So I just switched to Fox Farm tiger bloom and grow big. I switched from technaflora recipe for success recently. When mixing my 1st feeding of the FF and checking the ph, the level dropped substantially. My tap water ph is usually around 7.3 or so, after adding FF tiger bloom the ph dropped to 4.6. So I figured I needed to adjust up! Started with few drops and retested with almost no change. To make a long story short, to get my ph in the 6.8 range I had to add almost 1 once of ph up. To me this seems way excessive. I tested the ph using to differe t ph pens and both indicates the same readings. When using the technaflora products I would only need a few drops, not a friggen once. Does this sound right? Can to much ph up cause problems even though that was what was required to get it to proper level? I mixed 4 teaspoons of fox farm to 1 gallon of water. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Wow your tap water PH is really high.Do you know what your initial ppm reading is?
I haven’t started using the nutes yet, but I’ll be using the same line. My tap water comes out at around 8.7, so I’ll be happy to have far less work to do to get it down to 5.7 if the Fox Farm stuff ready is that acidic, though I suspect it isn’t.
@Astrocreep, i dont know the ppm. I actually just got a pen meter so i can check when i get home. But my concern is that once add the FF nutes the ph drops heavily and then I have to add 1 once of ph up to get to proper range. 1 once of ph up just seems like it’s way way to much and I’m nervous its going to cause issues
I would add silicate or switch back to product that was working for you.
Adding silicate and cal mag first would buffer ph some reducing the amount adding nutrients would swing it
I would just go back to using the technaflora products that seemed to worked well for ya. Why make things hard on your self and your plants.
Will
Are you testing the water too soon after adding your nutrients?
Take a couple of minutes and watch this video (ignore the word “aquaponics”).
Any updates? What medium ate you using?
@Astrocreep yea I’m using fox farm ocean forest. I switched to a natural ph up its called earth juice. So far it’s been great although only used 2xs. Out of the tap I have a ppm of like 120 ish, which I believe isn’t that bad, it’s city water. Sorry for the salary in response was outta town for few days
This is normal with the FF products, I used them for my first couple grows and it wasn’t until switching companies that I realized it was only Fox Farms products that would cause such a big drop in pH.
