Ph liquid tester vs. Digital tester for an indoor newbie..?

I have been testing my food/water with one of those liquid Ph testers where you get it as close to 6.5 as possable which besides being a pain in the ass to use, it is also not exactly accurate. I am getting it to a piss yellow which is around 6 to 6.5 by my color guide but i'm not guaranteed and I'm a perfectionist and I'm tired of guessing. I want a ppm meter also but only if I can find a high quality one for around $100.00 bucks.

My question is: Which is the best digital Ph tester? I'm so tired of testing with the visual tester and then adding Ph up and seeing its stll too low and haveing to rinse the tester tubes with distilled water and test again only to have added just a little much and turn it bright green (over or luckily getting it close. I need a digital Ph tester. This is gonna get even harder because I am going to be mixing 5 gallons at a time now instead of 1 gallon. I bought a water cooler style bottle and a pump with a good airstone for oxygenizing the water (I was tired of buying the gallon distilled water bottles, it gets expensive).

lol most ph testers are good bro so cant just say brand names. Get advanced nutes or plant magic nutes and u then will need very little maybe even no adjustment of ph. Dont forget to get buffer 4 and buffer 7 to do weekly calibrations of ur meter more frequent isnt needed, u wont need buffer 10 or higher as u will only be using between 4 and 7. Goodluck

lifeizgood said:

I have been testing my food/water with one of those liquid Ph testers where you get it as close to 6.5 as possable which besides being a pain in the ass to use, it is also not exactly accurate.

Click to expand...

Drip testers are more accurate than ph testers. I have never needed to calibrate my drip test.

lifeizgood said:

I am getting it to a piss yellow which is around 6 to 6.5 by my color guide but i'm not guaranteed and I'm a perfectionist and I'm tired of guessing.

Click to expand...

In my experience with two different brands of drip testers, piss yellow (no orange, no green) is 5.8. That is where I want it for coco.

lifeizgood said:

I want a ppm meter also but only if I can find a high quality one for around $100.00 bucks.

Click to expand...

Good luck. I have spent about $250 total on ph testers and I am back to the drip.

lifeizgood said:

My question is: Which is the best digital Ph tester? I'm so tired of testing with the visual tester and then adding Ph up and seeing its stll too low and haveing to rinse the tester tubes with distilled water and test again only to have added just a little much and turn it bright green (over or luckily getting it close. I need a digital Ph tester. This is gonna get even harder because I am going to be mixing 5 gallons at a time now instead of 1 gallon. I bought a water cooler style bottle and a pump with a good airstone for oxygenizing the water (I was tired of buying the gallon distilled water bottles, it gets expensive).

Click to expand...

Don't hate the player, hate the game.
mixing 5 gallons at a time is easier than one gallon.
I mix my nutes and ph up, the same and they come out the same (in a 5 gallon tub). When I check my ph and it is perfect, I rinse the ph tube with tap water.
If you are mixing the same nutes/water every time and getting different ph results, you have problems..

I'm not saying do not get a digital ph tester, but to say that a drip tester is inaccurate is not correct.
I have been screwed by a digital ph tester that cost about $100 that suddenly was not calibrated.
I calibrated it with a drip tester and realized the drip tester does not need to be calibrated.

guy above is wrong, ph testers are .2 accurate when drip tests are 1. Calibration keeps high accuracy.

guy above is wrong

some digital ph testers are good to .2 or better
some of them even read consistently after being calibrated
some of them are junk and some work fine


A drip test is as accurate as the person reading it is.

Where are you getting the .2 and 1?