PPM of my water

[Highflyer580]

I'm worried bout the ppm of my water I'm on city water and have a softer but everything in the house is ready roughly 450 the outside spigots will read closer to 500ppm could the softer be giving the TDS meter a false reading? And is that to high for a Coco grow run to waste...with minimal waste some.insigbt into this would be greatly appreciated thia is my first grow out here in smokelahoma

 

[MrSauga]

Well your water softener uses salt I'm assuming to soften the water. That would be the reason you have high PPM levels. The meter is most likely OK. I wouldn't think you'd want to run softened water on the plants but I could be wrong. It seems to me too much salt buildup and you'll be running into problems.
I can't help you on the coco part as I grow in soil.

 

[TorturedSoul]

No, a water softener should not be used to treat water that is to be used on plants. I wouldn't really recommend it for human consumption, either, lol.

The EC— electrical conductivity; you cannot actually measure the TDS of water/etc. with the types of meters we use, because not every dissolved solid can be detected by an EC meter, only metallic salt ones. Furthermore, different salts have different EC values; unless the solution you are measuring contains only one of them, it's like someone telling you that they have $4.68 in coins in their pocket - or that the coins in their pocket, together, have a mass of half a pound - and expecting to know exactly how many of which denominations of coins they have.

EC meters, TDS meters, and PPM meters... ALL of them just measure electrical conductivity (one can accomplish the same thing with a DVOM set to measure resistance, along with a calculator). The PPM and TDS merely multiply the measured EC by a conversion factor because... I never really figured out why, lol. Seems to be mostly just a thing with people who live in the USA. We're kind of odd in regards to the things we (think we) understand, I guess.

Anyway, here's a link that might be helpful:

https://www.cannagardening.com/hard_water_and_soft_water

I suggest you also do a web-search for:

electrical conductivity vs total alkalinity

...along with one for:

pH vs total akalinity

...and do some reading.

 

[Highflyer580]

No, a water softener should not be used to treat water that is to be used on plants. I wouldn't really recommend it for human consumption, either, lol.

The EC— electrical conductivity; you cannot actually measure the TDS of water/etc. with the types of meters we use, because not every dissolved solid can be detected by an EC meter, only metallic salt ones. Furthermore, different salts have different EC values; unless the solution you are measuring contains only one of them, it's like someone telling you that they have $4.68 in coins in their pocket - or that the coins in their pocket, together, have a mass of half a pound - and expecting to know exactly how many of which denominations of coins they have.

EC meters, TDS meters, and PPM meters... ALL of them just measure electrical conductivity (one can accomplish the same thing with a DVOM set to measure resistance, along with a calculator). The PPM and TDS merely multiply the measured EC by a conversion factor because... I never really figured out why, lol. Seems to be mostly just a thing with people who live in the USA. We're kind of odd in regards to the things we (think we) understand, I guess.

Anyway, here's a link that might be helpful:

https://www.cannagardening.com/hard_water_and_soft_water

I suggest you also do a web-search for:

electrical conductivity vs total alkalinity

...along with one for:

pH vs total akalinity

...and do some reading.

Oh I've been researching for awhile now and have been all over cannas sure being I'm actually using moat of cannas products but I really preciate it..but 9 out of 10 times the outside spigot isn't ran with the softer..with that being said is 500 ppm for tap water high?

 

[TorturedSoul]

Yeah. A lot of that is probably calcium, at a guess.

I used to mix one part tap water to two parts reverse osmosis (or distilled) water, or to use a nutrient brand that offered a "hard water" option for one of its components. Now I'm poor, lol, so I just use what I have and hope for the best.

I'm using my cell phone and don't have access to the many helpful links I bookmarked in the web browser I use on my laptop, unfortunately. And I'm probably far from the best person to explain this stuff.

Plants do use a lot of calcium - it's probably one of the four most important elements - but much of what's in our municipal water supply isn't in a form that's easily accessible to plants. And it can be a PitA in general, lol, especially if you don't like cleaning your coffee maker "every time you turn around" (BTW, white vinegar works great for drop coffeemakers, just use it instead of water, throw a couple paper filters in the basket so you can see some of what you removed afterward (and don't add coffee ), and run it, then run a couple plain water cycles to rinse it out.). But you don't want to replace the calcium/etc. with sodium, which is what a water softener does.

If possible, use a reverse osmosis device, a distiller, or a decent (physical) filter device.

IMHO.