-
Hey guys in dwc my ph goes down to low 5s overnight from 5.8 and the ec stays the same at .4 does this mean my ec is too high or not high enough? Water temp 70f
surfdad_grows, casadelwhacko and 3 others8 Comments-
-
1st: I don’t know, just my 2 cents
2nd: your ec, you say it’s at 0.4 is that 0.4 mS/cm or some scale shenanigans? EC=0.4 mS/cm is low but your plants look fine so…don’t change it
you might see some deficiencies after that kind of ph swing tho, if so don’t panic it’s just the pH and you are already working on it
in general the (synthetic) fertilizers we use today have somesort of pH buffer capacity so a higher ec would come with more buffer capacity BUT that’s NOT a reason to change your ec. only change ec when your plants start complaining (and when you follow a shedule for nutes of course)in general pH is temperature dependent BUT it’s not as much pronounced as people think (there are different mechanisms at work that partially compensate for each other…). For a swing of 0.5 on the pH scale from temperature (let’s say from 5,8 to 5,3) I’d say your temps would have to drop by at least 15C to 20C so you’d be at 41F to 34F during night and that sounds very unlikely to me
other than that, the usual things: doubting and double checking everything starting by the calibration of the pH probe over to being prepared for incoming root rot
-
@BePennjier love this reply! It is a very low ec which would make the ph swing more I didn’t even think about this. I think I actually might raise ec to help stabilize the ph hopefully.
-
-
.4 EC is about 200 ppm. They’re currently being underfed. 600 ppm is where I start my clones for reference.
-
@jmystro is this for dwc? Should I do a res change to maybe 1.2 ec or will that be too much of a shock you think?
-
@thedottiegman Minerals and water volume buffer pH. RO has no mineral or pH buffer for example. Your current .4 EC will have easily swing in a small reservoir. Volume matters. Large volumes of water have a far more stable pH than a bucket of water. At their size they’ll handle 1.2-1.6 EC without issue. Over feeding could cause some stress but you’d need to be up near 3 EC for that to happen. You should never need to be higher than 2 EC during peak flower.
-
@jmystro this makes so much sense now. I’m currently making a rdwc setup that I’ll have a 30 gal res? I’m not sure what is preferred but I’m hoping this issue will go away. Thanks jmystro you’re always helping me out I feel bad 🤣
1
-
-
-
-
Not done yet. Gota add the 1” waterfall pipe for my fill line
-
