By the looks of my plants,they are doing 100 x better,so I guess ph is VERY important.For now on..I check my ph at least 4 times a day.They seem to be hungry little creatures.2 days ago I added 150ppm cal-mag,290ppm veg food,10ppm of baking soda(ph was at 4.8)which brought me to a total of 450ppm,today when I checked the res it was sitting at 380ppm so they eat fast and they eat a lot...As for the question about having 9 plants in a 3 gal bucket, I'm not that good in cloning and one time I remember just growing one plant,Man that plant got huge,I let it veg for almost 2 months(it was a beast)it was about 3 ft high and about 5 feet across,everytime I looked at it,my mouth would water because I thought I was going to get about 2 to 3 pounds off of that plant,enough for me to never have to depend on a shady character on the street again.So one day I decided to do the flower thing,then it happened!It was a boy!So now I am taking a different approach.Everytime I check for the ph and tds I untangle the roots (which isn't a very hard job)I will start flowering soon to weed out the males,then I will go back into veg.Can I start now (flowering to determine males?)...Since changing the res 2 days ago,I have added 1 drop of ph down...when I did my morning test I was sitting at 4.6 and 370ppm,I added a pinch of baking soda,now I am sitting at 380ppm 5.6