I guess these are pretty important to have in a soil grow, so I'll be getting one. I saw some really cheap ($7) needle pH meters on ebay, and happened to notice one at k-mart today. I stuck it in some of the soil they had laying about, and noticed that the needle jumped from 4-9 depending on how far I stuck it in and where. I'm going to assume that is because this was over priced Chinese junk. What are my best options? This will be a semi-budgeted CFL grow, so I'd think it silly to spend $200 on these, but I'd prefer a certain degree of accuracy. Can I get a decent one for around $20-50, or would I be better off with the chem class color strips?
Thanks for the quick reply . Is that what you use? With that I would test the run off and not the actual soil, right? Are the soil ones no good?
Honestly I haven't used it yet, just ordered it 2 days ago and kind of wish I had shopped the site I linked you to, there are much better ones for under $50 it seems. I saw this one on ebay for $20 and jumped on it, but just found out from shopping eseasongear that I had to spend another $21 for the solution and cleaner. This one looks decent... HANNA HI 98106 Champ pH Tester, HI98106
What i personally use.. PH pens fail after awhile.. You could possibly mess your plants ph up bad before you notice.. I had one work well for 2 months, but I checked the ph with this kit aswell to be sure the pen was accurate *kinda like QC*.. it was great for like I said about 2 months then it started going out of whack.. so I recalibrated the pen as it came with the packets to do so... again it worked well for another 3 months or so then out of whack again, after awhile of adding ph down to the same amount of water in you're can everytime you kinda figure out how much you need and when the numbers wwwway off, it's like nahhhh.. cant be, so I check with the drops and I'm in the range I desire.. so I'm done with the PH pens I prefer the drops. Best of luck, & Happy growings.
I have this ph pen for the last 2 years and store it in kcl storage liquid. Lost some of its luster though.Takes about a minute to stabilize ph read. But has never had to be calibrated. BL
I use drops honestly its the only way to go. Its dead nuts accurate . If you have a employee drop the pen it fucks up the calibration . Dial it in and use it . Then it gets wet and it fucks up again . Total pieces of shit there not allowed in any of my gardens .