It’s essential. Doesn’t mean you can’t get lucky, but even if you have well water it will change seasonally. There’s a lot of science to wage movement and aquifers. Anyways same goes for city water, never know when they have issues and have to Sanitize, I grew coral for years and had friends who used tap water, and found that the swings from the city where kinda. Crazy. All depends on where you live I suppose. I had a cheap meter, wasn’t cal correctly and had an entire run start to go south. I quickly guessed my ph was off, verified with strips and picked up a nice, waterproof digital meter with kit so I didn’t have to worry about storage fluid or cal fluids. PH is the source of most people’s problems
And they don’t realize it. They swing too much or let it go too high typically and then get lock outs of different nutrients. Depending on how they react and what they run the problem gets worse and may seem like a nutrient deficiency. Which it is often, but caused by poor PH management.
Get a ph meter. A decent one. Make using it like muscle memory every time you water. If you find that it’s stable then after a bit just use it to verify if you want. It’s so easy I just always check and adjust when needed.
People using PH down to adjust - I also do but before, the last thing I add to my water is EM-1. I take the concentrate and brew a gal jug.
Well it has a PH that’s super low. This makes up most of my adjustment, then about 4ml of ph down per 5 gal and I’m at the sweet spot (6.0 I like to hit)
I couldn’t brew my EM1 with out a ph meter and I couldn’t make the mix of compost teas and microbes with out a ph verification tool.
It’s essential.
This is the one I use. I like it, works very well. Some people have had these break on them, and there are some other brands like blue point that make excellent equipment. But this is the kit I use and I am happy with it.
Apera AI209-T Value Series PH20...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077Z6LF91?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share