Ok, the ole soil/PH issue. First off, for those who can run soil without using a PH meter.... lucky bastages!!! I bought a good ph meter (Milwaukee) because I ended up getting PH lock out during my last grow. I did not use a lot of nutrients (only 'tiger bloom' at lower dose than schedule recommends during mid/late flowering) cause I was in Miracle Grow Moisture control that feed for 6 months... (not using it this time around). That is some very 'hot' soil, and by that my run off was constantly 5.2, even with the very high PH tap water that I have my run off was still very low. So if you do not want to incorporate it into your grow, just do not forget that PH lockout can happen in soil. Now I am running better soil and FoxFarm nutes. I added the recommended (a user here) Dolamite Lime to the soil mix so it has been great on help stabilizing my soil PH while supplying good Cal/Mag at the same time. I still PH my water going in as my tap is WAAAY high PH and also when I feed the FF schedule. Another thing that hind sight brought was that I let her get to big before flip and ended up getting root bound causing finishing to take FOR EVAR lol. Good luck, and take everything with a grain of salt here and trial/error is always the best... unfortunate sometimes
(Sorry bmeat, but you have to be taken with a couple of grains of salt at least)
Oh, on the PH up... I use GH PH up and White distilled vinegar for PH down. I use 1 teaspoon per gallon to get from 5.8 to 6.5 when using with nutes. I use about 1 and 1/2 tsp of vinegar to bring a PH down from about 8.4 to 6.5. (6.5 being the target always!) With both go slow and test often... nothing worse than PH up too far or PH down too far and having to use chemicals unnecessarily. (ok, OP answered)