Yes thats what that means.. I use RO water and that has a PH of about 4.9. RO water does not have buffers in it so any PH adjuster will do alot. I usually add just a couple ml of PH up and down to stableize it. I let it drift upwards as they drink and eat the nutes. Then I adjust it back down as I add water.. Little is more so dont chase it let it fluctuate... 5.5-6.5 is the rule; like I said I go 5.3-6.3 ish. I am new but I am having great results.
that happend to 2 of my plants this past week due to the fan. both plants survived. stick a stick that is strong enouph in the soil up against the stem and tie a string around it to hold it up and cross your fingers. but if the stem did not seperate and just fell over you will be fine.
I know what you are going through. My tap is 7.9 and I don't use r/o. I was using the nutes that came with the ebb/gro system and had the same problems as you..but switched nutes. I now use the 3 part General Hydroponics nutes and I rarely have to ph down anymore. They really keep the ph stabilized. I'm sold on GH products.
. I just mention it because it sounds like what you are experiencing.
yes indeed, the reason why i say 2 days is if your in flower and you feed once every 3-4 hours that only gives you 3-4 floods during lights on, thats not enough rince to wash off nutrient residue, during veging i flush the day before flipping the lights, since i run 24 hours and flood every 3 hours i get 8 floods in one day. the best way to know if you flushed good is when your ppm readings stop climbing, for example you add plain fresh 0ppm water, after first flood that number will climb, next thing you know that once 0ppm res water is now 600ppm. i go the extra mile and flush with plain water, 24 hours later dump res and add plain water again for another 24hours, but you can get away with doing it just once since i know its a pain to keep filling and dumping. going the extra mile like i do makes for stable PH and i never get nutrient lockout, even if you change your nutrient mix religiously weekly you will have salt build up and this can cause a nutrient solution to climb when the sweet spot for feeding should go down or stay close to the same starting point. now it is totally natural for PH to rise on a daily basis, but nutrient strength that rises very fast means one of 2 things, you have too much salt biuld up, or you are over feeding, now the basic way to tell if a plant is over fed is by seeing nutrient burn, this is the extreme case, too much nitrogen will turn plants dark green almost blue before you burn the tips, also give a cupping effect, the serrated edges of fan leaves point down, this is all tell tale signs of over fert. as for stablilty with your PH, you will see 2 different types of movemtn on PH, during Veg when a plant takes up most of the nitrogen, this nitrogen uptake will cause your PH to swing up to one whole point, from 5.5 to 6.5 in one day, to most who dont know better they think this is bad and it is a hard spke, this will usually occur when the plant is in veg and is pretty large, larger plants take up more water and nutrients therefore the swings in PH and PPMs are harder. in flower when we artificially deny the plant of nitrogen you will notice the PH stay for the most part the same or even go lower, there is a gentleman on this forum his name is FATMAN, he can elaborate more on this because he is good with the moleculare composition of water chemistry, in veg when nitrogen gets taken up it changes the chemistry of the solution naturally this is the main culprit. take into consideration of what i just said and add the fact that you may have tons of salt biuld up in your tank, in our case as CAP users where there are tons of surface area for salts to biuld up on and you may be using bottles of PH down too often. for those of you who do not veg long his should be mush of an issue, i veg anywhere from 4-6 weeks and i personally dont start to see hard PH spikes daily until 3-4 weeks in. i apply the monthly flush with hydro since when i used to run soil i had a new lockout or deficiencie every week, so i was always flushing and the more i flush the less problems i had, it give your root zone a clean slate. i also have intimate knowledges of the nutrients i use (botanicare PBP) and love it since it is not salty at all, unlike Technaflora and GH flora
