Hydroton raised my ph

Last time I bought leca years ago I soaked it in 4 ph water for a couple of days. Seemed to work.

Cured said:

Ok guys..
Mother Earth Hydroton...
Washed in 5.8 PH adjusted R/O water, then soaked 48 hours in 5.8 PH adjusted R/O water.
PH went from 5.8 to 8.6 in that 48 hours.

The original 4 DWC Buckets finally stabilized after adjusting the PH twice a day for 4 days.

Click to expand...

Wow, did you have quite a lot of water volume for soaking, or just enough to cover the hydroton? Mine have also finally stabilized but i think my plants may have been further along by now if the hydroton was proper ph in the first place. I did stay on top of it and ph of solution was never above 6.5, but it makes me wonder what ph was right at the root zone. I had the buckets filled partly up the net pot to keep hydroton moist up around the root riot, but if the hydroton was alkaline enough to significantly raise ph of the whole bucket, im sure the area where it was just a bit of nutes bubbling up to moisten the hydroton was much high ph. The roots are now leaving the net pot and hanging in water, but i dont doubt they were unhappy early on when roots were only in the slightly moist hydroton. It would kind of explain an odd issue ive been having. Seedlings were light green, looked hungry for nitrogen even as i slowly tried raising ppm all the way up near 400 which is way aggressive for a seedling in my opinion. Never saw any nute burn and plants were still not a great color. Maybe a bit of lock out from alkaline root zone. They are looking better now that ph has stabilized and roots are reaching down into bucket. Second pic is one that's still not the best color but getting better.

You can put the hydroton in a mesh bag, the type used for dry cleaning and laundry. It's easy to slosh it around, and by rubbing against itself will quickly shed the dust into the water.

Cured said:

Ran across this thread this morning looking for an explanation on the rise of my ph.
I have one DWC with no Hydroton and perfect PH, with 4 vegging plants. And I have 4 DWC 5 g buckets with 6 inch pots filled with hydroton, and seedling. The Hydroton DWC Buckets are rising about 3 points in PH every 8 hours. I'm using GH nutes, and GH PH down.
Im checking the PH with a Bluelab Combo meter.
I'm about to start 4 more 5 gallon buckets and do some experiments soaking the Hydroton first.

Click to expand...

Update...
Problem resolved.
I started using Armor-Si 6ML p

Cured said:

Ran across this thread this morning looking for an explanation on the rise of my ph.
I have one DWC with no Hydroton and perfect PH, with 4 vegging plants. And I have 4 DWC 5 g buckets with 6 inch pots filled with hydroton, and seedling. The Hydroton DWC Buckets are rising about 3 points in PH every 8 hours. I'm using GH nutes, and GH PH down.
Im checking the PH with a Bluelab Combo meter.
I'm about to start 4 more 5 gallon buckets and do some experiments soaking the Hydroton first.

Click to expand...

Update..
Problem resolved.
I started using 2 ML per gallon, of Armor-Si, and 5 ML per gallon, of Cali-Magic, along with my GH nutrients. No more ph issues.