Anybody else got issues with citric acid as PH down?

MedResearcher said:

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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^^

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This is what i would do, good suggestion.

The reason people have an issue with r/o water, is because the entire cannabis growing world has been educated backward.

Cannabis is a dynamic accumulator plant. You do not want to allow it access to anything in excess, or to anything you do not want in your cannabis flowers at harvest. Your goal is to set up the root zone properly for cannabis, then hydrate it.

The water you use to hydrate your soil or fill your res should have zero impact on your pH, other than through dilution as you add more water. When you add water to your soil or reservoir, r/o is a neutral/non-buffering hydrating solvent. It's only hydrating what you've already set up to work properly.

When you understand this, you'll begin growing better cannabis. 99% of the time, tap/well water is going to have elements which cannabis does not need, and also elements it may need which are not in a readily available form. Filter that garbage out and grow cannabis properly.

I found citric would drop the ph, but a day later it was higher than when I started.

I found very alkaline tap water would bugger soil up after about 6 weeks. I could watch the calendar expecting it. The run-off would be creeping up all the while until it was just too much. It was simple enough to control though. Obviously I needed ph down. I don't recall the numbers now, but I think the run-off would stay around 7 if I watered anywhere between 6.5 and 7.3 iirc. I know I gave myself quite a window, and the soil did it's buffering thing. Meaning I could be quite sloppy with the amount of acid. Which was normal P acid. Just fyi, I also used hydrogen peroxide leading to the flush. Then reused the medium.

It's nice to get lots of opinions, to help you make up your own mind. My opinion for your consideration, is that you can use typical down acid if you must. I'm also in the small pots club, where you must keep on the ball. So my experience is applicable.

The true measure, is the run-off ph. If it's getting high, and the plants are looking bad, you don't get a choice.


I noticed an odd thing using canna terra. It's a weak soil mix, that relies on a weak feed. Small plants under low light, could live on terra alone, if the water was around ph7. No more or less. It was happy being neutral. However, as the feed was introduced, the ph had to come down. Until at full dose, 5.8 was about right. Like you went from a soil grow too hydro. Again, normal P acid

I used citric acid my first grow back to organic with no problems but I didn't have a res, I now use ascorbic acid powder aka vitamin c it neutralizes chlorine/chloramine in water