Anybody else got issues with citric acid as PH down?

Howdy folks,

I was looking for an organic PH down solution and read somewhere that I should try apple cider vinegar.

That was really bad as I later found out. It created this sort of "sludge" in my reservoir and started to smell foul while simultaneously raising the PH again over time.
The water became completely opaque and brownish in the process along with a film building up on the top.

There was another thread around here dealing with the topic, I forgot where I saw it. Someone else had this happen and advised vehemently against using vinegar as PH down for this reason.
Lesson learned ...


Anyway, to replace the vinegar, I went with citric acid after another research session that seemed like the solution for me.

Alas, I have now emptied and cleaned my reservoir twice (with bleach) and have had the brown film/sludge return both times.

I am currently gearing up to dump my reservoir again and clean it a third time with bleach, this time making sure I scrub the entire surface by hand (I used a mister/sprayer the last time and cleaned the inside walls of the res with a broom) and hope that will take care of it.

If it doesn't, maybe the citric acid I have is causing the same reaction as the vinegar did? i.e. the film/sludge buildup?

Barring any feedback here, I suppose my next step would be to bite the bullet and throw some money GH's way and buy some PH down from them.

I had previously used PH down for swimming pools without any issues with the reservoir ever "going bad". But after 2 rounds I found the little label in the corner saying "antibacterial" which is obviously bad for the microherd of my organic soil so I ditched that.


Any feedback welcome.

What nutes do you put in your res?

No nutes, water only.

How ya growing with water only?

Citric acid and baking soda work great. Vinegar goes bad as does lemon juice.

What are the res temps?

Regarding your brown slime...you might want to check out some products that deal with bio slimes. One that I've seen discussed here on the mag is z7. I have not battled slime and have not used this product. The people who have swear by it as there are apparently some rez pathogens that even bleach and H2O2 will not entirely eliminate.

Alright, I will check into those.

But then my assumption is correct that this is NOT from the citric acid but leftover residue from the time the water went bad with the vinegar...

Bummer, will try another scrub with bleach and hope that solves it...

I was just wondering if something is wrong with the citric acid I am using but it is supposed to be a simple 30% solution without any other additives. So if nobody else runs into these issues using citric acid to PH down, then it must be the leftover residue from the vinegar sludge.

@easy7
how do you mean, how do I grow with water only?
Organic very happy and successful. Aside from the odd bumps here and there like now with the water ...

Tap or RO? If it's tap, the citric acid could be chelating some mineral or another. I'm seeing a lot of other problems like yours when I google the issue. Good for ph in the moment but maybe not so much for water that may be sitting for quite some time.

100% water will not grow a plant. Bsgospel asked what ferts you use. You replied no ferts only water, which is impossible.

There are a lot of places that are involved that could be your issue. Not giving us info will not solve your problem. Obviously you have a nutrient source.

> [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]But then my assumption is correct that this is NOT from the citric acid but leftover residue from the time the water went bad with the vinegar...

Biddy,
I think you're right. Good luck. -granger..[/FONT]

Easy7 said:

100% water will not grow a plant. Bsgospel asked what ferts you use. You replied no ferts only water, which is impossible.
...Obviously you have a nutrient source.

Click to expand...

The nutrient source would be the soil, no?

Well if you have a resevoir and soil that explains why ya got issues.

Easy7 said:

Well if you have a resevoir and soil that explains why ya got issues.

Click to expand...

How else would you use/store ph adjusted water?

Is this well water? Could be mineral buildup.

We give goats well water and it's very hard. See all sorts of mineral and slime in buckets.

Have similar issues with my well water. Just pure water, it stores well. If I add any type of food source, it will have some sort of fungal/bacterial bloom after a few days. Drove me nuts, when I ran a little hydro. Even bleach, would only slow it down. City water has bleach/ammonia mixture in it, think the ammonia makes the bleach last a lot longer.

One solution, mix what you need, use it all.

If that is to much work, you could install a dosotron style inline doser. They have ones that don't even use power, the force of the water siphons through a membrane or something. Anyways, fill the dosotron with an extremely acidic solution. So acidic nothing can live in it.. lol.. then adjust the dosotron so it pulls just the right amount to get your water perfect right before its delivered.

