Thread: water testing
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Old 06-17-2011, 07:34 PM
GpsFrontier GpsFrontier is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Lake Havasu AZ.
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I test my water quality everyday
How do you test your water quality daily? That would be very expensive. As far as I know it cost over $50 to have each water quality test done. If you are referring to testing it with a EC/PPM/TDS meter that isn't a water quality test. That just gives you a basic idea of the total amount of mineral elements in the water. But cant actually tell you what is in the water, or in what quantity each element there is. Not to mention if there are any pathogens, bacteria, fungi, spores, etc. that can be in the water that could give your plants a disease. That's even more important when using water sources like well, pond, or river water because soil borne problems will be easily transferred from these sources into your hydro system.

Rain water can still be an problematic because of the way it's collected and stored. The rain itself is generally good water (unless it's acid rain from smoggy areas), but rooftops and rain gutters are full of bird and rodent droppings that will bread bacteria and pathogens. As well as dead and decaying foliage that can harbor plant diseases, pathogens, as well as fungi and spores. City water has been chemically treated, but pathogens as well as fungi can still survive, and spores will germinate well after the chemicals are out of the water supply. There's a big difference between water quality, and a EC/TDS/PPM meter reading.

Quote:
I have granular pH down coming as the cheap watered down liquid stuff is expensive with having to make daily changes.
The dry pH Adjusters work well, but as I mentioned in the other thread if you are needing to adjust your pH more than once a week, something's wrong somewhere. Water temp wont have an effect on pH, but it will on the electronic pH meters (another reason I use drops). I'm not sure where your located but you mention heating the nutrient solution, so I assume you are in a cold area. I have the opposite problem High temps are my problem, in fact right now it's 101 degrees outside (a little cooler than yesterdays 105). But if you can get your water temps in the range of 65-72 degrees, that's right in the optimum range.

Quote:
I would also like to test for other nutrients but do not know how.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Though if you mean you would like to test your nutrient solution to see what the concentrations of each individual element is, rather than just a total of all of them combined. Me too, but the only way I know of to do that is lab testing.
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