10 gal res.. Ph always high.. ugh.

Hi folks,

First try at some bubbling. I have 9 clones in an igloo cube cooler 10 gal res. They are growin some roots.. but I filled two days ago with 1/2 tap water, sediment filtered, then charcol filtered upon entry to my home. 120ppm, and 1/2 water that I let sit out for a day. Running a 10 inch airstone. My ph is up in the high 6s every morning. I add gen hydro ph down a little at a time over the day so as not to shock the plants.. I get it down to 5.8 and by morning its high 6s again heh I suk. Two days after filling , my waters lookin brownish today and smells funky.. what is the trick here.. my water suk? I suk? lol Some tips would be helpful and I thank you for the time to check this out.

Whats up Waggs i have a similar setup but i am using a 10 Gal Rubber maid. My PH seems to be in mid 6's everytime i check it. What i have heard is dont worry about the PH so much its supposed to go up and down. I adjust it once a day and let it be.

buy a barreta filter jug about 20 dollars and gets rid of all ph sheilds to protect tap water ph from dropping or highering and from their if you use barreta filter it should work nice and mabey and a couple airstones i have 6 on a bubble just started them and they have 1 14" amitter but if i had more money i would recomend a bunch of mini ones about 4 to 5 inch ones 2 per plant with T connectors with a kinda large pump hope it helps it help a couple ppl

Thanks, I appreciate the info. I have a sediment and a charcol filter, you think I need more filtration?

Hotsause said:

Whats up Waggs i have a similar setup but i am using a 10 Gal Rubber maid. My PH seems to be in mid 6's everytime i check it. What i have heard is dont worry about the PH so much its supposed to go up and down. I adjust it once a day and let it be.

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Thanks. I'll just keep that up and see how it goes. I did change the res today that water was smelling and lookin horrid lol. This time I didnt use aged water, I just used the tap water. maybe some chlorine will help the water stay clean longer.. didnt add any.. just didnt give it time to sit out and evap.

whats up man i would advise getting some hygrozyme it definitely helped my water out. every five days i would have to change my water cause white fuzzy shit was growing in it. if you cant afford the hygrozyme just add 3ml per gal. hydrogen peroxide (h2o2) and it will definitely help your water stay clean longer and helps oxygenate your root system for the first few hours its in

Thanks Rob. I'll order some of that Hygrozyme tommorrow. In the meantime I'll put in some of the peroxide. Preciate it!

Hotsause said:

Whats up Waggs i have a similar setup but i am using a 10 Gal Rubber maid. My PH seems to be in mid 6's everytime i check it. What i have heard is dont worry about the PH so much its supposed to go up and down. I adjust it once a day and let it be.

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The pH shouldn't go up and down too much.. it'll affect nutrient uptake and overall growth and harvest.

What may be going on is this:
If your ppms are right on the money at, let's say 800ppm, then your plants will use the nutrient rich water taking in just the right amount of nutes and pH doesn't fluctuate regardless of water depth. In a perfect world, right?

If your ppms are too low, then the plant is using as much of the nutes as it can, the ppms drop drastically as the water drops, and the pH goes up because of the lack of salts, etc.

If your ppms are too high, then the plant will draw more water and less nutrients (proportionately), and the ppms will skyrocket as the water drops, and the pH gets much more acidic and goes down.

Just something an old school DWC grower taught me. Every strain is different, so don't expect to find the golden ppm # for every plant in every stage of growth.

Any reason why you are using such a huge res for cloning? Once you start adding nutes seems like res changes would be expensive, as I normally do many more changes with younger plants than older ones.

You don't have to be so nervous about bringing the PH down all at once. It is a good idea to do it slowly, im just saying you can bring it down a bit more than you are. I also find that my tap water will resist ph changes the first few days. It's as if the crud in the water acts as a buffer, and you have to saturate that buffer with enough Ph down to over come it, and then you don't get as much drift...Until the plants get older and cause the normal drift through feeding. Since you are having to change the water so often, perhaps you are constantly fighting the buffer. My advice would be, continue to pay close attention to the PH, but at the same time don't sweat it so much. Check it every 12 hours and if it needs brought down, do so and move on. The general idea with DWC is to set the ph at something around 5.5 and let it drift upwards to 6.3ish before lowering it again because different elements of the solution are available at different PH levels. You don't want to try to maintain a constant PH level, you want to maintain a PH range.

