im on my third grow, first was northern lights in soil indoors, the plant grew better than i could have asked for, got 4.4 z's one plant, then i read about ph, ever since reading about ph, its been going down hill, my water ph is about 8.0 so i lowered the ph to 7.0, i recently checked run-off and it was low, about 5.0 maybe even a little lower, adding tiger bloom it goes down even further, second grow was AK, got about half the yield compared to the first, now have White Widow and AK going now, the plants seem to be stunted, im thinking the problem could be low ph, i have not checked soil ph because i dont have a meter, what ph should my run off be. i know ph is important, but i cant help but think the old saying is true, if its not broke dont fix it, and i think thats exactly what i did,(maybe) vegged 4weeks, been flowering 10 days and i would think they would be further along now. 400watt hid if that matters
How often do you calibrate your meter? honestly I never check run off as different ferts cause different build ups and getting a good answer from runoff i find to be difficult I (when using soil) always add some lime at the start and just ph my water to 6..2-6.5. though 7 is still too high. and I water until i get a bit of runoff. ------------------------------------ though what I think was happening for your grow and why you yields went down is... you have high ph water u were using and a soil (assuming the same type still)... that likely has a high amount of peat moss in the mix... that has a tendency to drop low so you high ph water was balancing out the high numbers on either side and they were meeting at a happy medium when you started to ph you were not allowing the high ph water to fix the low ph soil anymore... so in conclusion if you keep the experiment/grow going the way you started it you could be back on top or add a ph balancer to the soil (lime) and continue ph'ing your water my two cents on your conundrum
What you can do if you think the pH is off due to to much nutrients in the soil is flush your soil with neutral pH, when you use nutrients make up a mix and get a pH dip stick test it before you use it to find out whether it's to acidic or alcholine, if your run off pH is below 5 or even 5 it's good to raise it a little naturally lime maybe.