PH dropping since using Dyna-Gro

I was using Ionic, which took my tap water at 6.7 and once everything was added my PH would be about 5.8. And i'd only ever see the PH rise(too much feed) or stay constant(right feed).

This Dyna-Gro Protekt rises my PH to 9.0. Im left with like 7.5 after adding foliage pro. So naturally I have to add A LOT of PH down to get my PH where it needs to be 5.8. 24-36 hours later its 4.8 or lower.

I'm thinking the plant is eating this protekt and dropping my PH because so much PH down was used to counteract the protekt.

Today i'm going to switch a plant back to Ionic and see if I have these same issues.

Sometimes the EC falls with the PH.

Plant looks healthy, roots are white, nice bushy foliage(no droopy leaves). Drinking about a half gallon a day, which I replace and add more protekt to get my PH back up.

Different silicon additives will react differently. Try silica blast, it will lower ph while some raise ph.

Sounds like you are using too much protekt. ph should be somewhere around low 6 after mixing in DG nutes... at least that's the case with grow and bloom; never used foliage pro. Once ph is set around 5.8, the protekt will pretty much lock it to within .2 or .3 over several days. If you use too much protekt and then have to use a retarded amount of ph down, that could be the problem.

dyna-gro bases lower ph and protekt raises ph. ur ph is lower after 24-48 hrs because ur using to much ph down to start with. ec falls because the plants are eating it. now u got a cpl choices. use less protekt or use less ph down or use more foilage which will raise ec. i use dyna gro,bloom,magpro and protekt. i mix my water in a seperate res than what is feeding the plants with a few airstones to mix it up. add water, protekt, base in that order and mix well. next adjust ph and let bubble for 5 mins for mixture to stabilize. now adjust ph again if needed. all this is in my opinion but it works for me. i just checked my water that i mixed fri and ph hadnt drifted not a bit. for more info on dyna gro search out homebrewer. hes the man. i hope this helped

Not trying to hijack this tread, but I'm new and have a question. Is it better to add nutes and wait 12 to 24 hours before adding ph up or down or is it better to set ph before you add nutes?

Always in this order: water, nutes, additives then adjust ph. Always.

Malevolence said:

Sounds like you are using too much protekt. ph should be somewhere around low 6 after mixing in DG nutes... at least that's the case with grow and bloom; never used foliage pro. Once ph is set around 5.8, the protekt will pretty much lock it to within .2 or .3 over several days. If you use too much protekt and then have to use a retarded amount of ph down, that could be the problem.

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Yeah, I was shocked with how much PH down I needed to drop my PH from 7.0 to 5.8. I have to use about 4-6ml. With Ionic it was literally a few drops of PH down to get my PH from say 6.1 to 5.8. To drop that same .3 PH I need like 2ml of PH down with dynagro.

tre274 said:

dyna-gro bases lower ph and protekt raises ph. ur ph is lower after 24-48 hrs because ur using to much ph down to start with. ec falls because the plants are eating it. now u got a cpl choices. use less protekt or use less ph down or use more foilage which will raise ec. i use dyna gro,bloom,magpro and protekt. i mix my water in a seperate res than what is feeding the plants with a few airstones to mix it up. add water, protekt, base in that order and mix well. next adjust ph and let bubble for 5 mins for mixture to stabilize. now adjust ph again if needed. all this is in my opinion but it works for me. i just checked my water that i mixed fri and ph hadnt drifted not a bit. for more info on dyna gro search out homebrewer. hes the man. i hope this helped

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I use 5ml/gal of protekt at this stage, plants are beasts, like 3 feet tall and 4ft square canopies. Root mass is huge, I have heard of this issue with reservoirs too small for the root mass, but i've had root masses this huge before without having this issue.

I'm feeding about 1.1EC on one and 1.3EC on the other.

I used to mix my nutes like that(now im running like 8 buckets so i'd need 16 total to do that way and don't have space for that). I add water now, add protekt, let sit for a minute or two. Add the rest foliage pro and sometimes magpro(finding im not even needing it in veg). Its about 20ml of protekt, then 3ml magpro(when I use it) and rest foliage pro(comes out to be 9ml-12ml depending on target EC). THis is for about 4 gallons of water in my buckets. Then I adjust PH to 5.8 and let it stay constant for a minute on my meter.

superstoner1 said:

Different silicon additives will react differently. Try silica blast, it will lower ph while some raise ph.

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I'll look into it, running out of protekt already.

I was just worried if it was bacteria causing it. I mostly hear of PH rises with bacteria stories, but I was reading dead root matter will cause a PH drop, not sure how true.

Is it normal to have bits of root matter bubbling around in your res? Like tiny fragments. And does aquashield help with that? I havent used AQ in a while because I realized i've been using expired AQ this whole time, and to be honest never saw much gain.

Yes, root problems usually lower ph.
Yes, aquashield will assist.

superstoner1 said:

Yes, root problems usually lower ph.
Yes, aquashield will assist.

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superstoner,I just posted in this catagory under "How to flush"I have expierianced the ph drop also.Under my circumstances,What your saying could make sense.I have already taken action that has shown improvement.How much root damage are we talking about, How critical could this get and what other measures can be taken.

