Please help

[Tabbatha]

Yep if it's dropping that low then calcium, magnesium & phoshorous will be unavailable at anything under 6.5ph. The soil will be fighting the low ph from the nutrient solution which won't be helping the roots. Your tapater is also hard which means a lot of calcium will be hampering mag uptake as well.

I've just added 5mls of tomorite to 2ltrs of water and measured it's ph and ec, and can confirm that what you're adding is a very high dose in terms of mineral content, and it slams my ph down by over a whole point on the scale. The ec in your solution is going to be at least 1.5 with your tapwater.. which is high, especially for tomorite.. so as I suspected you do need to back off on that.

You have to raise the ph for a while to give access back to the cal, mag and phosphor or you'll see worsening problems.

Also, once that's taken care of an you go back to normal routine feeding, you'd be wanting to use roughly 3mls to 2ltrs maximum of tomorite.

If you did get different nutes, like the hardwater version of Plant Magic soil (link below), then you'll see much improved nutrient uptake as they're designed specifically for cannabis in uk tapwater and the ph stability is bang-on for your tapwater. You'll probably just be able to add it without adjustment and still be in range.

http://www.greenshorticulture.co.uk/...nt-Magic-Soil/

[baron_greenback]

ok so to raise my ph, I'll just stop using tomatorite? Thanks Tab.

[Tabbatha]

Well.. not really.. but it will mean that the water going in for now will be in the high high 7's and that'll slowly raise your soil ph a bit. All fertilisers will lower ph but some more than others, and some are ph stabilised much better than others, and some are better suited to growing wee in general.

Some folks here do really well with tomorite but others don't and it usually depends on their tapwater hardness/ph and soil choice. So, if you do use tomorite, it looks like you'll need to ph up after adding it to the water. If you use less it'll drop less, too, but we can't use too little or we'll see defs from that.

If you had MY tapwater which is even harder you'd see it drop to 7.1 which would be a lot better than under 6.5, so I could just about get away without ph adjusting. You on the other hand, your water is softer so it brings you down too far, and using too much feed isn't helping, so you can sort of help it go higher by using less tomorite and plain water, but that'll only keep you a bit safer for now, until you can get some ph up or different nutrients.

You will need to start thinking about that now really.

[baron_greenback]

Yes Tab after reading your replies it ALL MAKES SENSE! I have some ph up now so i'm going to use it to bring it all in range, thanks for your input on this. What bloom nutrient would you recommend i purchase? Thanks again for your help!

[Tabbatha]

Nice one man, once you're back to 6.5 they'll start feeding on what they're after.

Personally the one I trust the most for quick injections of ph stabilised nutes (I haven't used them all by the way) is Plant Magic Soil.

There's a link in my last 2nd to last post to give you a place to look at the bling.

Good luck fella.

[baron_greenback]

Right then....had to up the ph quite a bit with the tomatorite to get the run off correct, only done it to 1 plant to see the result, now i'll just wait & see if that helps. I'll post some pics of before & after so we can all see.