Do beneficial bacteria play a roll in ph? Also what's the survivability of the bacteria in a highly alkaline environment?
@Aqua Man had said in a previous post that decolonization of these bacteria by entirely emptying and the refilling will have a huge impact on these colonies and had reccomended doing a 25 percent change at a time to offset total depopulation. Along with this the reccomendations for a sponge filter to help keep bacteria colonized. I'm paraphrasing all of this.
I'm curious about your issue too, hopefully you get it figured out.
At this point, I'm going through a process of elimination. The root cause will be uncovered, and I don't really feel any risk of losing the plants yet. I just want the plants to be of the best health possible, and to know how to run this system as dialed as possible.
I'm not terribly concerned about completely wiping out the bacterial cultures as I'd be surprised how healthy they're doing with these crazy rapid pH swings. As Aqua Man said, there are cheaper ways to retain those cultures. I'm not sure if they influence the pH at all, but the solution they come in might. Could be a bad batch (expired/bad mix/etc). That'll be determined one way or another though.
Tonight's experiment is just like last nights, changing two things:
- Use RO water instead of tap.
This will eliminate any substances in my tap water that may be causing problems.
- Use full strength mix of nutrients at exact ratios per recommendations.
This will also indicate if the incorrect ratio was upsetting the buffering of the silica and pH down.
If by tomorrow morning, as was this morning, the pH is back over 6 from 5.5, I'll know it's not my tap or the nutrient ratio. If it stays stable, when it comes to the next change out, I'll switch back to tap and monitor again.
This will confirm which was the root cause, if it was the tap water or the nutrient ratio, or will indicate it's one of the additives.
Worst case, and as a control, what I'll next is a back step to my initial method of running pool shock to keep the res sterile and monitor for swings. That would eliminate two additives that have been introduced over a short time frame and put me back at baseline.
I would then drop the pool shock again, and begin with identifying which of the two additives is at fault by running them individually. Finally, return back to current status quo and test again.
Sure, this process will be wasteful (9 gallons of solution being changed out daily is a shitty process). However it will lead to identifying what the root cause is.
The best part about this is I have so much of it documented now, it's no longer a game of shooting in the dark. I've learned a few things I have done incorrectly, and will continue correct as I proceed on this journey. Worst case, I'm out a bit of water, some nutrients, but will know that it's not base water related, base nutrient related, res and root health related, or silica related.
That leads up to the next set of variables which are environmental, where things get a bit more tricky and much more expensive to manipulate. Fingers crossed it doesn't go that far. Hell, by that point, and so long the plants don't get cooked in all my shenanigans, it'll be time to flower and it'll be closer to dialed in for a great final sprint.