Please educate me in tap water vs RO water

[ondercuver]

So I have very hard tap water , I have to live with it .

Untill yesterday I didn't know exactly what makes the water hard, I knew something about calcar or calcium levels , but nothing was clear in my mind.

So here comes google , I had to use the little guy because I didn't understand what my water test was trying to tell me.

Comes out that all the shit that makes the water hard si actually cal-mag .. well in most parts of the world (you have to check it for yourself)

So , why would anyone pay for RO water or RO system + cal-mag ... cal-mag supplements seem to be made out of unicorn piss mixed with goldflakes matured in dinosaur colon .

I know some ppl get very bad tap water and RO is the only way for them , but I read journals from guys with medium-low hard water that still use RO ... that makes no sense for me

 

[KingJoe83]

So I have very hard tap water , I have to live with it .

Untill yesterday I didn't know exactly what makes the water hard, I knew something about calcar or calcium levels , but nothing was clear in my mind.

So here comes google , I had to use the little guy because I didn't understand what my water test was trying to tell me.

Comes out that all the shit that makes the water hard si actually cal-mag .. well in most parts of the world (you have to check it for yourself)

So , why would anyone pay for RO water or RO system + cal-mag ... cal-mag supplements seem to be made out of unicorn piss mixed with goldflakes matured in dinosaur colon .

I know some ppl get very bad tap water and RO is the only way for them , but I read journals from guys with medium-low hard water that still use RO ... that makes no sense for me

Ro has a 0 parts per million if not mistaken. Therefore you can or one can have more room for let's say a micro grow in hydroponics.

So ro is 0 part per million now I add cal mag . But let's say general hydroponics well I just have my water source cal mag and low nitro if cal mag plus which carries even more nitrogen in it you would need to watch out on other trace elements that carry to high nitro.


I'm using nitrogen as an example here.

More room for you to fully control numbers. Specially low ppm which is refugees during seedling stage . 100-200 ppm is all that is needed but 100 - 200 ppm of what is in ro nothing ? So now I can put my own .

Tap water is good but again some places town areas have different ppm and ph readings .

Tap water for me is 150 in summer and 170 ppm winter .

Average .

So this means I don't kneel what trace elements or how much is in my water . Ro makes it more controllable if I was to bl arrow it down.

Hope this helps more me thinking out loud .

Second opinions always welcomed

Have you tried google.

Say

What is the difference between ro and tap water ? See what comes back ?

 

[ondercuver]

Ro has a 0 parts per million if not mistaken.

Hi there KJ , actually RO has close to 0 PPM of dissolved salts or any other chemicals that influence water electric conductivity , that's what an EC/ppm/tds meter measures EC= electric conductivity . So when we measure "PPM" it's just the salts content PPM , you may have a lot more other crap in the water it's just the EC meter can't measure that.


There is no fixed "room" for nutrients, a plant can take so much nutrients at a given time without burning but that's mostly for NPK , let's just say there's another "room" for cal-mag next to the NPK one . Ca toxicity is rare and well above tapwater levels, Mg the same .

So is it possible that the whole RO thing is just a internet noob hype that never ends?

Have you tried google.

yep I think almost 20 years of going to the google church, as with everything these days there's as much good info as bad , and now to the point of making it undecipherable .... and pure nonsense ... like I read one some weed forum one guy doesn't use some produce because he's anty GMO ... but he is growing gd autoflowers ... so naturally I disregard any info coming from him

On the other hand there are scientific documents available ... but you have to go thru hundreds of pages of crap and useless over use of "scientific" language.

 

[Scientific]

cal-mag supplements seem to be made out of unicorn piss mixed with goldflakes matured in dinosaur colon

Some stuff that I have learned about hard water:

When water flows over limestone rock (which is made of calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate) some of the rock dissolves into the water. That's what makes water "hard."

So yeah, if you've got hard water, you've got a natural calmag supplement being added to your water! Bonus!

There are people on this forum who have been growing cannabis successfully in hard water for years, evidence that hard water is not automatically bad.