Nitric acid, you can get some free nitrogen.

Third idea... and last idea! Can treat the water prior to filling the res. Some sort of RO system. If the ppm is low enough in the RO water, it should not effect your organic soil's PH imo.

Mr^^

I find that citric acid doesn’t keep the ph down for long. Good for feeding the bennies though. If you want your grow to go to the next level then sulphuric acid is the way to go.

Howdy folks,

thanks for all the feedback!

Quick clarifications:
- I grow in organic soil, meaning my food sources are in the soil. I fail to see how it pertains to the subject of this thread but I use EWC, kelp, blood and bone meal as my primary amendments.

- The water is indeed tap water. I keep it in a ~40 gal res and use a submersible pump for my watering. It has kept absolutely fine when I didn't add anything to it as well as when I used the (antibacterial) PH down for swimming pools (the plants grew alright when I used that btw. just a bit low on the yields but overall alright. I was trying to improve things by ditching the antibacterial PH down for an organic solution as to not mess with the beneficial microherd and here we are...).


Now I am slightly worried that the citric acid is creating the sludge through chelating minerals in the tap water. That sounds plausible to me and the water is quite hard (I have had readings up to 700 ppm out of the tap although it seems to change/vary and is averaging somewhere around 300 ppm).


But I will still go for another res cleaning, won't fill it up completely this time and see how it reacts if I don't add citric acid first. Let it rest for a few days, then add the citric acid and check a few days later. If it doesn't sludge, I have my answer.

Also need to clean the submersible pump though, if that leftover residue (I believe it's called "mother of vinegar" or some shit like that) has to be completely gone so this doesn't happen again.
Since I can't really scrub the submersible pump, I hope just running bleach water through it for a while will be enough...


Man now I know how it must have felt back in the days when there was tons of this "bad info" going around. If I ever see anyone suggesting vinegar as PH down again they are going to get an earful

Can anyone comment on the advantages of sulphuric acid over citric acid as PH down? Very open and interested to hear about it.
I am afraid I am woefully behind on my acid research so to speak
Informing myself about fulvic acid for example has long been on my agenda. My last information is that I should get enough of it through EWC? Might be wrong here... Haven't added any so far though.


I have so far tried to avoid installing an R/O system as I subscribe to the school of thought that says "why remove it only to add it back in?" and had already had good results with using the tap water. It is an option I have in the back of my mind though.

Mixing only what I use is another option certainly but it wasn't necessary yet and I am not ready to say it is necessary. First gotta make sure it is not from the residues of the first time the water went bad.

/Edit
Here is the thread about the "mother of vinegar" thing by hush:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=253664

And after re-reading it, I am a bit confused again. By all accounts this shouldn't negatively affect plant life or even the contrary. So basically the sludge shouldn't harm the plants but rather result in a positive symbiotic relationship?

My plants in veg were dying off from the bottom with the tops remaining green and producing new shoots. But the soil was devoid of nutrients as I wasn't able to topdress enough in the small 1 gallon containers.
A few days ago I cut them all back, removed everything but a few healthy shoots at the top and severely pruned the roots and transplanted them into a fresh batch of soil that had cooked for two weeks (nice mycellium bloom and everything).
I am currently waiting for the plants to bounce back and can already tell that only 1 or 2 didn't survive the pruning/transplant. the rest are alive but will need some more time to bounce back I feel.

Now I am beginning to wonder if I even need to get rid of that sludge/mother of vinegar/scoby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY ...

It's always so many factors to consider guys. Trouble shooting really isn't easy with living organic soil and plants


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY

You're in soil ....why is there a need to piss about with the ph?

I did not "piss about" with PH to begin with.

However I noticed several issues in the second round with the same soil.

Back then, one of the more plausible advice given to me on this very board was that my containers, particularly in veg, are too small to offer an effective buffer zone for PH.

It is true that there is no need to PH in true living soil BUT I was told that this does not hold true when the containers are "too" small.

