin I am currently using. The kit actually came with a 6 liter basin for 6 plants which I upgraded to the 1.75 gallon basin and only started 4 plants to give them some space. I haven't raised my nutrient levels yet because I found out what I had was miracle grow and my new nutes don't arrive until Friday. I am using Genral Hydroponics PH Down to lower the PH but it takes a lot more than I'd expect to change the PH. 3 small drops lowers the PH about .2 I added nutes then PHed the water, I haven't been adding nutes since I set the water up initially.