PH keeps going up fast

My PH has been going up really fast the last three days, since I topped off the other day.

Using:

RO water: comes out at 0 ppm, 7.0 PH

Ive read that pure RO may need buffering to keep it stable.

I topped off about three gallons a few days ago, 18 gallon res. The ph jumped into the high sixes. Because my nutes dropped into the high 300s, I topped off the nutes slightly, to about 425ish. This dropped ph down to about 6.1. Perfect, I thought.

I came home the next evening and the top growing (new) leaves were super skinny and looking like spider legs or something. I noticed some of the older leaves had the little jagged edges turned upward. Hmmmm, some sort of nute problem? Checked PH, was almost 7. Used some PH Down and dropped it to about six. Checked this morning, was climbing back past 6.5. Did a little more PH down, dropped it to six. Got home tonight, was over 6.5 again. Tomorrow I will change out the water.

WTF is going on? Ive heard that some people use a little tap water to help buffer their PH a bit. My tap comes out at 29 PPM.

Plants looked pretty healthy up until the PH jumped up for a day. Oddly, they are still growing madly, in spite of the spindly new growth.

Before I topped them off, the PH had been stable for 4 days.

What to do about this?

Wish I could help ya but I am having the same problem so I will just bump this up

I'm a beginner with hydroponics but from the experience I do have it just sounds like the natural buffers in the old and new topped off water are making this happen. My 30 gallon mothers tub had this issue for a bit so I'm curious how far your grow is already in the big scheme of time? couple weeks? more/less?

You may also want to review the image attached to this post. You want your PH to be stable around 5.8 (+/-.1) - an average of 6 is too neutral and starts locking out nutrients needed by the plant. Would they die? probably not, but they're not getting exactly what they need to eliminate all reasons of slower/stunted growth or new growth curling occurring.

Get your pH down to about 5.7 and watch it drift back up after a couple hours (don't do an immediate PH test after PH down is added, wait an hour or so). Once you keep doing this and stay vigilent at 5.8 you will overcome the water buffers and you will get the readings to stay where you want without much more intervention.

Doing this method keeps me a +/- .4 most of the time in my reservoirs, I check PH twice a day, morning and before bed and if it needs a little (always down, never up) I will give it a quick shot to stabilize it through the night. It may sound like a lot but no matter what your PH is going to rise up a few notches every day or so, so its good to just keep a close attention on it and do it a little each time to keep it where you want it instead of leaving it and coming back to 6.5+ where it was feeding on that for an extended period of time before you could correct it.

So your saying to knock it down then keep micro-managing it until it stops climbing. Well, hopefully this changeout Im doing today will cure it.

Im producing my RO right now. I am curious what they is making the weird new leaf growth, will upload a couple images when my camera battery charges.

GTS

I don't know that it will necessarily stop climbing but by consistently staying on top of it for a while you'll overcome the natural buffers in the water which is causing it to increase a short while after you use PH down. Once you catch up with those buffers you'll see that you need to do less and less PH down since the water is running out of natural buffers that fight low PH.

Think of it like a checks and balances eventually as you keep micro managing it twice a day with tiny shots of PH down you'll decrease the effectiveness of the buffers in the natural water allowing it to settle and be much more consistent. I take a small juice glass sample every morning before I head out for my day and if its high just put a squirt of PH down in.. once home I check it again about 2 hours before we head to sleep.. doing this for about 5 days keeps my PH nearly dead on 5.8 with very little fluctuation over the next few days. Having said that when I top off the reservoir and add additional nutrients this can trip higher or lower PH (likely lower than higher).. Every time I do this though the same methods apply and PH is in control very shortly thereafter. I'm sure some can do it but i've never read, seen others, or had my own, EVER stay the exact PH it should be for a long extended period of time.. too many variables with topped off water, additional nutes added for each new week can cause it to move around.. I think 6 days have gone by at one point where I had very little to no intervention on the PH.. short squirts here and there but nothing major needing immediate correcting, just prevention to keep it where it should be. An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.

I am by NO means a PH acid/base or water expert I'm just giving you some tips that helped me as a hydroponic beginner. Its much better to do this kind of work twice a day to keep it correct rather than waiting for the plants to live off of the wrong PH and watch them start curling and wilting and then try to correct the PH to where it should have been the whole time.

Changing your water will probably not help the natural PH rise, it takes diligence to get it under control. Keep us posted!

