General hydroponics (3-part) and ph issues

SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
I just wanted to share my experience and see if anyone else has had any ph issues when using GH.

I track my ph and ppm daily. And damn near every day my ph would drop, even tho my ppm was almost always dropping or steady. And it dropped A LOT sometimes. Like almost to ph 4.0.

And my plants looked healthy and the roots were white. I even switched to RO water just so I know everything that was going into my water, and that didn't work.

So I said screw it, and switched to megacrop nutrients. I don't wanna speak prematurely but it has been a couple days now and my ph is staying in an acceptable range and slowly rising back up again like it should. I will report back... please share if you have experienced anything like this.
 
SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
Streetpro09 said:
Only time I've had problems like that is when I don't add any cal mag to my top off water. What kinda ppm are you running?
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I didn't think about that. I typically don't add calmag. I started to tho when I switched to ro water. I will have to look at my notes when I get home because some days the ph did rise, so I wonder how that relates to when I had calmag in my top off water
Im running about 700 ppm right now
 
Streetpro09

Streetpro09

Tester
SoLowDoughLow said:
I didn't think about that. I typically don't add calmag. I started to tho when I switched to ro water. I will have to look at my notes when I get home because some days the ph did rise, so I wonder how that relates to when I had calmag in my top off water
Im running about 700 ppm right now
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That ppm might be a little high. I have run 400-600 just depends on where the plants are in the cycle. Once I get closer to 700 I notice problems popping up.

SoLowDoughLow said:
Hmm, maybe I haven't been letting it rise enough either. I never let it go past 6.2 or 6.3
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Thats the highest I usually let mine get to then ph down to about 5.3. I'm thinking that I may try 5.5 to 6.2 and see how that goes. @Heisenbeans said on his YouTube he runs 500 ppm and 6.1 ph for veg. I think as ph is rising and ppm is dropping you're doing it write.
 
SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
Streetpro09 said:
That ppm might be a little high. I have run 400-600 just depends on where the plants are in the cycle. Once I get closer to 700 I notice problems popping up.



Thats the highest I usually let mine get to then ph down to about 5.3. I'm thinking that I may try 5.5 to 6.2 and see how that goes. @Heisenbeans said on his YouTube he runs 500 ppm and 6.1 ph for veg. I think as ph is rising and ppm is dropping you're doing it write.
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That's what's weird. My ppm dropped 100 just last night and the ph still went down
 
Hydro

Hydro

PICK YOUR OWN
There are buffers in pretty much every nutrient now. They all work differently from one nute to another & will buffer at different rates with the different waters (tap/RO/etc). I've never had an issue with pH dropping on me when using GH products, but I use tap water and relied on the up swing of the pH over a period of time to hit all the target zones. I know you said you are now using MC, but was the water level dropping as fast as the PPM and the pH were when using GH products?
 
SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
HydroRed said:
There are buffers in pretty much every nutrient now. They all work differently from one nute to another & will buffer at different rates with the different waters (tap/RO/etc). I've never had an issue with pH dropping on me when using GH products, but I use tap water and relied on the up swing of the pH over a period of time to hit all the target zones. I know you said you are now using MC, but was the water level dropping as fast as the PPM and the pH were when using GH products?
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Water level was dropping about the same. I will have to double check the numbers when I get home tho to be sure on the ph and ppm. I believe the ppm dropped more when I switched to mc tho. And thank you guys for the help. I'll update when I get home.
 
Streetpro09

Streetpro09

Tester
Sry to hear about your car. Hopefully it'll be something simple or cheep. Also didn't mean to be pushy was just truly curious. Life can definitely get in the way of the things we wanna do sometimes. Mind if I ask what ratio you're mixing at?
 
Greenthumbskunk

Greenthumbskunk

PICK YOUR OWN
SoLowDoughLow said:
I just wanted to share my experience and see if anyone else has had any ph issues when using GH.

I track my ph and ppm daily. And damn near every day my ph would drop, even tho my ppm was almost always dropping or steady. And it dropped A LOT sometimes. Like almost to ph 4.0.

And my plants looked healthy and the roots were white. I even switched to RO water just so I know everything that was going into my water, and that didn't work.

So I said screw it, and switched to megacrop nutrients. I don't wanna speak prematurely but it has been a couple days now and my ph is staying in an acceptable range and slowly rising back up again like it should. I will report back... please share if you have experienced anything like this.
Click to expand...

When I used it it would always rise on me. I mean every day it would rise to around 7.2 or so. My well water is around 5.8 to start out with.

I ended up dropping that overpriced water (albiet much cheaper than the others water) and going to Jack's (worked great) been using masterblend for a year (works great) and that 25 lb bag is almost gone. I have some Ultrasol as well (works great) and it works well. I have no pH drift whatsoever with those 3 products.

All those are bulk 25lb bags. When I mix into the 5 gal storage container I also mix in the Epsom salt. I also mix my own Cal mag with calcium nitrate and Epsom salt.

Since my well water is around 28 ppm I always gotta add the Cal mag to any batch.
 
SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
Streetpro09 said:
Sry to hear about your car. Hopefully it'll be something simple or cheep. Also didn't mean to be pushy was just truly curious. Life can definitely get in the way of the things we wanna do sometimes. Mind if I ask what ratio you're mixing at?
Click to expand...
I always follow the same ratios on the bottle, right around half strength I think
 
SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
Ok, I just made this little chart. This was a typical week using gh 3 part. The first 2 rows are #5 uzi cookies, and the bottom 2 rows are sour larry lime pebbles. The arrows are me making adjustments myself. You can see it did rise a time or two but was so inconsistent and mostly dropping even when the ppm dropped. I will make a chart showing megacrop next.
 
SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
Here is megacrop. I know it might not look a whole lot different, but on the occasion that the pH did drop with megacrop, it was because the ppm went up. With GH the ph would drop even when the ppm would drop drastically. Also, it oftentimes went into the 4.0 range with GH. Never happened with megacrop, it seems more stable.

However, I am new to hydro, and this could all just be a coincidence, and I may have another issue. But my drastic ph swings seemed to have stopped for now since switching to megacrop.
15569708979338299315182013619151.jpg
 
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