what are the things I need to work about testing water

I know pH definately needs to be in a good range but what else??

EC/PPM , dissolved oxygen and temperature.

Take a sample of your water to someplace like Petco and have it tested .... for free!! They can even tell you in english what it means instead of a city water report that noone can tell you how to read.
Get a nice reliable air pump and a few air stones (depending on res size, I have a 55gal drum I'm putting 2 12" stones in) and run it 24/7
Try to do what you can to keep res water as close to 68f as you can as that is the sweet spot for adding O2 toy your H2O :jointsmile:

my friend says around 5.3 but on my testing strips it says around 6.8 is OK. He also told me my strips are junk because there not for organic use. Is a aqua testing strip different from a pool/spa testing strips and also different from a hydroponic store's testing strips?

Strips are strips, if they are for reading PH then they will work. Not as well as a meter but they will work. 5.3 is getting low, avg 5.5-6.2 through entire grow and you should be good :thumbsup:

you need two things champ. The first is a ph pen, they run about 20 bucks and I would recommend the hanna ones ebay hanna ph pen with the long black rod on the end. That is the probe and it is hot swappable which means when the sensor fails you can replace it without replacing the entire unit. Keep ph below 6, somewhere at about 5.8 is what most recommend. Personally I find ph to be less of an issue the longer the plant is alive. I regularly give un-phed tap water to my flowering plants when it's time to flush or rinse off debris.

The second thing you need is a ppm meter. They run about 20 bucks as well. Dont buy an expensive one, just buy the cheapest ebay ppm meter

You could probably get these in a set if you looked around. Cheap is best since they tend to fail or get dropped on the ground or in your water.

I keep ppm's @ 700 for vegging plants and work my way up slowly over the next few weeks to 1400 ppm for full flowering and full on vegging. For my mothers and clones I use a ppm of about 500 as I dont always want them to grow really fast right away. A low ppm keeps them growing slowly and the second I increase ppm's they begin vigorous growth.

Pens rock and once you learn how to incorporate them into your system, they make for quick easy checks with the comfort of knowing exactly what's going on or not going wrong with your grow.

i appreciate the feedback guys. Definately getting one of them pens. I tried one thing to my girls and now they seem to be getting back on the healthy side:)

Thats the trick. Keep your eye on the top growth for signs of distress or happiness. If you make a change the new growth will reflect it, not the old growth. Pretty much once you damage a leaf, it's gonna stay damaged until it falls off. Very important to keep things stable for this reason, as you cant really repair the plant.

Yup changing 1 thing at a time is no doubt the best route since that way you can find out exactly what you have been fighting and know what to look for next time :thumbsup:

Hey Proday what's up?? :jointsmile:

:jointsmile: fer sure.