New Grower My pH conundrum

[stumpy]

Hi guys, just wondering if i can pick your brains for a minute about pHing water when using organic nutes.

I'm currently growing easy ryder in biobizz light mix (pH 6.2 from what I've read online) and everything has been going pretty well up to this point, however now she is getting bigger and im using a higher concentration of nutrients per litre I have noticed a worrying change in the pH of the water im using.

I'm using tap water which comes out of the tap at around 6.8-7.2, if left standing for 24 hours it drops to around 6.6-6.8.

This seemed amazing at first, but I've noticed that the nutrients I'm using are making the pH drop:

2.5ml BB fish mix/ 1L water gives me a pH of around 6.1
2ml Plant Magic Oldtimer Bloom/ 1L of water gives me a pH of 5.8

Now I know that the optimum soil pH should be around 6.5 and soil often buffers the pH of solutions. My concern is that using these nutrients the soil may not be able to buffer itself back to the ideal pH range and my plants will suffer. I've read alot of information where people say you dont need to worry about pH when using organics and good quality water but would i be in thinking that this depends on what is used as a buffer in the soil and isnt correct as a blanket statement?

Thanks for the help guys, it's only because of the wealth of information on this forum that I've made it this far and any advice that can help is welcome.

Apologies if this isnt completely clear, I should really wait till ive written a thread before i build:smokebuds:

 

[TaNg]

Hay dude,if I was in your situation I would flush with tap water to get the PH of the soil up,just keep running water through until ur run off is where u want it (I like 6.6). I don't even sit the water out to remove the chlorine.

 

[stumpy]

Yeah I get what you mean mate and thanks for the lightening fast response :drool:

the values i gave though were after nutes have been added, not of the runoff. This is where i get confused, every bottle of nutes i have make the pH of my water quite low, i can flush but the problem comes back whenever i want to add nutes, so it seems im between a rock and a hardplace... :smokebuds:

 

[TaNg]

Can u use some lemon juice to raise the ph of the feed? Or try leaving the food you have just mixed to desolve into the water,sometimes is takes a while to settle.

 

[stumpy]

Thanks man, I gave her 1.5ml fish mix/1 litre of water with a ph of 6.2 and got a runoff of 6.3 so atleast she has something to eat while i sort this out.

It's interesting what you say about adding lemon juice to up the pH. Initially i thought it would lower it further but after abit of searching i found alot of articles about it raising the pH in the body. Will this still occur in water? and if so on a reasonable timescale?

Thanks for the help so far mate, sorry for all the questions :smokebuds:

 

[TaNg]

Thanks man, I gave her 1.5ml fish mix/1 litre of water with a ph of 6.2 and got a runoff of 6.3 so atleast she has something to eat while i sort this out.

It's interesting what you say about adding lemon juice to up the pH. Initially i thought it would lower it further but after abit of searching i found alot of articles about it raising the pH in the body. Will this still occur in water? and if so on a reasonable timescale?

Thanks for the help so far mate, sorry for all the questions :smokebuds:

Haha your right dude it's dolomite lime or some thing alkaline u need,I'm stoned and I'm not organic lol. Just to put this out there but I tried airiating my water with a aquarium pump but it was raising the PH so I stopped,might be worth a try if u have one handy.

 

[stumpy]

lol no worries man, im abit too blazed to compare the alkalising effects of water to that of the human body so i thought id ask

i think saturdays gonna be spent finding a solution to this in a faraway garden centre.... ill probs go with the dolomite lime

:smokebuds:

 

[stumpy]

also i reckon ill pick up a bottle of mineral water where the pH is listed on the side just to make sure this cheap pen is in the right ballpark :smokebuds:

 

[stumpy]

Just thought I'd update this with what Ive done incase anyone with the same problem reads this thread, hopefully it might be of assistance.
Ive used mineral water to check my pH pen- label on the bottle said 7.2, my pen fluctuates between 7.1 and 7.2, so im happy that its reading true.

After abit of reading last night i found alot of growers who use a silcone based additive report an increase in water pH, so i took a trip to the shops and bought a small bottle of Plant Magic Bio-silicate.

Just got 1 litre of water from the tap (measured pH 6.6) and added 1ml of Bio-silicate. This raised the pH to 10.2 !:dance:

so from now on i think i will mix my grow/bloom nutes at the level i want, check the pH and then adjust it using small amounts of Bio-silicate until i get the pH i want.

J Tang, thanks for all the help man, im gonna try dolomite at some point in the future but my ER is 6 weeks old so i was looking for something to take effect quickly, so hopefully this will do the job