I have a new waterfarm just out of the box 7/7, rinsed the hydroton in water, inserted my feminized germinated seed and it popped open 7/9. Have a 96X3 LED 30" above the seeding. PH is high at 8.1 and the PPM from my tap are 140-142. Res temp is 72 deg and RH is 68. I have ONLY water in the waterfarm so didn't see a need to monitor anything. Wasn't concerned about the PH because no nutes in the res. Did a full systems check last night (7/20) just for giggles and PH is consistent 8.1 but my PPM was 850! Again nothing added to res and I started with tap water at PPM 142. I had to flush 3-times to get the PPM down to 140. Any ideas why it increased on it's own? I have tin foil over my hydroton and it does get splashed, I'm wondering if any metals leach into the water. Should I have sterilized the hydroton? Thanks guys.
TDS Increases By Itself
- Thread starter tucker99
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Dr Fish
Well-Known Member
First WF i washed and still had quite a bit clay residue at clean up time... Didn't seem to effect the ppm... I use a mesh dry cleaner/laundry bag and a 5 gal bucket... Work the mesh bag with your hands and slosh it up and down it comes clean fast..... I add a little bleach to that water.... Some people recommend soaking over night with a low ph water.... I always reuse my hydroton, i wash in a small cement mix tub to float off any organic stuff, dry and store it.... I've enough hydroton ready in plastic bags for 10 water farms.... You could toss it and buy new for each grow... Aluminum?? I doubt there's any more leaching than we get in our food..... 
DukeO
Well-Known Member
My guess would be it is coming from the hydroton. I take mine out side to rinse with a hose and a big bucket the first time I use it.
Because so much clay dust is bad for my drains.
With WF dripping down over it, ppm is more likely to go up then with DWC if not cleaned real good.
I have been amazed at just how hard it can be to clean at first.
I let mine soak in a bucket for a while then mix with my fingers as I let the water over flow the bucket.
It has always been a little bit of a pain in the butt to get real clean the first time.
My guess would be that you just did not get it clean enough and some little bits are still washing off.
I have found that soaking it for a while before I start to clean helps with the cleaning.
At this point I would just change the water and you should see things at lest start to slow way down with the ppm going up.
Good Luck!
Because so much clay dust is bad for my drains.
With WF dripping down over it, ppm is more likely to go up then with DWC if not cleaned real good.
I have been amazed at just how hard it can be to clean at first.
I let mine soak in a bucket for a while then mix with my fingers as I let the water over flow the bucket.
It has always been a little bit of a pain in the butt to get real clean the first time.
My guess would be that you just did not get it clean enough and some little bits are still washing off.
I have found that soaking it for a while before I start to clean helps with the cleaning.
At this point I would just change the water and you should see things at lest start to slow way down with the ppm going up.
Good Luck!
- Thread starter
- #4
Thanks Duke, I'm incline to agree. I'm 2-weeks from sprouting a seed and the little girl looks good. I pulled the top bucket off this weekend and washed the res bucket real good with bleach water and still have the same situation. If my sprout wasn't doing so well I'd pull all the hydroton out, rewash it, and start over. I THOUGHT I cleaned it well enough and did run the waterfarm for about a week without anything in it. I SHOULD have checked water quality then and washed it again when I saw the values increasing, just a newb mistake. I've been changing the water every 2-days and no, the values have not dropped off. The PPM is still increasing about 40-50 points per day. The PH is increasing but I'm attributing that to the nute content, just increase concentration to 450PPM. Major PIA and a real waste of nutes changing every 2-days, but not much choice at this point. Fortunately I only have a 2-gal res. Just going to have to grunt it out the first grow.
