nft ukcheese terra aquatica bioponics

to try and prevent ph drop i loaded up nutes and let the ph swing,,, within about 5 hours it had gone from 5.5 to 7.0,,, so i set the machine to 6.8 and we will see what happens by morning. in the morning the machine had dosed ph down twice, and the nutrient had dosed 11 times, leaving me on 0.9 and 6.5... aparently this is perfect according to the ir grow sheet, so maybe my ph issues were caused by me trying to keep the ph at 5.8 ( common ph for hydro), instead of keeping it between 5.5 and 7 im thinking maybe the nutes got its own buffering ability and maybe ive been ruining that by putting in too much ph down,,,, in essence fighting the buffer with my ph down instead of letting it do its job, and raise for a few days before it swings down naturally. time will tell lol. ok so what time told me is that the ph will swing up for a day then start to drop.. im assuming as the plant pull nutes out and excrete into the water.. and after about 48 hours the ph will only drop unless its just been dosed with nutes... but then the upswing in ph is only by 0.3 in 5 hours,, then it sstarts to drop again... meaning you either need to constantly feeed it ph up.... instead of ph down... but this isnt what ghe / terra aquatica say should happen... they say ec goes down, and ph goes up...the problem is if i tried to stabilise the ph by drip feeding it nutrient, its would still end up ph 5.0 after 3 days, and the ec would be well over 0.9 so that isnt a solution to my problem. sooooooo i thought ive got some ta silicate powder... it does say on the pack:- Silicate works in synergy with all our products. However alongside beneficial micro-organisms (TrikoLogic®️, TrikoLogic®️ S) use only in foliar application, or localized at the level of the collar (dry application), not to slow down the installation of beneficial populations of microorganisms in the substrate. Conversely in open soil growing, Silicate’s composition stimulates the growth of helpful microorganisms and helps create a beneficial natural environment for extremely healthy plants. ... im thinking as my bacteria should be reasonably well established by now then hopefully it wont affect them too much, so i put it in at half dose stated... they said 4g in 10l , i used 2 g in 10 l . this didnt seem to affect the ec, but did bring the ph from 5.6, to 6.5,,,,,,, as it moved its way round the system it had stabilised to about 6.2. the next morning ph was at 5.9 and the machine had dosed nutrients...meaning the bacteria were still eating, this is much less of a ph swing than if i had used ph up alone, so im thinking if i only add silicate at half strength or less... and i only use it in the final 6 weeks of bud giving the bacteria 3 weeks to establish silicate free. .. maybe i can add this in weekly and use this to stabilise the ph, and use less ph up daily. it took about 3 days for the silica to loose its buffering power... at which point i put another 2g per 10l in ( half dose), so that over the week i had put in the full 4g per 10l that gh recommend, just in 2 doses. I viewed some other peoples research and it showed me that in nft you should add silicate every 72 hours, but in a low concentration, because in nft u get build up, but i believe if you have a float top up on your res, and its supplied with unbuffered calmag adjusted ro water, then its going to dilute your stable res mix and over the week your ph is going to swing down . imagine my 70l res, auto tops itself up with 180l of water over a 7 day period, its nearly used tripple its original res size in unstable top up water... i can only imagine thats going destabilise things. over the coming weeks i may try up to stabilise using the ph up and down method ( depends if i can find a distributer for gh ph down ), and document my trials on here. if i were to do this, then the water that tops up would be pre buffered meaning the entire system should be more stable. an alternative would be to load up the machine with ph up, then get it to dose ph up, but i know too much ph up raises the ec.. and im keen not to go over 0.9/1.0. i included the pic of the dosing machine to give you an idea of what its using over the course of 13 hours, and this is after using silica that turns into silic acid in the tank and that harms the bacteria,,, with that being said, its uptaking loads so maybe where i am only putting in half doses twice a week maybe its not damaging the biocolony so much.. next week i will add the silica when i do the change not mid week, and see if it stabilises things for longer... check next weeks comment to find out what happens !