So I started to PH my water and even though I used PH down for pools which was antibacterial and killed or at least negatively affected the microherd, I saw positive effects on the plants.
So I continued PHing my water.

In the meantime I had gotten rid of my old soil mix that created so many issues in round 2, figuring it was infested with something or was oversaturated with salts or something similar.

I started a fresh batch of soil, used the PHed water (with PH down for pools with the antibacterial properties) and had another quite successful round. Only the yield was a bit lower than what I would have expected/liked.

The next round in the same soil, the issues I had the last time I went for a second round with the same batch, began to reappear. Slower this time and less severe but they showed back up.


I much later realized that (as I was previously advised on this very board but chose to go with other, seemingly more plausible explanations for my issues) the main source of my issues were the buckwheat hulls I used instead of perlite as my aeration amendment.
The buckwheat hulls are decomposing very fast and in the process are leeching N from the soil mix, massively. The deficiencies I faced were consistent with N deficiencies at the start and later turned into all kinds of deficiencies but mainly N (recognizable by the leafs starting to yellow and die off from the bottom of the plant, moving upwards).

Anyhow, this was not only due to the N deficiency but also my mistake in not top-dressing enough/correctly in-between grows.

To my shame, the first time when I ran into issues in round 2 with the same soil batch, I hadn't top-dressed anything. I was trying to find answers about what and how much to topdress and was trying to figure out when and how to use aerated compost teas etc. that I lost track of the fact that I need to reammend the soil through topdressing in between each cycle.
So along with the massive N deficiency through the decomposing buckwheat hulls, I now had a soil that was just overall depleted of nutrients and didn't fix that. The plants reacted accordingly.

The second time I went into round 2 with the same soil batch, I topdressed EWC, generously. With positive effect. But it wasn't enough as I did not topdress kelp, bone and blood meal as well.

Furthermore, the decomposing buckwheat hulls presented a new problem: Soil compaction.
Aeration was very poor once I started the second round with the same batch, as the ammendment for aeration, the buckwheat hulls, had mostly decomposed by that point.
The result was extremely poor drainage. My fabric pots would stay wet at the center and bottom for a whole week or more. Not good.

This lead to root rot, in veg as well. When I pruned the current veg group and transplanted into a fresh batch of soil (now using perlite instead of buckwheat hulls) I saw that almost none had white, healthy roots. Almost all of them had brown, sickly looking roots. This also explains the resurgence of the fungus gnats in my veg room.


I have now, hopefully, fixed my soil by removing the buckwheat hulls and replacing them with perlite and reamending all the nutrients (kelp, blood, bone, dolomite lime, oyster shell powder) and reintroduced mycos during transplanting as well.

The plants were massively pruned and most reacted well and are in the process of bouncing back. Only 3 or 4 out of about 30 are looking like they will die from the process.

Now while they are recovering (I am currently watering them with distilled water), I figured I tackle the next potential source for issues: The water with the sludge from either the citric acid or that mother of vinegar/scoby residue left over from when I used vinegar as "organic PH down"...


So my plan is to let the plants recover while I clean out the res again, this time scrubbing it in its entirety by hand. I also got a special cleaning product against algae and the like, hoping it will get rid of what the bleach apparently didn't.
Then try my best to do the same with the pump and hope for the best.

If I get rid of the "mother of vinegar"/"scoby" and my res no longer builds up that sludge, with the fresh batch of soil and the plants are still not healthy, then I know I need to get back to the drawing board.

But I think once I tackled the water, with the new batch of soil, I should be fine going forward. Fingers crossed.

My .02 cents. Citric acid is not a good ph down. It will work immediately. Let this solution sit for a couple hours and ph will be creeping back up. Had problems with coco couldn't figure it out. Slurry and runoff confirms my suspicion I always ph feed water going in to 5.6 to 6.0. Slurry and runoff tests are 7.0 to 7.2 slurry/runoff respectively. I noticed a few others have said the same thing

If you don't have it already, add a bubbler to your res to keep your water from going anaerobic. This might keep it more clear if aerobic microbes are thriving over anaerobic.