How to Prepare Water for Hydroponics

Hi guys, this is Kevin from xPlonix, here with a hydroponic tutorial for beginners today. We're going to look at properly pH-ing your water. So when you're setting up your water for a new grow, how to make sure you have the right pH, and then also how to add your nutrients and check your parts per million, and some things to consider when you're setting up your water for a new gardening project. Because if you get this wrong, you can really mess your grow up, and that's not what we want to happen. We want to have beautiful plants. So let's get started. Hope you enjoy. Okay, so the first thing we're going to take a look at is the pH of our water, which is the measure of the acidity or baseness of your water. Normally, pure water is at 7.0. That's called pH neutral. What we want for hydroponics, and for most plants actually, is to have slightly lower than that. Anywhere from the 5.5 to 6.5 range. So what you need to do first when you're changing your water or setting up a new gardening project, is to check your pH with a pH testing kit. And I've got this here. This is from General Hydroponics. What you do is pop the cap off of this, grab a little bit of your water, about half of a container full here. And then you're going to drop in three drops. One, two, three. And as you can see, it's already starting to change color. Now all you do is give that a shake, and then on the back of one of your kits, you'll have a color comparison chart. If you can see that, I know it's a little bit torn up, but you will then compare the color to the back of the chart, and that's going to tell you roughly what pH it is. So if you can see here, this is sort of a forest green color. That means I'm in the 8.5 to 8.0 range, which is very, very high. So I need to get this lower. Now how am I going to get that lower? Well, you're going to use something called pH down. This is a sample I grabbed from a hydroponic convention. It's from Mad Farmer. It's called Get Down. Now what I recommend is starting off very slowly if you're just beginning, but I happen to know that for five gallons of water, which is what I'm dealing with here, with this particular pH down, it requires one and a half capfuls. So I'm going to go ahead and pour in one capful and another half, and then I'm just going to rinse the cap out real quick. Now the thing to consider with pH down or pH up is that it's very, very corrosive. So don't get that on your hands. Don't put it on your skin. Don't get it in your eyes or anything like that. So just really be careful with pH down. Now the next thing you need to do is mix up your water. So I'm going to grab this makeshift tool right here. I've got a little kitchen spatula, spoon. Mix it up and give it some time to set. So make sure you get it all fully mixed because what we're going to do is then test it again and compare the color. And once we're in that range that we want, we can move on to our next step, which is checking our parts per million or our total dissolved solids in the water. All right, so this is pretty well mixed. So I'm going to go ahead and check again for pH. Get in there and grab some well-mixed water and give it a couple more drops. Three. As we can see, the color is already very, very different. It's more of a yellow-orange color and that's actually exactly what I'm looking for. So we can see we've got 6.0 is a bright yellow and I'm looking at a yellowish, probably a little bit high, but that's okay. I'll just put a couple more drops in. Actually, I'll probably just turn this cap upside down and rinse out the residue of that and that should be about a drop or so and that's really all it needs. Be surprised at how little pH up or down you need to actually adjust your solution. So now our water is properly pH-ed and we're going to move into the next step, which is checking your parts per million. All right, so we have our pH properly set. Our water is correctly pH-ed, so our plants can actually uptake nutrients from this solution once we mix it. Now our next step is to check what's called the parts per million or the total dissolved solids of the existing water. We want to check this first before we even consider these nutrients that I have right here. So what I've got here is a TDS reader, very cheap. I bought this on Amazon for I think about $12. It's not going to be the most accurate, but for all intents and purposes right now, it's going to work just fine. So I'm going to pop it open and put it in our solution here. Hit the hold button, give it a shake and I've got 353 parts per million, which means that out of a million, 353 parts of this solution here is not H2O. So that means we might have some calcium in there, some other elements. And the reason why that's important to know is that you're going to be measuring your PPM when you add these nutrients. And if you don't have that 357 to subtract from, you're going to underfeed your nutrients because you'll think that that 357 is included in here. So that's very important to know. And then on another note, I would suggest if you're starting a new grow, to start out with what's called reverse osmosis water. And that is processed water that has a parts per million ideally of zero. Sometimes it gets up to 10, but 10 compared to 357 is very, very significant decrease. So it's going to be a more pure water. But for now, I'm using my tap water and that's fine for now. Alright, so let's get into these nutrients. I've got a General Hydroponics Flora series, which comes with Flora Grow for vegetative state growing, Flora Bloom for a blooming or ripening or fruiting phase, and then Flora Micro. And Micro contains all those trace nutrients that a plant needs, but it doesn't need in a high concentration. So the first thing we're going to do is consult the back of our nutrient. And this is very small, so I'll see if I can overlay this on a video for you, but I'm doing a blooming and ripening phase. So that's the mix of nutrients that I'm going to be using. For this, I need one teaspoon a gallon of Grow, two teaspoons a gallon of Micro, and three teaspoons per gallon of Bloom. Now you always mix Micro first and you don't mix them together. You do them separately. So we'll do Micro first and Micro requires two teaspoons per gallon. And they actually have these handy charts on the back that tell you one teaspoon is five milliliters. So I know that I need 10 milliliters a gallon. This is five gallons, so I need 50 milliliters. I've got a little beaker here that goes up to 30. So I'll give it 30 and then 20 and rinse it out. So Micro's done. We'll go on to the Grow now. Grow only needs one teaspoon per gallon and that's because this plant is going to be in a blooming and ripening phase so it doesn't need as much of this nutrient mixture. So if it only needs one per gallon, in five gallons it only needs 25 milliliters. Do that. It's got a nice green color to it. Lastly is our Bloom and this is where all the nutrients are really coming from. We need three teaspoons a gallon, so 15 teaspoons a gallon. So I'm going to do 30. That covers two gallons. Another 30. So another two gallons and another 15 to round out the five. Alright, so we have all our nutrients in there. I'm going to give it a stir. Mix everything up nicely. Now if we didn't have our water properly pH-ed, all these nutrients we would add, we just added, wouldn't be able to be processed by the plant. It'd be called nutrient lockout. So there's only certain pH ranges where your nutrients can actually be used by a plant. That's why it's so important to get your pH right. Alright, so we have these mixed up. Let's check our TDS again or our PPM. Alright, it's got us at 1,120. So if we take off that 350, looking at about 800 parts per million of nutrient, which is a good amount for what I'm growing right now. I'm doing some tomatoes. It could probably be a little bit higher, but I'm just going off the recommended guide right now just for the purposes of the tutorial. So that's the basics of how you're going to set up your water. Remember, pH first, check your water's PPM as a base, and then add your nutrients and check your PPM again. And always remember, as you're going through your grow, keep checking it every single day. Make a note of your pH and of your PPM because you'll be able to see problems as they arise much quicker. This is Kevin from Exponix. Really appreciate it if you subscribe and like the video. If not, hope your grow goes well. Thank you.