High Brix Hydroponics

[Aroxol]

Yo dudes, quick update...

Carbonated water has a big impact on cal carb in a positive way. I’ll check in an hour or later today and see where pH is sitting and take some solubility pics (full glass and then sediment/ residue on bottom).

Flat Water Start: 6.7pH
Flat Water W/ Cal: 9.2pH
37% pH Increase

Carbonated Water Start: 5.3pH
Carbonated Water W/ Cal: 5.9pH
11% pH Increase

 

[Weaselcracker]

I knew it. Skybound’s gonna be filling the res with Perrier... It was just a matter of time before this happened.

 

[Aroxol]

I knew it. Filling the res with Perrier... It was just a matter of time before this happened.

Only the finest for my plants!

 

[Skybound]

I knew it. Skybound’s gonna be filling the res with Perrier... It was just a matter of time before this happened.

If it's stable, hell yeah! Not perrier, but if there's a way to generate the carbonated water, I'm in.

 

[Aroxol]

One of those machines like SodaStream. Just fill with your tap, well, or RO water and it carbonated it. Probably cheaper machines out there too. I look for a lot of stuff used, and I bet you could find one of those machines for like $15-20.

 

[Skybound]

Yo dudes, quick update...

Carbonated water has a big impact on cal carb in a positive way. I’ll check in an hour or later today and see where pH is sitting and take some solubility pics (full glass and then sediment/ residue on bottom).

Flat Water Start: 6.7pH
Flat Water W/ Cal: 9.2pH
37% pH Increase

Carbonated Water Start: 5.3pH
Carbonated Water W/ Cal: 5.9pH
11% pH Increase

How much calcium carbonate did you add to how much carbonated water?

 

[Skybound]

My brother has those CO2 cylinders for his kegerator, so I can just keep them filled to use them and just get me a regulator, plus parts to screw onto a bottle, but I need to figure out the numbers and wait and see if it gives you any issues.

 

[Aroxol]

How much calcium carbonate did you add to how much carbonated water?

7oz of water in each glass and I just dipped my dropper into the cal carbonate up to the 3mL line. Then I stirred the cal off the dropper into each glass. If I had to guess I’d say the coating was probably ~1-1.5mL of cal carb.

There’s a couple things that need to get answered in my mind.

1- Cal carb continuously raises pH over time in flat water, will it do the same in carb or has that broken it down long term? A way to test this is I can add pH down to both glasses and see how effective it is over time between the two glasses. IMO pH down is a total bandaid for cal carb in flat water and needs to be reapplied daily otherwise pH just goes right back up.
2- If I add the carb water with cal back into a bigger container of flat water, what will happen?

Edit: I bet a beer brewer could answer all these questions and has tested all this stuff btw... for any of you who have brewer friends.

 

[Weaselcracker]

I have a Co2 tank setup for kegging home made beer and whatnot. My current tank is almost empty though and the local supplier is permanently AWOL. I’d hate to waste my last batch making fizzy water...

I’ve never tested the ph of anything I’ve carbonated.

 

[Skybound]

My experience with the calcarb in water, then in more water was that I had to kill the res with PH Down to get it to 5.8. So a day later when testing PH. it would start in the high 6s and ever so gradually work it's way down to 6.0ish over the course of say 120 seconds as the water circulates in my system. The down did it's job and counter balanced the upward pull, but the fact that it takes minutes to even out leads me to believe the 2 don't settle together which means the roots have to go through a wide ranging PH shift each time of feed which on it's surfuce might sound beneficial, but it is also an unreliable environment that likely tricked the roots to put out every different kind of exudate it can which I interpret as stressful and is why my crop began to fail. It was then that I realized PH stability is a non-negotiable priority for good growing.

 

[Skybound]

I'm fairly confident the gypsum will be successful and is an acceptable middle ground to get more calcium into the res. I suspect the carbonated water experiment will wander to the alkaline once the carbonation fizzles out of the water. If I fail again, and you fail, I want to revisit Emilyas Egg Shell process. When I made acetate, the PH went high for a week, but then came back to the acidic side. I think it fell to like 4.8 for me, but that's b/c I used a whole gallon of vinegar to 190 grams of calcarb. I'd like to figure out a ratio of calcium:vinegar:water that has a desirable PH, maybe in the 5.0-5.5 range? I am very confident that can be done, but then my only concern would be knowing how much calcium is in suspension at that particular ratio? CalCarb is one of the stock solutions in hydro buddy so we have some base numbers to use and since it's only calcium, pretty close would be more than accurate IMO.

 

[Weaselcracker]

How do the calmag manufacturers keep it acidic? Maybe the same idea as eggshells in vinegar but not brewing so long?
GO cal mag used to be 0-0-0. I actually ordered a bottle but when it arrived it was 1-0-0. I use it when I need to drop N levels in flowering.

 

[Skybound]

How do the calmag manufacturers keep it acidic? Maybe the same idea as eggshells in vinegar but not brewing so long?
GO cal mag used to be 0-0-0. I actually ordered a bottle but when it arrived it was 1-0-0. I use it when I need to drop N levels in flowering.

GH or GO? CaliMagic uses calcium carbonate, and how they got it to our PH range must be the MAGIC part, lol. Ca+Mg is the GO version is organic and turned my res to snot many years ago when I first started out in Capn style.

 

[Weaselcracker]

General Organics, which I assumed was just another branch of GH/Monsanto.

 

[Pennywise]

One of those was causing precipitation problems for others recently. It just turned into a goopy mess in their Rez. I figured it was a combination of ingredients which ones i didn’t know.

 

[Aroxol]

A lot of the calmags use calcium nitrate - 1 possibility. Another is, “Since Mg2+ has smaller ion diameter than Ca2+, the former shows stronger ability to form hydrate. Therefore, when Mg2+concentration is high enough, it will inhibit the formation of crystalline structures of CaCO3.”

All I know is my brain hurts, I’m an idea guy, not a scientist. Too dumb for this shit

 

[Pennywise]

Same here, I know calcium will precipitate under certain conditions but that’s about it.

 

[Skybound]

I don't know the chemistry either. I'm slowly figuring out that formulas with a (+) ae cations and ones with a (-) are anions, lol. I am a caveman chemist.

 

[Pennywise]

I’ll have to look that up tonite.

 

[Aroxol]

Yo dudes, quick update...

Carbonated water has a big impact on cal carb in a positive way. I’ll check in an hour or later today and see where pH is sitting and take some solubility pics (full glass and then sediment/ residue on bottom).

Flat Water Start: 6.7pH
Flat Water W/ Cal: 9.2pH
37% pH Increase

Carbonated Water Start: 5.3pH
Carbonated Water W/ Cal: 5.9pH
11% pH Increase

So 3 hours later, here were the results.

Flat Water Start: 6.7pH
Flat Water W/ Cal: 9.2pH
3 hours later: 9.0 pH

Carbonated Water Start: 5.3pH
Carbonated Water W/ Cal: 5.9pH
3 hours later: 6.2 pH

Now this is something that’s a bit interesting... I added 1mL of pH down to each cup and it had a big impact on the flat water, very minimal impact on the carbonated water which makes me think maybe the CO2 is doing something to stabilize the water right around 6.

I’ll check again tomorrow and see how everything’s doing.

Flat water pH down before/ after:

Carb water pH down before/ after: