Well I just accidentally destroyed 2 plants trying to drain my 20 gallon double bucket + rez home made dwc bubblers. I noticed the seedling I had just germinated a week ago had started yellowing and drooping so I looked and there was slime in the water and smelled like a damp basement. I tried to salvage/clean it but the netpot fell over and the plant and hydroton fell out and i'm raging right now. 1) How am I expected to grow shit when my ambient house temperate is 85 degrees in september? I can't afford to cool the house more than I do down to 80. I even duct tape the other vents except my bedroom and it still isnt enough. I can't afford to buy/run a water chiller. I only have a simple poor man's home built system with 2 plants. 2) What is the deal with PH? I'm using tap water that comes out 8.1 and 550 ppm. I add dry PH powder, it gets it down to 5.8. 8 hours later the ph is back to 7.1... what???!! Add more powder bring it back down to 5.8, rinse repeat and water always goes back up very fast past 7.0 and it makes the water super cloudy. I use powdered PH because otherwise it costs an arm and a leg to get it down to 5.8 on a regular basis. And the nearest hydro store to me is 20 miles. I can't afford a R/O filter, nor can I afford the bill to waste 6 gallons of water per 1 made. I don't understand how it went so wrong this time. I grew my first grew a couple months ago when it was even hotter. Can I just add like a bottle of peroxide for every 5 gallons of water i put in ? Somebody help me fast, I need to rebuild the setup again tomorrow in a way that won't make my water foamy and slimey. edit: also can somebody link me LEGITIMATE AIRSTONES. So far I've tried 3 different kinds and NONE bubble from the actual stone, just from where the air hose goes into the stone.
1. You're not expected to grow shit. 2. High PPM water has a lot of dissolved solids. When this water sits out, for 8 hours, certain chemicals evaporate. It sounds like the acidic chemicals in your water are evaporating, leaving water with a high PH. It happens in hydroponics also when plants suck the nutrients out of the water, it causes the PH to rise. PH is one thing you really need to be well versed in and understand. It's incredibly important to understand PH in order to grow marijuana. You can get PH up at Lowes. Look for Roebecks (sp) drain cleaner. It's 100% lye. Read the bottle and make sure it's 100% sodium hydroxide. Dissolve carefully in water, and you have PH up. A bottle of peroxide for every 5 gallons of water? Are you serious? Legitimate air stones? They all work. Go to a petsmart and buy one. Shove the hose on real tightly. You NEED a carbon filter. NEED. If you're going to be cheap and not buy one, don't grow. Even if you're a medical marijuana patient, get a carbon filter. If you're not a medical patient get one.
Why would I want to make PH up though? It's always high. I feel like though that I'm adding so many harsh chemicals to the water to keep the PH low on a daily basis that it's just going to poison the plant somehow. I wanted the res because I was sick of filling up the bucket every single day (the last grow was drinking 1-2 gallons a day). Did I get algae because the res doesn't have air stones in it? It's basically 14 gallons of water in the tote recirculated slowly by a pump into two 5 gallon buckets. The entire system holds ~20 gallons. I built it myself from an 18 gallon tote, 2 buckets and plumbing supplies. I figured peroxide since I didn't know of any other way to destroy the algae without poisoning the plant. I'm stoned and desperate. Not my airstones man. I have a normal air pump, I can rig it so that all the air even goes only into 1 stone and if you hold it horizontal in the water you can see that no bubbles come from the stone except from where the little barb is glued to the stone. I had a bunch (8) of the Oxystones, and 3 different kinds of your walmart aquarium section variety. All had the same result. They just make the water look like it's boiling violently, not like a bunch of tiny bubbles aerating the water. What does a carbon filter do? How is it used?