3 Digital PH meters, 3 different readings!

[greenhead]

the difference btw the numbers isnt anything to worry about... we are only talking about a few thenths of a percent here. your plants cant tell the difference btw 7 & 7.4. if you were to use drops you wouldnt have that kind of resolution anyway. you could only tell that the ph was btw 6.5 and 7.5. if yu want great accuracy you will have to buy an expensive bench top model that calibrates to 3 standards like ph 4 ,7, & 10.

His other meter read 8.5, that's a bit more than a few tenths of a percent. I'd be pretty pissed if I wasted money on some digital PH meter and it wasn't dead on.

I've never used a digital meter, only the drops, and I have to disagree that the resolution is as coarse as you claim. If somebody has a good eye for color, then I'd say that the accuracy is pretty close to + .1 / - .1 or at least + .2 / - .2

If for example - PH 6.5 is yellow on the chart and PH 7.0 is green on the chart and the readout after doing the droptest shows a yellowish-green color smack in the middle of that yellow and green, then the PH is around 6.75. And you don't have to wait around for 10 or 15 seconds for anything to 'stabilize' while you get your readings. The drops seem to be quicker and easier to do, and from what I've seen not any less accurate than the digital PH meters that people use, which very often seems to give fucked up readings for one reason or another.

I kind of wanted a digital PH meter a year ago, but I've read so many bad things about digital PH meters on this forum, and the problems that they've caused, so I don't really plan on ever getting one. I just grow a few plants anyhow.

I remember watching one of those urban growers videos, and the dude was checking the PH of some sick plant. First he used one digital PH meter, and then after he didn't trust the reading completely, he brought out a second digital meter. And he got a different reading, and then he took out the good old drop test kit last, to really see what the truth was.

Drops - No calibration - no batteries - cheaper - quicker to get readings - and the drops don't fuck up, unlike digital PH meters often seem to do.

 

[wafflehouselove]

Well i have multiple resevoir i dont have a small grow so i need to save all the time i can so instead of dropping every reservoir soup into a tube i can just dip my hanna meter in it and get a reading within 2 seconds then move on to the next reading

 

[chimei]

Just to clarify,

In the end the Milwaukee was the most acurate of the 3 compared to the 3 drop + test tube PH kit.

The milwuakee did have an intial reading that was way to high (8.5 for tap water) but now I think it was due to the probe shipping dry. After a soak for 24+ hours and a calibration it seems to be working fine compared to the manual PH drop method.

I will stick to the Milwaukee and double check it every month and if I do need another meter in the future I will try Milwaukee again.

The 2 hanna's I cannot trust. One the probe is probably too old on, and the other just does not work right.

And to finally note, I just grow in soil for personal use and keep very low numbers, I never paid attention to PH years ago, but then figured I should to "optimize" my plants eating. And the drops are easy if you just want to take a measurment once, but when adding PH down and having to retest a few times, that is too tedious for me.

 

[wafflehouselove]

Chimei, i also have a milwaukee also, they are very supportive, if your probe goes bad or anything you simply just send it in and they'll replace it for free.

 

[Blunted22]

hey im drunk and read your post a while ago so no flame if im wrong but.... did u try a blue lab that WASNT a trecheon... i use a blue lav tester (the one up from the trech)and ive never had a prob with it my plants are always in good shape and the ph solution is always exactly on or a tenth or two off that i can recalabrate anytime.... chemical testers and drop and shit are garbage and u can barely tell what the color should be and its only by a whole point which in mj growing is garbage in my personal opinion...

 

[FreezerBoy]

No Flames from me and apologies if it read that way. I have the BlueLab EC Truncheon and love it. My pH kit is accurate to 0.1, as accurate as any pen tester. Whether it's actually accurate to some lab standard or not, it's consistent to the point I was able to use it's numbers to solve my problem.

More important than the numbers is the curve. If your garden regularly climbs, water with lower pH. If it drops, water with higher pH. No curve, bad. Use the curve to the plants advantage.

 

[ChaosCatalunya]

pH test kits.... what people are missing...

There are different types..... wide band and narrow band.

GHE's is wide band pH 4 to pH 10 like this

Nutriculture's is narrow band pH 6.0 to 7.6 .. this is the kit's pack shot
[While you are there, look at the Hydro kits, best on the market IMHO, over 18 years experience....cheap, robust, well developed]

Now, sometimes you need to measure below 6, no problem, dust off the GHE kit, but for most work, 6.0 to 7.6 .. is just fine... the point is that this whole range is indicated by the same wide spectrum as the GHE kit, so it is really possible to achieve an accuracy of pH 0.1+/- with a dye.




wafflehouselove ... 2 seconds will not tell you anything, pH meters have temperature correction, it needs to be in a lot longer than that to be sure it has given a correct reading.

The point I am making is dyes will not give incorrect readings, pH meters often do.

 

[wafflehouselove]

naw my hanna meter reads pretty fast, i'll get the same reading if i leave it in there for 10 mins, i've already tried this and know this about meters thats why i choose the hanna grocheck they read faster ph then my other milwaukee