PH Testing

[Tippers75]

Hi all,

 

Due to transitioning to Coco I now need to pay a bit more attention to my PH levels. Tbh I've never really checked them much as never had an issue especially as I'm in a soft water area with water at 6.5. So I'm in the market to get a tester. What works best for you be it solutions, pens or strips. Do the cheap £10/15 pens work as I don't want to spend £60+ on one

[catweazle1]

If you definitely know you have water, try Sensi pH Perfect Coco Grow and Bloom, so yo don't need one. Don't buy anything else they sell. Just use it on its own and see how you get on. You'll want an ec pen to measure the nutrient ec and runoff ec.

[BushDoctoR]

I use a cheapo pH meter, works okay but takes forever to get a stable reading. pH isn't too critical in coco as the medium has pretty good buffering ability. If your water is 6.5 I doubt you'll need to do much adjusting. Test solutions are okay for double checking your meter from time to time but the colours can be hard to distinguish from one another and are a complete faff

 

As catweazle says, it's an EC pen that's more important. I wouldn't trust the really cheap ones but you'll be fine with an essentials one if you don't want to fork out too much. Most would recomend a truncheon and they really do pay for themself in the long run

[greengal]

I bought a meter that tests both pH and EC from fleabay 2 years ago. I think it was shipped from China because it took a while to arrive. I paid about £25, as I recall, and it’s excellent. I test it with calibration fluid every 2 or 3 months and it’s always stayed very accurate.

 

Nutrients in my experience lower pH so if your water is 6.5 you may find it does not need any further adjustment after adding nutes.  Sal
 

[JonDaMon]

I’ve been growing in coco since 2009. 

I’ve gone through loads of pH meters over the years. 
 

best thing I’ve found is pH drops. 
 

 

i use a BLUELAB truncheon for EC but only use droppers for pH and aim for 6 (yellow) every time.