Best PH meter.
- Thread starter Jeffro420
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Honey Oil Riot Squad
Well-Known Member
I have managed to keep the cheapest pH meter out there (etekcity, bout 15 bucks on amazon) working perfectly for over a year now.
Glass electrode pH meters work by sensing the charge created by ions (for pH purposes, H+ ions) along the glass of the ball that you immerse in solution. It gets a lot more complicated than that as the glass electrode is also filled with solution, but basically that's the gist of it.
Now, if you take those ions away from the outside of the glass electrode and store it like that, number 1 your meter is going to become way uncalibrated, and number 2 after a long while of this your meter will just stop working on you. Glass electrode pH meters will continue to work great just so long as you keep them immersed in a solution that allows positively charged ions to completely surround the glass electrode at all times possible. There's even a certain concentration of these ions that allows the best longevity for your meter.
What you need to do to keep your pH meters working for long periods of time is get some pH glass electrode storage solution. I doubt you can find it in any stores but I know it's like under 10 bucks on amazon. If you can't get this, at the very least you should be storing it in like a pH 4 calibration solution or something with a lower pH like that.
What the glass electrode storage solution does is actually use Na+ ions (sodium ions), rather than the H+ ions that it reads your pH by, to surround your glass electorDE with positively charged ions while it is being stored.
If you don't store your pH meter like this, it doesnt matter how good it is, it will NOT last very long. Get some storage solution and your meter will last for years. A cheap one at that. This is what is done for pH meters in chemistry labs.
Glass electrode pH meters work by sensing the charge created by ions (for pH purposes, H+ ions) along the glass of the ball that you immerse in solution. It gets a lot more complicated than that as the glass electrode is also filled with solution, but basically that's the gist of it.
Now, if you take those ions away from the outside of the glass electrode and store it like that, number 1 your meter is going to become way uncalibrated, and number 2 after a long while of this your meter will just stop working on you. Glass electrode pH meters will continue to work great just so long as you keep them immersed in a solution that allows positively charged ions to completely surround the glass electrode at all times possible. There's even a certain concentration of these ions that allows the best longevity for your meter.
What you need to do to keep your pH meters working for long periods of time is get some pH glass electrode storage solution. I doubt you can find it in any stores but I know it's like under 10 bucks on amazon. If you can't get this, at the very least you should be storing it in like a pH 4 calibration solution or something with a lower pH like that.
What the glass electrode storage solution does is actually use Na+ ions (sodium ions), rather than the H+ ions that it reads your pH by, to surround your glass electorDE with positively charged ions while it is being stored.
If you don't store your pH meter like this, it doesnt matter how good it is, it will NOT last very long. Get some storage solution and your meter will last for years. A cheap one at that. This is what is done for pH meters in chemistry labs.
Honey Oil Riot Squad
Well-Known Member
Water is better than nothing but assuming it is at a perfect pH 7 this is fairly useless. Get some pH electrode storage solution and your meters will last 10x longer.
Honey Oil Riot Squad
Well-Known Member
And good luck getting within 0.5 pH units of where you're trying to get with this. In my experience with this stuff the color change of the indicator is so minimal in the 5.5-6.2 range for hydroponic growing that it's practically impossible to assess where the pH is with any reasonable amount of accuracy. Though I think it is designed to have a more significant color change in the soil growing pH range, so maybe it is better there. But if you are hydro don't get this!!
How do you know it is working correctly? I guess with tester solutions?
I feel like I just wasted $200 on the BL. I would have rather gotten a $15 meter.
I assume I better get the cleaning kit or storage solution as you said.
Honey Oil Riot Squad
Well-Known Member
I know it's working bc
1. It calibrates perfectly to a pH 4 and 7 solution.
2. My plants like the 5.8 pH I always go to.
3. For the same nutrient concentrations I always seem to need roughly the same amount of pH down to get to pH 5.8.
Another note: pH calibration solutions can go bad, especially pH 4 solutions. If your meter won't calibrate exactly to pH 4 and 7, don't scrap your meter quite yet, try new calibration solution. After some months of opening and closing calibration solutions I notice my meter doesn't calibrate exactly so for a while I end up calibrating to 4.05 and 6.95 instead, for example. But once it gets really off I simply remake or buy new calibration solutions and it calibrates perfectly to 4 and 7 again with the new solutions.
Honey Oil Riot Squad
Well-Known Member
BTW the storage solution I use is from atlas scientific and is pretty cheap:
Rammstein
Active Member
my ph meter cost me 10$. have been using it for the last 4 years. no problem at all! 
as for ppm meter, bluelab ppm stick, rock the world. never had any problem with those. used 2 in the last 10 years. lost the first one during moving, otherwise it was working perfectly fine. totally recommend it!
as for ppm meter, bluelab ppm stick, rock the world. never had any problem with those. used 2 in the last 10 years. lost the first one during moving, otherwise it was working perfectly fine. totally recommend it!
MickFoster
Well-Known Member
I guess if a person is color blind it would be difficult to determine. I have been using drops for 10 years, never had a problem, and never felt that getting within 0.5 accuracy was that important. In fact I feel that varying the pH a bit allows for better nutrient uptake, considering different elements are more available at different pH levels. I do find the colors on the bottle to be off, so I use this and have no problem determining a color between 5.5 and 6.0.
Honey Oil Riot Squad
Well-Known Member
Well shit! That's a HELL of a lot better than the bottle. I remember trying to do something like that when I initially started and tried to use drops, but obviously I had a hell of a time trying to get a photo of the actual liquid at exact pH values when I don't have a meter to measure said pH values in the first place... I wish you'd have shared long ago! Lol.
Varying pH levels can be good for nutrient uptake of course I agree with that and I think that may not be a bad method. I personally prefer accuracy. Some plants are more sensitive to different pH levels and that accuracy can be important. It seems easy enough looking at the photo but then you also throw in variables such as light levels and color in the room you are looking at the vial in and it gets even more difficult to tell the difference between how orange that orange is compared to this orange lol. It just gets very frustrating in my own opinion and I prefer the easy accuracy. I had a plant stunted in growth for a month when I first started and was using drops until I finally got a meter. Of course, that's when I first started, so who knows what other problems I could have had. I'm not saying you can't do it (especially with this photo), I'm just throwing in my opinion against it. That's what the forum is good for, getting multiple views and solutions to problems.
And even so, my pH setup is 25$... not sure how much drops are, probably a bit cheaper but that is still not a bad price at all for that extra added accuracy.
MickFoster
Well-Known Member
I don't understand the question.