Quote Originally Posted by sirruler
there was one other thing i was meant to ask in this section which slipped my mind and thats testing water ph. should the ph be tested before adding nutes or after? i realised that when adding nutes the ph changes quite a lot and thats why i ask. thanks
Good rule of thumb is to check after you have added everything to the mix and it has had a little time to move around. Rockwool will increase your ph, but depending on the size of your res it may not become much of an issue. A problem could be with trying to lower or raise it once your plants have been added. You would like to get a good feel for how much up or down you really need to use when adjustments are made.

If you are able, and location helps here try to collect rain water. You will find that it should show a ph of around 5.2, and full of oxy which is a great thing. Tap or well water can be used with slight adjustment. Play around with adjustments to the ph in a container. Once you learn how much up or down is needed you will have less issues down the road.

If you use Rockwool, you *must* soak it in ph adjusted water for at least 24 hours. After that you can also add an extra rinse or two just to pull it down a little more.

In our 20 gal systems the ph really stays pretty stable and might only move a point up over seven days. This is a simple adjustment by sticking my baby finger into the ph down bottle and then mixing the res water by hand. Not rocket science, but the keep it simple route has never failed so far.

Trial and error is how we learn. Start out playing with different water levels and nutes. The nutes should not raise or lower the values. If they do, move onto a nutural solution or organics. With organics you can mess up a bit more and not cause as much harm to your palnts or system. Another plus with organics is taste if you worry about that.