From what I've read plants love Reverse Osmosis. Plants expel their used up waste into the water which causes the PH to rise. I notice it usually tops off at 7 or so. I've never seen a PH 7 hurt plants. It just isn't optimum for exploding growth. The leaves turning slightly up and the spindly growth may just me a sign of fast growth. The leaf edges turn up (in this theory) a little because the water is pulling the water out the leaf at a great rate. The spindly growth will thicken up as those leaves mature. If it is a sativa I notice the leaf fingers at a higher growth/light rate, get skinnier then on a lower growth/light rate. If the leaves at the top of the growth are standing straight up and there are two to three sets of leaves growing out at the same time then I think this theory checks out from what I've witnessed. The PH would then level out as the plant gets out most of it's salt build ups. Change the water more often until the plant has slowed down in dumping it's fertilizer salts out of the water. If the leaves on the bottom of the plants start browning and drying on the plant I would contribute that to a higher fertilizer ratio then needed maybe due to the topping and not needing a higher ratio of fertilizer till it spurts out the leaves a little more.

Optimus Primo said:

From what I've read plants love Reverse Osmosis. Plants expel their used up waste into the water which causes the PH to rise. I notice it usually tops off at 7 or so. I've never seen a PH 7 hurt plants. It just isn't optimum for exploding growth. The leaves turning slightly up and the spindly growth may just me a sign of fast growth. The leaf edges turn up (in this theory) a little because the water is pulling the water out the leaf at a great rate. The spindly growth will thicken up as those leaves mature. If it is a sativa I notice the leaf fingers at a higher growth/light rate, get skinnier then on a lower growth/light rate. If the leaves at the top of the growth are standing straight up and there are two to three sets of leaves growing out at the same time then I think this theory checks out from what I've witnessed. The PH would then level out as the plant gets out most of it's salt build ups. Change the water more often until the plant has slowed down in dumping it's fertilizer salts out of the water. If the leaves on the bottom of the plants start browning and drying on the plant I would contribute that to a higher fertilizer ratio then needed maybe due to the topping and not needing a higher ratio of fertilizer till it spurts out the leaves a little more.

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You've never seen a hydroponically grown plant suffer from a pH of 7? I can only speak for my own grow, but my plants were hating the high pH. Leaves turned yellowish brown, started wilting. What does everyone else think?

Hand Banana said:

You've never seen a hydroponically grown plant suffer from a pH of 7? I can only speak for my own grow, but my plants were hating the high pH. Leaves turned yellowish brown, started wilting. What does everyone else think?

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I personally keep it right at 5.8 (+/-.1) - I want all the nutrients I'm using available to the plant. Going a little higher or lower starts locking out key building block ingredients. I can definitely say before I had my PH meter I had a weeks worth of 8.1 and it did affect them once roots hit the water in the first week, I just had no other way to accurately test PH when the project was originally started. That is about the extent of which I have with high PH and the plants.

All I can say is they looked normal until the PH went through the roof. WHen that happened, they all simultaneously started having the same weird growth. It has to be some micro-nutrient lockout.

look at the base of the new leaves



Skinny weird, weird, weird

I figure if I get the PH under control, the nutrient problem will go away.

Now that I have a good idea of what the problem is (PH) what can I do to prevent it in the future?

I am switching out the water right now, what should I initialize the PH at? Middle fives? Help me out here....

GTS

How many gallons is your res and how often are you changing it.....if it adequately sized you should only need to change it every 10-14 days.....as Caddy was saying earlier.....it may bounce like crazy for 3 or 4 days but it will stabalize.....then the last 7-10 days of the res is not such a pain the ass to deal with.

Give it time to stabalize unless it is so small you NEED to change it every few days.....if thats the case then you just need a bigger res.

Old in the Way said:

How many gallons is your res and how often are you changing it.....if it adequately sized you should only need to change it every 10-14 days.....as Caddy was saying earlier.....it may bounce like crazy for 3 or 4 days but it will stabalize.....then the last 7-10 days of the res is not such a pain the ass to deal with.

Give it time to stabalize unless it is so small you NEED to change it every few days.....if thats the case then you just need a bigger res.

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My Res is 18 gallons. I am changing it once a week.

I just changed it. I will micromanage the PH for a couple days to keep it just below 6 until it stablizes.

Now that my plants are sick looking, what is the best way to bring them back to normalcy?

Whatever happened made them stretch with no branching to speak of. They look like retarded palm trees at this point with very very sickly spindly top growth.

GTS