so baking soda was a bad idea....i think it didnt dissolve all the way cus it clogged the pump and tubes of my one setup that had the pump still in it...
that tells me two problems, one, never put any powders in the tank, always dilute and disolve them first. Tons of growers safely use baking soda for pH control.
two, pump is still in?
A water pump can harbor dead debris, dead roots, mushy yukey stuff and crap that really screws up the pH. Give your water the sniff test to determine if the water pump is spoiling the water. It should smell like fresh cut iceberg lettuce or alfalfa sprouts, and not stink bad. Most all water pumps have a filter in them that needs cleaning after two weeks, or get the pump out of there after 3 weeks.
After the first two weeks, and then daily, your pH should and will climb from 6.0 to 7.0 in about 18 to 24 hours because the plants are eating the nutes and the water is going down, and becomes more acidity. If the water jumps from 6.0 to 8.0 in a day, or worst, in 8 hours, you have a serious problem, and 99% of the time it is dead debris, dead roots, dead pieces of roots or leaves in the water. And the water pump can hold and hide that crap. Get the filter in the water pump cleaned after two weeks, or after the roots are int he deep water, or get that water pump out and the pH will be more stable.
but o well changed it out with the other pump and new tubes and jus cleaned out the other pump...not to mention our ph went from 6.6 to 8 in like 5 hours....so we just changed out both res'es again and decided to jus go the route we were going ....correcting the ph as needed this time were gonna keep up with it more than once a day.....do u think correcting ph more than once a day is a bad thing as long as we dont go outside of the .4 in 6 hours and 1.0 in 24 hours?
I do from 7.4 to 6.4 in a day, and wait 4 hours and come back and move it down to 5.9 to 6.0 very often, and it is ok.
and also i think we got some baking soda in our hydroton....next time we do a drain and replenish do yall think it would b a bad idea to spray them off with our sink sprayer...just to get all the nastyness off of them and whatnot or does that sound like a bad idea?