Sorry I'm more engineer than chemist
 

hi Ron!

I like the hydro web page, it truly kicks-ass. I know you've been asked this a thousand times, but I have more questions about pH. I have been growing tomatoes and alternative health herbs in FL for years and started hydro about 5 years ago now as an experiment that stuck! Anyway I had been using Rockwool one for years, but cost and supply issues made it suck for me too. I now use a sort of homemade nutrient salt powder formulation now with great results. But sometimes, for a small starter unit with 10 sprouts, a six gallon reservoir that's changed every two weeks and topped off every four days, and waters 4 times a day in rockwool baby cubes ---- I want to use up old Rockwool one drips and drops left over. My powder has a buffer to pH 5.8 and therefore never needs stabilized in the big units, and is for me ideal. I stopped using formula one because it was always pH 4.5-5.0 which caused problems and perpetually had to be adjusted to 6.0 (which works for me). I can't afford up and down bottles on a large scale, that's why I switched ferts in part. Phosphoric acid for ph downing is easy to find, but caco3 is hard to find for ph raising. baking soda works well pH wise, but I hear that the sodium competes with potassium for uptake in plant cells causing k deficiency. Is this true? Would baking soda cause a problem in such a small reservoir? What else is easily available to use to raise pH? Hydrate lime and potash for me dissolve poorly, work poorly, and cause water turbidity and line clogging. Any ideas?

I am one of those lucky ones that has well water that is always around 7.0 and only have to use very little pH down so I have always used the store bought stuff.
While I get a lot of questions about fertilizer chemicals that is not my forte. My specialty is building garden systems well enough as to make it easy for the average grower.