Potassium Hydroxide or Potassium Silicate?

Indoor Growing Hydroponics
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I’m wanting to make my own PH up to bring up my acidic well water which comes out at 50ppm @ 4.8 ph.

I’m running hempy buckets with coco. I haven’t grown in a long time but remember using dyna gro pro tekt for it’s silica which made for very healthy plants…that it always raised the ph up which worked. I figure I get not only a ph up but the benefits of Silica. Any others of you use this approach or do you use hydroxide?

I’m currently looking at the below products. I’ll be running Jacks and or maxibloom.

PH: Potassium Hydroxide

PS: Potassium Silicate fertilizer 4 lb.

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Save yourself some money and use baking soda.

Edit: misread OP’s original post about hemp buckets. I use baking soda, when needed, for soil application.

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Baking soda PH up. Lemon juice PH down.

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U could also use Dlime for ph up, would add calcium an magnesium too.

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Potassium hydroxide would be the way to go. Don’t really wanna be adding sodium to the res. Potassium bicarbonate is a good one but is not as cheap as the hydroxide.

Potassium silicate is a good product to use for si and it does raise the pH a bit but can’t be sure if it will raise the pH of your water enough to get it in range without over doing it.

Edit: I noticed the potassium carbonate on custom hydro is slightly cheaper for a lb than the hydroxide. Although it might not go quite as far as the hydroxide I would get the carbonate. The potassium silicate is probably still a good addition even if it’s not being used solely for raising pH. Don’t need much like 0.15-0.2 g/gal.

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K-silicate works great to raise pH and fortify your plants with silica. Assuming you’d make a stock solution with the dry minerals and add ml’s to your feed. Dual purpose! I haven’t seen toxicity from over use…

I’d choose potassium (bi)carbonate over potassium hydroxide after observing fallout (brown/rust residue in tanks) when using large amounts of hydroxide in combination with high EC feed and hypochlorous acid…

Hope this helps!

Best~

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Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. Plants don’t like much sodium.

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Hey @Taproot you might want to just get some of the Mad Farmer Get Up. It’s a potassium based pH up that has both those.

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That would be my next question.

As I stated, I was planning on using maxigrow & bloom which I’ve used before but with tap water in the city. Additionally, I was planning on using jacks 321 with calnit for comparison. both of these have magnesium in the base and maxi has cal and mag. I’m curious if I should add more calmag for maxi…I can see at least cal for jacks. Don’t want to over do it on calmag and get lockouts. But like I was saying the well water doesn’t have much in it other than apparently sulfur which is common out here in Oklahoma.

Thanks for your input.

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Exactly …dual purpose. I get the ph up and silica at the same time. Personally I noticed my plants looked much healthier with it and the stems where thicker which is why I even started years ago with it. But, in the city at that time the ph was higher so I used sulfuric acid to bring it down…super cheap.

I was just curious if others were just using slica or hydroxide.

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Does it only come in liquid? I used to love dynagro products but found the powder nutes much cheaper and I assume more stable in the long term.

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I use maxi-bloom myself and I have to use a cal/mag product with it.

My personal choice is blue plant but I’m using rain water and RO so I’m not dealing with the ph issue like u are. The DLime would probably work in ur favor- you’d just have get the ratio down.

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Thanks, I’ll look into it. I am however looking for everything from the base nutes to any additives or ph up / down etc to be powder as much as possible.

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Ya, that one’s liquid.

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No guys! Don’t use baking soda, it’s salt! Like, table salt and carbonates. Why would you add that? It’s terrible for plants.

Use lime instead. Calcium carbonate. The calcium is good for plants. Potassium silicate would also be waaay better than baking soda.

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I just realized you’re running hydro. I’m an organic guy so I’m really not sure which is best for hydro.

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Interestingly enough, my plants in soil don’t mind it, but I don’t generally add a lot. I just picked up some dlime to use going forward. :v:

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They can handle some sodium but not a lot.

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At most a 1/4 tsp., but no need to add additional salts if it can be avoided.

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I use potassium hydroxide, a 500g container of flakes has lasted me 4 years, I also have a 1l bottle of 98% sulfuric acid which will probably last me a lifetime.

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