Recently I have been getting huge spikes in my PH readings. My system is an ebb and flow 4 x 8 tray, 60 gallon res, 4x 600w lights with plenty of fans and such. The other day I had the water at 6.0 and two days later it was at 8.4! Holy cow of Calcutta! I said when I read that. Any way, I was trying to figure out what could cause that so I talked with the local hydro store owner and we talked over nutes which are all good, the temprature is all good, the res is always covered and in the in the dark, I change the water/nutes once a week, the PH meter is of quality and is calibrated, rockwool has been presoked in PH balanced water. So he asks me, when was the last time you cleaned your res? To which I replied, About 6 weeks ago, its new and I have just been veging them. He tells my Whoa, you have to clean that thing out every week, the old nutes can be throwing your PH off big time. I said I would go do that straight away. Problem is, the res is rather a pain in the butt to be moving out from under the table and cleaning every week. I did it today and it was a lot of work moving it around in the room I have my grow in as the area is not very big and is dominated by a 4 x 8 tray. I couldnt imagine doing that every week, so I had to think harder and work smarter. I have to be careful when I get in that frame of mind as I tend to over complicate stuff. So I scrubbed out my res which was indeed filthy with old nutes, dried it, put it back under the table and then took a trip to home depot. I went and bought some 6 mil plastic in a roll that comes in at 12 x 100. I cut a piece off of that and lined my res with it, I filled it with ROed water and added my nutes. I then checked the PH and it came back at 6.0. I dropped it to 5.5 and let it sit for a while. Checked it again and no PH spikes. Now every week when I have to clean my res, I can pump out the water as normal and just pull out and dispose of the plastic and replace it. No more lugging that big res down the hall to the bathtub to scrub it down.
I thought I would share this with folks that have a decent size res and have to clean it often and those that are getting unexplained PH spikes. The plastic seems to be the way to go, saves a huge amount of time and energy. Hope this helps some one out there.
I thought I would share this with folks that have a decent size res and have to clean it often and those that are getting unexplained PH spikes. The plastic seems to be the way to go, saves a huge amount of time and energy. Hope this helps some one out there.
