Sky, so far you are rocking this little plant. Good job. I prefer to hand water at this stage, but if you're not going to be there every day, I like the reservoir idea. You are having too much fun here.
The tea doesn't affect the PH much at all (good thing). In fact, sometimes I add a few ml of diluted florablend to my tea to bring the PH from 6.2 to 6. I have found some tricks for maintaining stable PH:
Maybe I'm mixing something wrong. My Tea PH is usually around 4.8-5.0 after 36 or so hours.
1. TRY NOT to use PH up or PH down. Instead, mix up your nutrient solution, without the silica, bubble for 15 minutes, then measure PH. Let's say it is 5.5. Just add 1ml of silica, let it bubble for 15 mins, then repeat, until it gets to 5.9. Adding PH up / down, and especially over-correcting, leads to unstable PH.
I'm on a 2 gallon res, so a mil of silica will alkalize the crap out of the solution. This sucks too, b/c I like using silica, especially when prepping to Flux.
2. Try to keep your hands and other foreign objects out of the water.
Seriously, my hands never touch water. I only use mostly a 100ml syringe to extract water to test. Once inside the test cup, I add in the nutes and mix with water before plunging it back up to inject into the res. If at all possible, I do not remove the lid either.
3. Use R.O. or distilled water (which you are already).
Check!
4. If you find you over corrected, or your PH is dropping / rising quickly, throw it away and start over. Take your reservoir to the sink, wash it well, and mix up a new batch of nutrients.
Unfortunately I can't afford 3 new gallons of water (at this time). Also, I am only working with sample pints of the 3 part Flora, and each is about half empty. Tossing out a res will break my back. I gotta work within my means.
>>>I'm sure PHing it will be a constant pain in the ass
Follow these steps above and you will get your PH stable. If the PH is 5.7 - 6.2, you're still fine. Don't try to adjust it to 5.8 every day. If it's in that range, it's fine, leave it alone. Also, since you've been doing so much work on your system, I'm sure your hands have been in the water, and then moving the water from bucket to bucket as you work on the system and so fourth.... Once things settle down and you leave it alone, you should find the PH will settle too. The most common problem is trying to adjust too much.
Is PH a verb? ha ha ha
PS. ancient forest is a great amendment to any soil mix. Be careful with ocean forest on small plants. It's hot. I would go with happy frog instead, but you may want to do more research on this from people who are more experienced with dirt. I'm not an old guy ;-)
skunk! good looking plant.
