Water Help!

So i need some help im running a hydro drip system with tap water, ph balanced after nutes of course around 5.8-6.0 i change my water out every week however im the third week in and im getting smelly slime like water. Just yesterday i did a tare down and cleaned my hydroton and basin with bleach water. My question is are there specific elements that im missing ? or should i invest into some water additive? Im also running airstones 24/7 in the 10 gallon res. and the water is staying pretty chill though i dont have a thermometer yet. Update: I checked my ph lvl when i got home today and it was way up to like 8.0 i had to add a double dose of ph down to get it back to normal, i also called local hydro store and they had mentioned that the nutes i have dont react well with airstones so i either need to change to RO water (which right now is out my price and space range) or change out my nutes with something different.

Don't give up on anything just yet, I think you will get accustomed to using your water. If it has a high pH to start with, once you lower it with acids, it tends to rebound quickly. When you adjust again a day later, it usually stays somewhat stable.

What are you using for pH Down, and what nutes?

HTH

so i went down and got an RO system , i also got some clearex and flushed the whole system out with it and the new RO water , i then dumped it refilled the res today and when i got home form eating turkey the dam res was all cloudy again and my ph had gone up. im thinking now that it might be some of the additives im using, right now im using; Sweet , Dark Energy, Sensi Grow, Cal-Mag. Im going to try to add one at a time to see if there is one that is causing the cloudy water, im thinking it might be the dark energy, also im thinking about not using the airstones and swapping them out with 35% H202. any other help would be appriciated!

prnkstr said:

so i went down and got an RO system , i also got some clearex and flushed the whole system out with it and the new RO water , i then dumped it refilled the res today and when i got home form eating turkey the dam res was all cloudy again and my ph had gone up. im thinking now that it might be some of the additives im using, right now im using; Sweet , Dark Energy, Sensi Grow, Cal-Mag. Im going to try to add one at a time to see if there is one that is causing the cloudy water, im thinking it might be the dark energy, also im thinking about not using the airstones and swapping them out with 35% H202. any other help would be appriciated!

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You need your air stones and 35% h202 is hydronperoxide this is used to prevent root rot take some pics of your set up and i will try to get you going

Im going to start a grow journal when i get a camera. After some more research i found out that the Dark-Energy is the reason why the water is getting cloudy, this came from info from the manufacturer. Also from some other forums another guy had the same problem and he said that it went away after about 3 days but the RO system has helped it not be slimy so i guess im on the right track. So far the only thing is having to let it sit for a few hours and then check the PH again because it seems to go up after a while for some reason. Another toy i need is a digital TDS and PPM meter right now its all guess work and the crappy liquid ph tester set