Question, I am by no means a hydro guy I have always done soil. I do want to try soem coco. But if the water rises up and back down could the rocks start hold nute mix as they dry out and cause a salt build up? Like could you take a cup and a small hand full of rocks from the bottom on each basket and soak them in a cup of water and see if they cahange the ph and is so how quick it changes?
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I suppose thats a possibility. I’ve never encountered that as a problem before. At the end of the run, the hydroton will be dusty whitish so you do have to clean them between runs. Maybe I just didn’t clean them well enough between runs. I suppose I could run some plain water with hydrogen peroxide for a few cycles and see how that does.
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Also that’s a kinda of a question type also, like is that a way to check your system since you don’t have a runoff or anything to measure off of besides the res?
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Haha. I usually don’t. Like not in years have I ever had to be over obsessive over my pH. Once it’s set, it’s always been good til the plants drink up all of their food. Then it’s a simple drain the dregs, wash out the res and then fill it with a new batch, pH everything and walk away from it. I bought an EC pen too that I used once or twice. I don’t check that either. I feed heavy and I know that.
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Now I’m curious to roll up in there and check the pH again. It’s been a few hours anyway.
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Cool. She’s holding steady at 5.79… for tonight anyway
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I would be willing to bet that it has something to do with the frequency of the flood and drain schedule.
But, then again…what do I know about this shit?
Seriously. 
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pH is back up to 6.2
I need to get to the bottom of this.
These little plants seemed to perk up a little with the reduced watering. Nice. Hopefully this trend continues forward.
Gonna put on my detective hat and go punch this pH issue in the dick! Wish me luck.
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Ooo are you gonna reset the ph and start checking after each flood and drain?
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I have it flooding and draining every 4 hours. It seems like it’s creeping up by 0.1 every flood cycle. Gonna get my snoop on.
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Surprise Surprise. Some sort of shitty brown organic trash at the bottom of all my buckets.
If this trash isn’t the culprit, I don’t know what is. I’m also not sure where it came from unless it was caked up on the inside of my supply lines cuz all the buckets and the reservoir were thoroughly cleaned. Bout to clean this trash out and reclean everything and see how that does.
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Okay. This is promising. Everything got wetvacd out and wiped out with a little hydrogen peroxide for good measure. All pumps cleaned out. Res refilled and fresh nutes.
I also noticed that my old bottle of pH down was slightly gummy on the sides of the bottle. Luckily I have a new unopened bottle. I used the new bottle and was able to get the fresh 30 gallons down to 5.8 with 10ml. The other bottle took about 45 ml to get the 30 gallons down to 5.8.
I have high hopes I just fixed all of my problems. Next feeding is in about 2 1/2 hours.
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Are we gonna check ph after each cycle?
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Yeah I think that’s a good idea. I’ll at least catch the one at 10 pm. I’ll catch the next one around 6 am maybe lol
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This is super interesting, like it sucks your having the issues but finding out why seems like a neat journey to see what the shit is happening.
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My grow sometimes feels like a choose your own adventure book
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5.79
It took a minute to tick down there but it seems to be holding steady.
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Okay. So she has crept back up to 6.15 pH over almost 24 hours. It is still in range but I don’t like that it’s doing this.
Now I’ve also noticed that there is an inch or so of water left in the bottom of the buckets after they drain due to design. So this inch of water is getting roasted under the lights. Could there be some kind of reaction happening from the water heating up then mixing with the main res water when they flood again?
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What kind of dragons we smoking this read around
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Dude, why don’t you just grow in coco/soil/perlite and call it a day. End the madness I say. 
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