Any idea how to test the water for ph levels accurately see what is missing is there such a thing

look at city water reports for a baseline to aim for. then use test strips or pens to evaluate your local supply. PH down and up are easy to find and many things can be used. My tap water does not chnage to much almost always aorund 7.2

The test strips are good enough and cheaper over time than probe. If you need to test so often that a probe becomes cheaper, that's more about OCD behaviour than need. pH of tap water can change, so it is good to spot check it and make sure that your methods of ph-balancing stay on point. My tap changed from 8.4 to 7.0 a few years back. I did not spot check. I added enough acid to bring 8.4 down to ~6.0, but ended up going much lower, obviously. Killed 160USD worth of seeds, lol. If the inputs stay teh same, it takes the same mL of acetic acid or whatever else you might use to ph-balance the water-only or water+fertilizer irrigations. The 4-color .5pH resolution strips is plenty good enough resolution. I bought a 100-pack 5 years ago for 6 dollars.. I still have 70-80 remaining, lol. I use ph-buffered nutes, so i don't actualy have to ph-balance anything except when using water-only for one reason or another. Do not overpay for a basic acid to ph-balance. Read the ingredients of those 'marijuana branded' ph-up or ph-down products. It's mundane shit you can buy at your local convenience store for 1/10th the price andn get 3 gallons of it, lol. pH drift is not caused by using white distilled vinegar (acetic acid). pH drift occurs due to a poorly buffered solution. this is the fault of the manufacturer not hiring a chemist to do basic things the industry already did, outside of marijuana branded stuff. The ph-up/down bottles are a scam to price gouge you. Test water to see what nutrients are missing? Did yo ualso mean this? If using products with gauranteed analysis labels, you can calculate elemental ppm. this is 10x more accurate than a TDS probe, which merely converts EC to ppm using 1 of several possible conversion factors, which tells you how inaccurate that is, lol. There are free apps and websites that will take the info from your labels and do the work for you. just google "elemental ppm calculator fertilizer" and i bet there are a few options. i've got a bookmark somewhere.. think their is a free app that can even work backward from target ppms and give you dosing for your products to hit those targets.

How accurate fo you want it.. I use a liquid test I don't need it that accurate.. I don't use and instrumentation not even EC just humidity/ temp,, if your in hydroponics you probs what it accurate but my soil looks after all that.. Answer a PH pen or wand is better you will get EC on there too.. like I said I don't bother much... Much love and hood luck

Hmmm, not quite the water but there is some stuff that can help you understand better. The medium is a staging area for the rootzones. The water is a solvent used to cool and transport salt minerals to medium. 98% of minerals are uptake from soil solution 2% come from soil particles. Now this is important to understand because for 95% of people they don't use a medium that uses a high CEC. They use low CEC which means soil particles don't hold much of anything. So the plant takes the 98% minerals from the water each watering. Because the soil has low cec nothing is replaced from soil. Before we go any further it helps to understand this concept: 99% of all minerals in a plant's life time will compose of N,P,K,Mg,Ca and sulphur. These are the macros. Everything else is 1%. Think of fertilizer like a template. You apply a feeding template based on the EC of a medium. What's is ec? Electrical conductivity, i prefer to call it the currency of life, if medium is not conductive then life is not happening. EC Requires two things to measure, salt minerals and water, no point in checking ec on dry soil as it won't be accurate. After each watering you check ec if it falls below desired setpoint re apply fertlizer template best suited for your stage of growth. Make sure ec doesn't go high. Your general ph of your medium will give you an idea of how much of your soil is saturated with base cations, Ca,Mg and K. These are the big 3 and are vitallllllll for a healthy soil, the closer you are to 7 the higher % your medium holds the base big 3. Cannabis will naturally overtime acidify the medium, lower and lower as more and more reactions the place, your job is to keep the pH in thay sweet spot range of 6-7 , understanding when pH gets low you need to re apply the big 3 back closer to 7. The more and more you feed salt minerals, for example if the medium dries up before any the minerals are uptaken or transpiration is crippled, then the salt stays in the medium until you things get moving again if you reapply more water and fertilizer the salts build up as nothing got used up last time , ec will rise until tips start to burn through osmotic stress. Transpiration by day, 90% (from soil) Respiration by night 100% (from air) Water flows from high salt to low salt. If medium becomes too high ec wayer will start to flow back out the leaf by force, very stressful. The more and more you fill your medium with salts thay are not comprised of the big 3, Ca,Mg and K the lower your ph will read 6.0 or less. Soon as your ph gets to the 5's aluminum will start to break free and replace all the big 3s releasing Al3, the destroyer of life and prevention of all uptake. Master pH, Master Ec, Understand these concepts and what was once difficult and mumbo jumbo becomes easy as baking a pie. Gluck brother.

I just use the green liquid dropper stuff to test the ph. I’m pretty lossy goosie with ph as long as it’s close you will be fine honestly anywhere between 5.5 and 7 7.5 the plant will grow pretty well and not show any signs of problems most the time. Now some plants are super sensitive to ph

Hi bud. There are PH meters available to measure ph. There are EC meters to measure the electrical conductivity of your liquid. There are PPM meters that can show the values of different nutrients and minerals in your liquid. As far as I know, there are no meters out there that tell you if you are missing something. Just meters that tell you what is in your liquid/runoff and its measured value. If you want to diagnose something specific, like black spots, you'd be better off uploading several pictures and include them with your question. Hope this helps, even just a little.

bro just get the GHE pH drops, don’t let no nerd tell u different they cheap, fast, n don’t lie — no batteries, no drama, just color and facts i been usin em for years, even for hydro. long as u ain't blind or color dumb, u good them digital pens flake out if u breathe wrong near em also ph don’t show what’s missin, it just tells u if your roots can slurp the nutes u feedin right but ph off? plant still starvin

I usually try to read the pH of my runnoff, but it isn't a 100% accurate as far as I know. (I'm a new grower so take my advice lightly)

btw. Just read the question. If you want to see "something" that is missing. You are perhaps wrong with pH 😅 If you are looking for deficiency you should check EC or specific qualitative + quantitative analysis. There are also test kits for such questions. If you buy a ready to use soil test kit you will also get a test for pH 😂

Biolab ph meter !!!!

ph-meter or ph stripes? If you want a "cost free" solution there is always the possibility to use household items, but you will only get a rough idea and not an exact number. There is a vast amount of possibilities from cabbage to baking powder and mixes of ingredients. If you don't want to measure try your rain water and if your water is not completely off limits buffering of your medium is at least for soil an option,

Hi, Ja mit einem PH messegerät da hast du genau Werte. Oder du nimmst PH test Streifen die sind biliger aber ungenauer. Als nächstes solte dann der PH wer zwischen 5.8 und 6.5 liegen wichtig ist aber auch das der EC wert stimmt der solte im Runoff nicht über 2 liegen. Kommt aber auf dein Grow Medium an, je nach dem kann dann der EC wert etwas varieren.