That’s just great. Looks like an RO filter is on my short list of shit to get along with an exhaust fan. In the meantime my man sold me on some shit from the store that I probably don’t need.
Some sort of water conditioner
And he also sold me on a different brand of pH down. He said it’s concentrated so go half as hard with it.
The argued for over 30 years about a new treatment plant to get a local town of around 15,000 off septic and onto sewer. There was no plant or infrastructure. Plants been going maybe 5 years now. Zero problems, except cost. My buddy has lived within .25 mile from the open ponds. No smell. I find that weird. Not sure the process they use. I know the plant is the gold standard as far as technology.
There were some great bumper stickers.
“Los Osos…we can’t agree about shit.”
was the declorinator expensive? In my old town they used chlorine and chloromaine. I used this AquaSafe® Plus | Tetra® for my teas. It’s cheap af and I always thiough that if it’s safe for fish, it’s safe for plants.
True shit the ones they were talking about out here they were talking about treating the water with hydrocloric acid and sulfuric acid. Like what in the actual f&@k.
@TrichomesToStun it was $15 for a 16 oz bottle it feels like all bottles in there were around $15. Lol. Fucking hydro store. Always selling me on some bullshit.
@Hotrods_and_hounds maybe I should call the water treatment company and just straight up be like “what did y’all just do to the water?”
yeah nasty, but, in water towers, they’re like gigantic humidifiers… or an open air radiator. Those acids evaporate extremely fast. I’m not sure how the water processing works for our tap or drinking waters, but I highly doubt it’s the same process.
“We goofed”
-them probably
Yo. Finding the number was incredibly easier than I thought it would be and their webpage says call us when ever and we’ll answer any question you have.
Yeah they’ll answer them, with some BS. Nah hopefully they give you a straight answer.
I waiting to hear back what they say lol, Indy starts with”well this shit isnt working in my hydro setup”
Hahaha.
Hello water treatment how can I help you?
“Yo! Y’all’s water is fuckin up my weed. Whatchyall doing different? And don’t try and bullshit me neither!”
What makes a good RO system?
By how much O it can R 
Two things. Effectiveness and efficiency.
If it gives you zero PPMs, it’s effective. If it does it without putting your water bill through the roof, it’s efficient. 
Jokes aside, that is, more or less, what it comes down to, as I understand it.
Edit: I should add that they don’t need to be expensive. I use a “portable” system I bought from ebay for around $100 that works perfectly.
I think the easiest solution would be to just use more acid. Aeration of a res can also release CO2 and raise the pH of the solution. If it drifts a certain amount overnight or whatever you can just add a bit more until it stabilizes.
Does your city / town have annual water quality tests available online? A lot of places do and they test for tons of stuff.
Really soft water like ro can be a pain in the ass since it has no buffering capacity (resist to pH change) because it has no carbonates or bicarbonates in it (alkalinity) I’m sure it’s useful in situations where the water is extremely hard or has things you don’t want in it but imo in most situations it’s not really needed.
What EC are you feeding at? Does your area have a water quality test available online you can look up? My tap water comes out at like pH 9.5 but when I add the nutes it brings it all the way down to like 5.4 (because the water is very soft ) harder water would not have such a drastic drop because it has a higher buffering capacity compared to my soft tap water. Ro water is even softer than that so it would change even easier.
Edit: for example the uptake of ammonium nitrate can drastically lower the pH of the media / solution especially with no buffer. If you’re gonna use RO water I’d recommend running a higher ec unless it’s already high because that will help resist changes.
That’s a lot of good points. When I first started with this system I was going to the store and buying like 60 single gallons of distilled at a time. I was having crazy pH swings with that cuz like you said there was no buffer. I said fuck it and switched to tap. I filled the bath tub and let the water dechlorinate naturally and bucketed it into the res. From there, my pH locked into place. No problem. From there I even stopped waiting for the water to dechlorinate before going into the res and I didn’t notice any difference. I think the plants actually like the chlorine.
Then just out of the blue everything is going haywire with the pH.
Tonight I’m going to reset the res. Completely drain it and make a new batch of food and use the new pH down and see if that works.
Interesting. Main res is back down to 6.56⬇️ 0.10 from the end of lights on this morning.
Test bucket is at 6.46 
0.20
That is kinda weird. Now is that conditioner a stabilizer? I do know house and garden makes a stabilizer for ro water.
I’m not sure. All I know is I’m gonna do one thing at a time. Even if I have to refill this res 3 times in the next few days.
@Hotrods_and_hounds all it says on here is water conditioner to remove chlorine/chloramines or heavy metals.
Active ingredient is sodium thiosulfate
