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-indoor
-soil
-Soil generic with perlite
-Soil Additives: Lime, Bone Meal, Blood Meal, MG Organic chicken shit
-Soil pH:5.9
-Water source: TAP
-Water pH: 7.5
-Age of plant: 1 month
-Type of fertilizer: Neptune's Harvest Fish emulsion
-Rate of application: once a week
-Lighting source and distance from plant: 600w HPS 15"-24"
-Temperature (70 night 82 day)
-% Relative humidity: 30-35%
-Lighting schedule: 18/6
-Type of ventilation your room has: couple of fans
Thats my set-up and here is my problem.
I have been watering my plants with just tap water with 7.5 PH, and adding about a cap full of neptunes harverst fish emulsions for every gallon of water and 1mL of superthrive per gallon. This usually brings the PH of my tap to right at 6.3 before it goes into my soil, I thought that was acceptable but now my run-off is testing at about 5.9. I flushed 2 pots with plain tap water at 7.5 PH and it brought the runoff to 6.2 so i fed it with my 6.3 nutrient water and the runoff was 5.8 after that. I'm not sure why my readings are so low. The plants have only been in this soil for a week now and have been watered twice only with my nutrient solution with a PH 6.3 and the PH is already as low as 5.9. This just doesn't make much sense to me especially with the lime I added to my soil. I'm planning on getting some ph up and ph down but is that going to solve my problems? Am I going to have to end up flushing all of my plants?
Does flushing with PH 7.5 tap water change the PH of the soil if it doesnt have any PH up in it? what should the PH value be of my water with nutes before it goes in the pot and what should i try to get the run off water to be? If my ph has been low for a while, could there be problems from phosphorus, calcium, and magnesium not being taken up and should I shoot for an even higher PH to compensate for this?
I'm really hoping someone can help me get this worked out because the frustration of fixing my PH is driving me insane
Im kinda confused about how you flush. Flushing with a ph of 7.5 with a soil ph of 5.9 should brining it somewhere in the range of mid 6's. Also, whenever I flush i use a tiny amount of ferts to replace what I flush out, instead of adding more on top later.
Either way tho, 5.9 isnt really danger level.. I mean its on the low side for soil but not dangerous like 7.5 is for the high side. I would do a serious flush with some light nuted water around ph 7 (you can get aquarium ph upper, its easy to find) if you're really worried about it tho. Are you having any lock out issues?
I added a picture of my set-up, the pots i was flushing are gallon pots I think. I ran about 2-3 gallons of tap water straight through it then the last quart of water was nuted at 6.3 PH. Right before I added the nuted water the run-off was 6.2 but after adding the nuted water it went down under 6 again. It didnt seem like the flush was raising it very much for the amount of water I poured through that tiny pot. Either way if you say its not dangerous, its not like my plants are dying I just was checking the PH chart and phosphorus calcium and magnesium are out of the optimum range for my PH level.Quote:
Originally Posted by carinia