Ok, so I'm growing for my third time, did everything right in my opinion. germed 5 seeds, all sprouted, put them in hempy buckets, all came up. I'm using 600w MH , and RH is a bit low @ 40-55%, mostly in the 45-50% range. i dont got any freakin clue on what else could be going wrong. ph's are also good @ 5.8 (remember this is not soil, its perlite/vermiculite mix). But the ph does keep changing.. I'll do my best to keep it @ 5.8. temperature levels are also ok. any clues? I'm now at the start of week 3 in veg and none of the plants have grown in atleast a week. watering every third day with 1/3 rd strength nutes Nr.1 and 4 "look" alright, but they havent grown in atleast a week, the two others have also not grown in 7-10 days at all. the plants are very tiny eventho they might seem "big" in the picture.
for week 3 they are highly under developed. I had a similar issue my first grow. is your meter calibrated? what's the run off pH? temperatures? how is the air flow?
the ph meter is calibrated, runoff ph is always too high, around 6.5. Eventho when i water i calibrate the runoff to be 5.8. but after two days, always above 6.3, then i water again.. but my real question is do these seedlings look dead or are they probably still alive, time is not a question so i can keep on vegging, but i have to start to think about new sprouting new seeds quickly if they are dead..
They're definitely not dead. Since you're having this problem with all of them you'll probably have it again if you germ new seeds. I don't know hydro, but could they be hungry? It seems odd that your pH is jumping around. Again I don't know hydro but I thought it was easy to get pH under control with hydro. do you have a pic of the whole container? what's the temperature? what nutes are you using? I don't think I'll be able to help, but others will probably want to know more details. good luck.
ok cheers for your replies guys! i started taking a closer look at my shitti china ph tester, it appears to be broken, I cannot come up with any other solution. the ph tester shows ph's from 0 to 5.4 but after 5.4 it jumps to 5.9 instead of 5.5. so im guessing it doesnt show anything correctly. I can only assume what ph the water in the tanks is, and i assume its totally f'd up. shiiieeet.
test your meter in a soft drink or orange juice, which should be very acidic. then put it in windex or some other ammoniated solution, or mix some bicarbonate of soda. that reading should be basic. the ph should rise rapidly when it goes from the acid to the base. if it rises slowly you need a new electrode. your electrode probably isn't replacable though, if it's a cheap meter. i don't have a meter and i don't know hydro, but i read that information on Milwaukee's website.
got a new ph meter yesterday and watered, its now been 20 hours since i watered and the plants are looking so much better, everything is going great again. Should have guessed, its almost always a problem with the ph! thanks guys!