Learned the hard way about taking care of your meters

Basic Growing Info
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I just wanted to show a picture of my gunked up ph/ppm meter. Definitely learned my lesson about not cleaning your meter after each use. I have been using this meter for about 8 months or so. Now I know this going to have to be cleaned off and I plan on getting around to it but I find it strange that even with all of this Gunk build up on there that it is still on the money when I put it in the calibration solution. Here is some pics of what happens when you don’t take care of your meter LOL

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I rinse all mine after each use and i always turn them down, THAT took a lot of training on my my part :slight_smile: so any water drains into the cap off the pens and they finally started lasting a long time and dont even need to clean or reset them much makes huge difference and I am lazy but got tired of buying them LOL

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@vinivv I definitely understand that

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Good rules for PH meters:

  1. Wash after every use.
  2. Store upright, sensor down in appropriate cap on.
  3. Scrub lightly 1x a month (i use a toothbrush)
  4. Calibrate 1x a month (I only do 7ph calibrations, I know some that do 4 and 7 ph calibrations)
  5. Clean cap 1x a month and use storage solution.

So far so good and I use mine near daily. It took 3 years to literally burn out my first PH80 and now I’m 1.5 years into my second.

:v:

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The other thing i did was replace all my mixing buckets they got real nasty, I poured Hydrogen peroxide in one that was empty and it bubbled like crazy so that was bacteria :scream_cat:g

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What do y’all think about cleaning the meter with peroxide or alcohol?What do y’all think about cleaning the meter with peroxide or alcohol?

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I think no use the solvents ( water is a solvent also ) they send you have to be very gentle with the sensor its has a bunch of things it does and has to run perfectly I listened to a guy on video explain it last week you really don’t even want to touch it much but with a soft tooth brush

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Don’t use that for a pH probe. Probably ok for an ec meter.
They make pH probe cleaners. You really shouldn’t ever need it if you store them correctly/use often.

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I just saw its not just a PH its a multi meter PH and PPM the newer PPM meters your not supposed to have to clean much thats what mines says on the package so i just brush with water now and then keep it super clean.

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Did some digging b/c I wasn’t sure what was in the probe cleaning solutions.

This is Hannas pH cleaner: “HYDROCHLORIC ACID 0.034%”
Oakton is similar, slightly stronger.

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I use the first and middle packets and that calibrate PH pen perfectly

This guy covers everything