I find diluting sulfuric acid is useless in my situation. I add drops of pure sulfuric acid and that drops the ph faster in my situation. Even if I have no nutrients in the Rez my tap water raises the next day about 5 points after using sulfuric to ph. Must be something in my water.
Sounds like your water is worse than mine!
What could be causing it? I’m on city water. Believe it or not my tap water usually registers 0 ppm (700 scale) on my bluelab. In the winter it sometimes bumps up to 40-50. I’m going to try a modified version of jacks 321 soon. I’ll see if jacks is ph stable in my situation. Currently I run megacrop with the same ph drift up. My water alone drifts faster than with Megacrop. If ph drifting up becomes a problem when I run jacks ,I plan to use a Torus Hydro, PH Perfect tube in my Rez to keep things stable.
In the Hoh? I love it out there! The trip from Seattle is a bit much for me, though, since I can’t drive.
I forget the details exactly, and Im still fuzzy headded from anesthesia, and on dope but it has to do with the calcium content of your water and dissolved C02. Maybe @Northern_Loki can chime in. I can find th links after I sober up. If you are feeling very ambitious, you can go through my AAA thread and HPA thread.
Hmmmm. Actually, the info is scattered in several threads - My HPA thread, the Mega Crop PH buffer testing thread, and my AAA thread. Not easy to find and not organized at all really. Those threads are long and rambling and cover a lot of different things at the same time. Might be a good idea to gther all that iup and make a sticky or at least its own thread. I really think more people are effected by this than have no idea its even possible or exists.
Anyway, in some manner, the calcium in the water interacts with the C02 to sort of act like a buffer in the UP direction. When you add PH down, acids form in the water. Carbonic acid forms from the disolved C02. As you aerate the water, the C02 leaves the solution, which means less carbonic acid, which means higher PH. You add more PH down, the cycle just repeats. You can keep adding PH down as long as you want, and gthe PH will just climb back up every time you aerate the water = or even just let it sit. I forget how the calcium fits exactly, but its a key factor. Different water with different calcium content will react differently.
For me, doing RO made no difference.
Not the Hoh, but not far as the mold flys Im across the narrows bridge out in the boonies. Not as “rain forest” as the Hoh area, but close enough. The soil in my area is nothing but pine cones and pine needles going down down down. Until they did some logging around our community, it was hard to tell if the sun was out for all the trees!
I love it though. Green does things for your soul. I could use less rain though
I bet.
Outdoor must be a pain in the ass with the rain.
Still, not many folks clamoring to move to anywhere on the dry side of the state.
Well I mixed jacks 321 for the first time yesterday and ph was 6.3 without adding ph down. I added quite a bit of ph down (sulfuric acid)to jacks to bring it down to 5.8. Today I checked ph and it was 6.3. Sucks.
You expected it to stay 5.8?
Maybe related to your water?
If so, you should be growing in soil and you’re all set…
Yeah. I’ve heard that jacks 321 was pretty ph stable. I haven’t sent in a water test yet. It’s probably my water.
@MichiGreen I want to try buildasoil sips but I want to mess around with a few more things before I go organic.
I have heard the same thing, I am about to start using it myself, but not the 321 formula.
It’s not necessary to “go organic” to grow in soil…
It’s just another medium with built-in nutes.
They will need to be supplemented with your choice of nutes after a few weeks of veg growth.
What will you be using? If you don’t mind me asking
Go to last few post, I spelled it all out there…ratio’s, PPM, and which nutes I will use.
What media do you grow in?
I grow in pure coco and I used to use megacrop but the N content was too high for me.
1 teaspoon is roughly* 4 grams. I did the math and one teaspoon for that jacks blossom booster is 211 ppms of N per gallon compared to megacrops 98 ppms of N per gallon (4.5 grams per gallon). I chose jacks 321 because I could modify the N content below 78 if I choose too. Coco is basically Hydro and another grower told me to go lower than 80 ppms per gallon of N in coco in flower.
The highest I would go in veg is 150 ppms of N per gallon. Jacks 321 is about 119 ppms of N per gallon. Still too much in flower so I already made a custom feed of jacks.
I’m interested to see how your grow turns out with those numbers.
You and I have different numbers. I get 130 for N @ 1 tea / gallon, not 211! With my 50/50 mix, N is under 100.
I have done the work, what matters to the plant is NOT the total of N P or K but the ratio’s at which they take them up.
From my own eyes, i have seen that ratios drive the plant not total volume #'s.
My last run, which you can see, produced super dense, heavy , leaf sparse Bud. Ratios were 2/1/1 veg, 1/2/2 early flower, 1/3/3 mid flower, a week blast @ 1/6/6.
My posted feed schedule is very close to that run, expect results will be also.
I grow in a bottom wicking 6 gallon system, feed every fill up. My soil is pretty much inert, just there to hold roots, wick water from the res, and provide a buffer zone.
Been closing in on these ratios for 2 years now. I KNOW what accepted standards are, they are incorrect IMHO. I have seen with my own eyes, N is a killer in flower, just is. We need some yes, but very little. We can tolerate higher amounts of N, AS LONG AS the ratios of NPK are correct, and we adjust PPM for such. Long as my P and K are 2 -4 times my N level, I am good.
By my numbers:
Megacrap has horrible ratio’s, I would never touch it. See all the LARFY Bud produced by it here.
My mid ratio of 1/3/3
My late flower blast:
Why is this so, dont care, just know it is. Ratios drive the plant, and I use that to my advantage.
There’s two different bags
This is where I got the 211 lol
This is from the jacks website
Going by the numbers of the jacks website I get closer to your number of 130
Yes I’ve heard that plants take what they need but those numbers I use for veg are based on reading the plants leaves.
Edit: what does your inert soil consist of?
As long as the ratios are correct, plant takes what it needs. If N is out of whack in flower, it confuses the plant, she wants to grow bud, but high RATIO of N to P n K tell her NO!!! She makes skinny leaf filled buds.
lets just say plant WANTS X of P and K. That is just fine, long as ratios are right. IF your food has 3X of N than it does P or K, NO MATTER HOW MUCH you give her…nope, notta gonna happen…she will not take up enough to satisfy her needs. Hard to 'splain to someone, so I generally do not. I say instead, watch my grow, you like what happens , use my #'s, you do not like what happens, do your own…IM EASY…LMAO!!!
4 part equal mix:
Sunshine # 4
Root Organic Original
Worm castings
perlite
mixed well, then 15 -20 % more perlite added to “WICK” and be “loose”