Enzyme products like hygrozyme are not meant to clean the water exactly. They help break down organic material and turn it into food, so if you have an older DWC tub with a big root base, chances are you have some dead stuff in there. Adding an enzyme can help clean it out and keep things tidy. It is also useful when cleaning up used grow medium like coco, eats all the dead stuff away. I am not sure how useful it would be in a cloner. H202 will definitely help keep you res cleaner and smelling better, but changing the water daily isn't a bad idea anyway until you start with nutes. good luck!

Waggs said:

Thanks, I appreciate the info. I have a sediment and a charcol filter, you think I need more filtration?

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I had a similar problem with a very small res. My ph would jump from 5.6-5.8ish up into the low 7's in like 10 hours. I was using tap water around 180ppm (which ended up causing mg/cal problems anyways which is why I went to RO). After switching to RO I could go 2-3 days without having to adjust and in that time I would have to add more water anyways. I think purewaterclub has some starting @ about $60 (the 30gpd one). They are super slow though. Good luck!

Heisenberg said:

Any reason why you are using such a huge res for cloning? Once you start adding nutes seems like res changes would be expensive, as I normally do many more changes with younger plants than older ones.

You don't have to be so nervous about bringing the PH down all at once. It is a good idea to do it slowly, im just saying you can bring it down a bit more than you are. I also find that my tap water will resist ph changes the first few days. It's as if the crud in the water acts as a buffer, and you have to saturate that buffer with enough Ph down to over come it, and then you don't get as much drift...Until the plants get older and cause the normal drift through feeding. Since you are having to change the water so often, perhaps you are constantly fighting the buffer. My advice would be, continue to pay close attention to the PH, but at the same time don't sweat it so much. Check it every 12 hours and if it needs brought down, do so and move on. The general idea with DWC is to set the ph at something around 5.5 and let it drift upwards to 6.3ish before lowering it again because different elements of the solution are available at different PH levels. You don't want to try to maintain a constant PH level, you want to maintain a PH range.

Enzyme products like hygrozyme are not meant to clean the water exactly. They help break down organic material and turn it into food, so if you have an older DWC tub with a big root base, chances are you have some dead stuff in there. Adding an enzyme can help clean it out and keep things tidy. It is also useful when cleaning up used grow medium like coco, eats all the dead stuff away. I am not sure how useful it would be in a cloner. H202 will definitely help keep you res cleaner and smelling better, but changing the water daily isn't a bad idea anyway until you start with nutes. good luck!

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I don't think this is a cloner. The clones have roots, and now there is just a pH problem. These are growing plants, not cuttings from what I gather in the post.

i have a feeling its your water try gettin a RO filter well worth the investment : )

And if you don't want to invest the $$$ in an RO filter, try googling "pure water" on google maps near your location. This seems to be the term all the local RO water sellers use - YMMV. You'll spend between $0.14 and $0.25 per gallon. Using RO, if you keep your reservoir clean with peroxide, your pH fluctuations should become more manageable. Now that I have about 15-20 gallons of RO laying around in 3 big jugs in my garage, I find I use it for refilling car washer fluid reservoirs, radiators, batteries, etc. Anything that uses water and you don't want that scale buildup to happen - like your handy-dandy steam iron. Also is a great part of any emergency kit - like earthquake or anything else that could potentially knock out or contaminate your tap water system.

I think I will eventually invest in a system but at these prices, it's hard to not just fill up the jugs at the store on your way to get groceries or whatever. Unless you are very remotely located.

I had a HELL of a time keeping my tap water pH down before I switched to RO. My tap water is around 250ppm or so.