Orange cookies ... attempt number 2

Sorry I've been behind but this plant has been giving me a lot of trouble. I don't know exactly why, my 1st grow used tap butter all the way through with no problems. It wasn't until the very last couple of weeks that she started showing any signs of ph in balance. This one however started showing signs a lot sooner and lost almost all of her leaves which was quite scary because 1 day she was literally spilling out of the tent when I opened it in the next she was stick skinny. I'm not exactly sure what happened the only thing I can get is that now that I'm using nutrients it's changing the ph and I had messed it up somehow. So I started checking my soil ph and it was close to 7 and a 1/2 which I know is too high. I also finally started checking the water and realized that While sometimes it's around 7 it can go as high as 8. And I'm sure that's a big part of what was messing me up. I really struggle with the nutrients, I just don't know if I'm overdoing it or underdoing it any given time period the plant always looks like it's having some kind of issue. My solution is to try to keep better track of the nutrients versus the water versus the ph channel of the things in a notebook. I. I kind of thought I could get away with skipping that stuff. And before you laugh your a** off at me be aware that my whole 1st grow I did skip all that stuff and came out with almost 2 oz.