Flushed and still not happy with pH

[fanleaf]

So, I just flushed my plant. FFOF soil keeps going acidic on my and lockout problems.

5 gallon air pot 1st day of 12/12 for AK47

Flushed with 15 gallons of distilled water that I phed to as high as 8.2 for the last few gallons to come out the bottom at 6.4. In the top at 8.2 and out the bottom at 6.4 and only 070ppm!
What the heck? This plant is huge for it's age but every other week I'm getting deficiency issues do to the unoff going down as low as 5.1 when I flushed the first time and it was 5.7 when I just decided to flush this time. I am showing sighns of a deficiency as of yesterday directly after feeding her so I flushed.

Why does my FFOF keep going acidic? I have some dolomite mixed in. I mixed it in over 2 weeks ago and it seemed to help for a bit last week but now Im acidic again.

I always use distilled phed to 7.0 and when using nutes I ph to 6.8 but I keep going more and more acidic. I use calmag and FF line of nutes along with Earth juice and thats about it.

Any ideas?

 

[Spitz]

Re: Flushed and still bot happy with ph

I have run into a very similar scenario. It's frustrating enough that I'm likely going to move to coco in the future. At 70 ppm, it's likely not salts moving your PH. I've heard that peat based soil amendments are very acidic as they break down. The only recommendation I can make is to water to some waste every time you water. Not really a flush but get some runoff on each watering. Add some slow release lime when you mix up your soil next batch. Keep fighting the fight! Good luck

 

[fanleaf]

Re: Flushed and still bot happy with ph

I have run into a very similar scenario. It's frustrating enough that I'm likely going to move to coco in the future. At 70 ppm, it's likely not salts moving your PH. I've heard that peat based soil amendments are very acidic as they break down. The only recommendation I can make is to water to some waste every time you water. Not really a flush but get some runoff on each watering. Add some slow release lime when you mix up your soil next batch. Keep fighting the fight! Good luck

Yea, this sucks. I just got off the phone with FF and the lady tells me the runoff in the 5's is a good thing even though I'm watering at 6.8-7! I told her I would believe that if I didn't keep getting lockout every time it works it's way back into the 5's. She insists that I shoudnt ph at 6.8-7.0 but instead 6.4-6.5 and it's ok if the runoff gets lower in the 5's! This lady's either smoked some great stuff or some really bad stuff but I don't know which. I told her I added some dolomite a few weeks ago and it still cant keep up. All she said was adding the dolomite wasnt the best thing to do but I'm unclear why she said that. IM DONE WITH FF SOIL AT LEAST FFOF ANYWAYS! I also asked her why when I mix up my nutes for flowering and add the open sesame/tiger bloom and big bloom as their schedule calls for is my ph at 5.0 in the gallon of distilled all at the same time the bottles of nutes say perfectly ph balanced. Her answer to that was I need to use ph up. I said, "I do use ph up" but again I asked why it says ph balanced and comes in at 5.0 and she had no answer.

Oh yea, and I water until I get 10-20% runoff every time even when I feed.

 

[ultraduster]

We both in the same boat unfortunately. After I flushed and added dolomite like you suggested, the deficiency has been the least I've ever seen. But I do have the same problems as your third and fourth picture using the same FFOF.

However the last feeding I did, I pH'd to 6.45, only because it didn't seem to go up after adding 2ml of ph up to a 1/2 gallon, but it came out at 5.75, which was a great improvement. I did dress it with 2.5 tbsp of the dolomite after the flush, and poured maybe 1/4 gallon of water on top of the dolomite.

I think I am also done with FFOF, may go DWC after this one, unless I can find a better type of soil.

 

[fanleaf]

We both in the same boat unfortunately. After I flushed and added dolomite like you suggested, the deficiency has been the least I've ever seen. But I do have the same problems as your third and fourth picture using the same FFOF.

However the last feeding I did, I pH'd to 6.45, only because it didn't seem to go up after adding 2ml of ph up to a 1/2 gallon, but it came out at 5.75, which was a great improvement. I did dress it with 2.5 tbsp of the dolomite after the flush, and poured maybe 1/4 gallon of water on top of the dolomite.

I think I am also done with FFOF, may go DWC after this one, unless I can find a better type of soil.

Yea. I'm doing everything I can to carry this plant through flower
Flushing last night my plant looks better again today. I just fear I will have to flush again in 2-3 weeks when it heads down in the 5's again. I added more dolomite last night when I flushed. I added more than I did the last time and then flushed another gallon through with 1/2 strength nutes hoping to work some of the dolomite into the soil. We will see on the next water lol.

 

[Zebs]

to my understanding distilled or reverse osmosis water has no actual ph as its devoid of anything. so adding ph up/down to it will show a ph which isn't actually accurate.

personally I mix r/o with my tap water at 6 parts r/o to 1 part tap. I then have a nicely buffered water of about 6.5ph and 70ppm. when I flush using this my ppm will rise as I push nuets out to around 100-150ppm but the waters ph will not change dramatically 0.2 ph points either way.
pretty new to growing so no idea if this will help you out or not.

 

[fanleaf]

to my understanding distilled or reverse osmosis water has no actual ph as its devoid of anything. so adding ph up/down to it will show a ph which isn't actually accurate.

personally I mix r/o with my tap water at 6 parts r/o to 1 part tap. I then have a nicely buffered water of about 6.5ph and 70ppm. when I flush using this my ppm will rise as I push nuets out to around 100-150ppm but the waters ph will not change dramatically 0.2 ph points either way.
pretty new to growing so no idea if this will help you out or not.

Dude, you are the man! That actually makes very very good sense and it's for sure worth a try. My tap water was causing a bit of problem for me because it's ph 8.2 and it seems buffered there because if I add ph down and get it to 6.5 three hours later it's right back at 8.2. It will continue to do that about 5 times befor it gives up and stays at the ph that I kept resetting it too. I actually learned that about my tap water with my fish aquarium a while back. I had baby fish that kept dying off because of the high 8.2 ph. I had to ph down my aquarium water every day for over a week before it stayed there for good. It's really weird to me how it did that and I welcome anyone to explain to me why my tap water does that.

Now, I'm going to let some of my tap water sit out for a while to blow chlorine off and try that 6:1 ratio. Even though my tap is 8.2 I think it will be ok in a 6:1 ratio but who knows.

Can anyone explain why my tap water does that?

 

[Zebs]

my tap water comes out at 7.5 after a couple of hours hits 8, its full of calcium. ppm is 400-500 depending on how hot its been here. I keep South American tropical fish so my water is always mixed that way, just so happens its great for my plants too.