Still dropping. Im thinking the res(which only holds 3.5gallon) is too small for such a massive plant.

Heard this before and been reading it more and more the more I google it.

Do you mix the water up well when you add ph up? One thing that got me once is I was pussyfootin it just squirting ph up in the res expecting the bubbles to mix it up. I wasn't mixing the water well enough, so old acid water was building up inside the root ball... and it kept seeping out over the hours and my ph kept diving. If you are getting decent water flow through the roots when you mix/ph your res, should be fine though.

I have my air stone going bubbling the water when I add nutrients.

When I change my reservoir I put plant in a new bucket. Wash the old one. Come back and spray the roots into the new bucket and then put the plant back in its cleaned bucket. Fill up the bucket(6.7 @ .12EC tap water) and then add protekt 5ml/gal at this stage(leaves my water about 9.6 PH). Then let bubble for a minute, i'll mix with my meter probe and then add foliage pro up to my desired EC. Usually my PH is now at like 8.0. So i'll need to add like 6ml or more sometimes to get my PH down to 5.8. Then after 12 hours it will still be 5.8. I check it on the 24hour mark and its usually 5.6.

Just now they were 4.8 after 60 hours of PHing to 5.8. Not sure what the feed was because I had to add about 1.5 gallons of water to each bucket(so the PH might of been lower than 4.8 ), EC was .9 after that water add back and PH 4.8. I added 6ml of bloom and brought PH to 4.2, added 9ml of protekt which brought PH to 5.9, left meter in for a minute, same, [email protected]

Other plant I gave 9ml of bloom and 10ml of protekt which brought PH to [email protected].

Both reservoirs are at 20C, which is 68F according to my chart. Each plant is getting 10lpm of air.

5ml of protekt per gallon is too much I think. I use 10ml in a 5g bucket filled with 4g of water.

Other than that sounds like you are doing everything right.... so I dunno. You could try giving the rootball a good flush/rinse to make sure there is no buildup of old water inside... but it sounds like you do when you change the buckets. Once they get big they are kinda like a sponge... and just sitting them in new bubbly water doesn't replace or soak out the old water and material in the rootball.

Once I started mixing in my additives throughout the week with a spatula that problem went away. And it sounds like you might not have this problem but there are only 2 causes I know of that cause the ph to dive like that... one is what I just mentioned and the other is signs of pythium/etc setting in.

However the buffers or whatever is in protekt could be a cause or contributing to the issue so one thing you can do is first lowering the dose of protekt or stop using it and see if your problem gets better. If that doesn't fix the ph problem then try the next thing... flushing roots... and keep going down the line trying to isolate where the prob is coming from.

I just agitate my buckets. Let them rest on the lower edge and agitate. This will swirl the water and mix it.

13 hours later the buckets are [email protected] and the other is at [email protected]. 17C after waking.

The EC dropped on both and so did the PH.


Height difference


Short one


Tall one

Both Afghan Kush. Shorter one is getting the lesser feed. Although it looks like it needs a touch more. Maybe a full 1.3 -- Tall one probably needs 1.5

Noticed burnt tips feeding them both at 1.5

It was weird because i'd find water level had dropped and EC stayed the same, which would be perfect, right? Apparently not.

I cancelled the protekt top offs and been topping off with water and then adding more Bloom.

PH is still dropping .1 to .2 a day. Sometimes it raises .2, but very rarely.

My veg buckets are dropping too. I set them for 5.8 and like 4 days later they were 5.2.

I need to go back to Ionic on one of them to see what the issue is. Never had these problems with Ionic.

Roots still look white on the flowering plants. The plants in veg have a little brown(but this most likely hydroton as it hasn't progressed)

I do get droopy leaves after adding new water(cold water) I hear cold water causes a droop? After a couple days of adding water the leaves perk back up(has happened more than a few times already)

Plants are drinking a ton, like 1+gallon a day. I lift the roots out the water and the level drops to about the 3 gallon mark.

I've never had plants this thirsty and healthy in flower. Usually they drink so little that I dont need to top off for a week+

The big one is about 4 feet tall and the small one around 3 feet(flowers are much smaller on this plant, need to give it a boost to get light now that the stretch is about over)

I use DG also , my water is 6.2 , after adding my protekt ,FP and Mag pro , my Ph is 6.2 , I ph down about a hr later to 5.6 and 24 hrs later Im at 5.7 and holds solid , but if they are on a feeding frenzy I do get the Ph drop with the EC ,but only if they are on 15 ppm or better eating frenzy. and that only takes place when I am over due for a res change. Im thinking you nailed with your res being to small,because I never add to my res at all and when Im over due for my res change im like 3 gal shy , my res can hold 18 gal, but rite now Im only a 2 plant grow ,So im only doing a 9 gal mix. So IM thinking you are rite about to small of a res.

So for the past 72hours the plants have been in just water to see if the PH drops.

I checked and PH was 5.4 from 6.5 tap water.

So the plant is doing something to drop the PH on its own. Roots are still looking healthy and the plant is growing fine, surely if I was undergoing root rot i'd have noticed brown roots or a smell or something foul going on.

Nothing. So i'm stumped. The only thing I can go on is the plant releasing cations that drop the PH??? I read this before in a PH dropping thread.

Last grow with monsters thats for sure.