hey guys i am in week 1 of flower after 5 weeks of vegging. for the past week my ph has been dropping pretty fast. from 6.0 to 5.4 within a day. i am using the Botanicare nutes pure bloom, cal mag, sweet, and liquid karma. ppm 1100 R/O water at 40 ppm rez temp 70-75 plants look good no sign of deficiencies or such. is this normal? its kind of a pain in the ass, it the beginning it would take a week for ph to drop 1 point. any suggestions/ help appreciated
Drop your ppm, id take it down to about 900 min.. Generally when ur ph is dropping like that they are getting to much nutes.. less is always more..
thanks YODA, i just brought it down to 900ppm. do you think that i should stay at this ppm the whole grow or should slightly raise it later on in week 4 or later of flower
The plants will tell you what to do... When the ph drops water down ur mix, meaning to much nutes.. when ur ph rises they want more food, add nutes.. each strain is different , so going this way is the safest way dude.. If your ph stabalizes then hold your ppms there.. Hope that helps YODA
have a look at the bottom link in my signature, it explains how to work out what strength your plant prefers. PH will fluctuate as certain nutes are used fast and others are used up at a slower rate. a bigger reservoir will help stabilise it
Check your roots! You may very well have root rot. Carbs like Sweet and DWC are a very bad combo. The plants can't uptake the carbs. Sweet is made to feed bacteria in an organic system. If you are not running beneficial bacteria in some sort of media (DWC or Aeroponics=no media), you will be feeding any bacteria or other pathogens that happen along with the Sweet. The pathogens that attack roots are everywhere. When running DWC or Areo feeding them carbs is a recipe for disaster. I learned that lesson the hard way by losing a few crops.
I have read your post before, the odd part is that using your method my ppm and water seem to stay pretty constant through out the week, meaning my strength is perfect but my ph is totally out of wack and its been getting worse, dropping from 6 to 4.9 in 16 hours. plants look healthy so i dont think its root rot but just ordered stuff in case it turns out to be root rot.
It's a good idea to make sure your PH meter is calibrated correctly. I had a hell of a time figuring out what was going on with my grow, and it turned out that my meter was about 1.5 too high.
I'll second the pH meter sentiment. I had BAD problems until I found that my pH meter was approximately .8 out of calibration. I now re-calibrate daily. No problems since. For what it's worth.
I know my ph meter is accurate, i always have a liquid ph tester (old school) and I test with it when numbers are odd, my ph meter is correct.
is it possible for root rot to be there but plant still be healthy and show no signs but ph lower crazy like that?
When you say that your water is 'consistent', do you mean consistent as far as ppm or water level (physical amount in the system)?
I mean that the ppm seems to stay about the same, while a i loose small amounts of water. also my plants are growing well and are noticeably bigger every day.
Well, if everything seems to be otherwise dialed in, you might actually be onto a good thing. Plants uptake nutrients differently at different pH levels. So, a 'controlled' drift in pH can be a good thing - providing that it's staying within proper range...
well like i mentioned before I have to correct my ph twice everyday. in the morning its at 5.3 i bring it up to 6 and then at night its at 5.3ish again. when i left it for a whole day it wen to 4.9-5.0 so i am not sure if its really staying in range and am assuming if i dont correct it, it would keep dropping. but just got my gallon of aquashield so gonna throw that in just in case i have root issues. other than that i am clueless. But i have to mention that have about 15 gallons of water, in 6, 5gallon buckets, with 5 plants , 1 control/rez bucket. so it maybe the amount of water thats is not enough and causing this instability. idk!