Is my water "quality" good for hydro?

[fred_light]

looks like a great space man and those windows will make ventilation a breeze!
lol, no pun intended.

Hehe, yes it is close to what I have been dreaming of since a close friend of mine started growing and I checked out OG (that's how long I have been lurking ...)

Inspired, and camera out I also took a pic of some of the gear. The controller and Homebox did not fit to well, so I left them out.

I see I have not mentioned my filter and fan. I have bought a really small carbon filter (K2 proline) and a ventilation fan (S&P 160) to match it. Both are 160 square meters / h. I know this is not big, but I think they are enuff. Since I have not unpacked I can still change to a larger 350 square meters / h. Remember I am not using it so much to controll heat, but more to clean the odor and move heat away from the shade. I am only gonna use 2 feet of hose on it.

 

[lokes]

I just got my hydro stuff in the mail, tested my tap water and the digi stick is reading 90ppm and ec of .2

Is that good bad? Anything I should know/do special with my watter? Maybe add cal mag?

Edit: PH reads 8.3

Deft not to be rude but you have almost 2300 posts, what have you been posting about, if you don't know the answer to your own question?

Your ec/ppm is fine, PH is a bit high, just lower your Ph and your off and runnin.

 

[Deft]

Never done hydro. Never learned much about it and wanted to make sure the ph wasn't a sign of a problem. It seems out of place with the other numbers.

 

[lokes]

Yah, that's pretty high Ph for tap, but after you add your nutes, and test it, you might be spot on. Hydro runs a little lower than soil at about 5,6-6 seems to be the rule of thumb.
~keep up the good fight.

 

[justanotherbozo]

censorship sucks!

 

[Deft]

I'm going to adjust to 5.3 and let it go up to the high 5.x range. In soil my ph always went up pretty fast.

 

[FreezerBoy]

5.3 is too low and will lead to nute lockout. 5.6-6.0 is the range you're shooting for.

 

[Deft]

Good to know!

 

[Deft]

I got my rez set up and two seeds started to test things out. Set the ppm at 300 and ph was 6.7 so I lowered it to 5.5 last night.

Thing is that today at noon it had crept back up to 6.3! Is this normal? I used a lot of ph down in my 12 gallons of water just to get it to 5.5.

 

[lokes]

Deft what kind of setup you runnin and what size lights? At 300ppm you should be using nutes to drop your Ph, not Ph down.

 

[Deft]

250w, 12 gallons in a 18 gallon rubbermaid. My tap is very high ph and likes to stay that way.

I was just in chat and hillbilliepnpcp thought it might be the hydroton that was bringing the PH up and I'm pretty sure he is correct. I didn't know I needed to soak it first.

I anticipated using ph down because nothing but that seems to bring the ph down enough. Nutes did drop it substantially but not enough. Do you mean I should have waited till I added more nutes? I thought that I was aiming for 300 ppm and 5.5 ph? I would not have been able to get that without ph down.

I think this is going to be a learning experience. At least my rez is steady at 66*F-70*f so I won't have to worry about rot for the winter at least. temps at hydroton level are 77.


I'm open to all advice/constructive criticism and appreciate your input.

 

[lokes]

Yeah see, I'm not a pro on a DWC so the PPM sounded really low, but if they are constantly in the nute solution that sounds about right.

So I'd just flush the hydroton really good, and see if you get better results.

 

[FreezerBoy]

Deft, What's your PPM movement like in all of this? I'm also doing 250w, 12 gallons in a 18 gallon rubbermaid. My water is 250-300 ppm. Underfeeding will cause a rise in pH

 

[Deft]

Cant sleep, god damn.

Yea I am building a similar system, not entirely on purpose but I did get the 18 gal tub partly because you have one just like it.

There is no movement to speak of, no roots have hit the water (just two tiny seedlings so far). I think I read that roots exchange Hydrogen ions for nutrient particles which accounts for the rise in ph over time but no roots in water means no rise right?

I really think its the sediment from the hydroton, things changed right after I cut holes and dropped in the net pots yesterday.

I don't want to blast the seedlings till they get at least their first non cot leaves so I figured 300ppm total with 90ppm or so base from the tap would be ok.

 

[fred_light]

Update:

I am getting slowly closer to g-day So I decided to do a test with nutes in my water.

Before nutes:

pH: 7.1
EC: 0.18
PPM: 120-130

2 gallons mixed with 0-16-32 (G-M-B), 3-part Lucas Formula.

Results with nutes:

pH: 5.53-5.57
EC: 2.21
PPM: 1540

as far I can tell I am one lucky camper. No need to adjust anything when I am going full strength And hopefully the pH will rise as I top off and plants eat.

Of course not starting this hard with nutes.

 

[lokes]

Update:

I am getting slowly closer to g-day So I decided to do a test with nutes in my water.

Before nutes:

pH: 7.1
EC: 0.18
PPM: 120-130

2 gallons mixed with 0-16-32 (G-M-B), 3-part Lucas Formula.

Results with nutes:

pH: 5.53-5.57
EC: 2.21
PPM: 1540

as far I can tell I am one lucky camper. No need to adjust anything when I am going full strength And hopefully the pH will rise as I top off and plants eat.

Of course not starting this hard with nutes.

And that's the way its done. Nice work.