At the other extreme, there are people like me who have water that is so soft that the local water utility actually adds carbonates to it to protect the pipes (and even then, my tap water is only 30 PPM; if I don't had Ca/Mg to my hydro reservoir I get deficiency symptoms).

A PPM/EC/TDS meter just measures the electrical conductivity of water, so it can also be affected by things like iron in the water, and as you say, it doesn't detect the stuff that doesn't conduct electricity.

Traditional two-tank water softener systems installed in people's houses remove the Ca and Mg but replace it with Na (sodium, from table salt), which is arguably even worse for your plants. Watch out for that.

Reverse osmosis systems actually remove the Ca and Mg from your water and don't add anything, giving you very pure water that has very low electrical conductivity. You can install an RO system in your house or buy RO water by the gallon at the store. (Distilled water works too.)

Advanced Nutrients told me that they assume pure water as a starting point for mixing up nutes, and that extra stuff in the water can affect the quality of the fertilizer mix.

I believe what happens is that an excess of one chemical affects the level of other chemicals. For example, if you have hard water with tons of calcium, it can interfere with other chemicals like potassium. (To be technical, in that example positively charged calcium ions are competing with positively charged potassium ions and so throwing off the amount of available potassium.)

General Hydroponics makes a special version of one bottle of their three-bottle FloraSeries fertilizers. Instead of just FloraMicro, it's called FloraMicro Hardwater, and they recommend using it if your water is over 250 PPM. So effectively GH seems to be saying that about 250 PPM is the point at which hard water becomes a severe enough problem so that special measures are called for.

A lot of people seem to completely replace their hard water with RO water, but it seems to me that you could just add enough RO water to lower the PPMs to an acceptable level and have the benefit of free Ca/Mg.

Sources for more info:

• Your local water utility's website (but their reports can be hard to read if you don't have a chemistry background)
• Your local hydroponics shop (but beware the know-nothing clerk who confidently tells you a bunch of folklore that's half true and half BS)
• Your local gardening club
• Your county agent or other government farming/horticulture agency

Practically speaking, you can just try your water and see how it does. It may not require any adjustment.

I hope that helps...

 

[LB07]

Some stuff that I have learned about hard water:

When water that flows over limestone rock (which is made of calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate) some of the rock dissolves into the water. That's what makes water "hard."

So yeah, if you've got hard water, you've got a natural calmag supplement being added to your water! Bonus!

There are people on this forum who have been growing cannabis successfully in hard water for years, evidence that hard water is not automatically bad.

At the other extreme, there are people like me who have water that is so soft that the local water utility actually adds carbonates to it to protect the pipes (and even then, my tap water is only 30 PPM; if I don't had Ca/Mg to my hydro reservoir I get deficiency symptoms).

A PPM/EC/TDS meter just measures the electrical conductivity of water, so it can also be affected by things like iron in the water, and as you say, it doesn't detect the stuff that doesn't conduct electricity.

Traditional two-tank water softener systems installed in people's houses remove the Ca and Mg but replace it with Na (sodium, from table salt), which is arguably even worse for your plants. Watch out for that.

Reverse osmosis systems actually remove the Ca and Mg from your water and don't add anything, giving you very pure water that has very low electrical conductivity. You can install an RO system in your house or buy RO water by the gallon at the store. (Distilled water works too.)

Advanced Nutrients told me that they assume pure water as a starting point for mixing up nutes, and that extra stuff in the water can affect the quality of the fertilizer mix.

I believe what happens is that an excess of one chemical affects the level of other chemicals. For example, if you have hard water with tons of calcium, it can interfere with other chemicals like potassium. (To be technical, in that example positively charged calcium ions are competing with positively charged potassium ions and so throwing off the amount of available potassium.)

General Hydroponics makes a special version of one bottle of their three-bottle FloraSeries fertilizers. Instead of just FloraMicro, it's called FloraMicro Hardwater, and they recommend using it if your water is over 250 PPM. So effectively GH seems to be saying that about 250 PPM is the point at which hard water becomes a severe enough problem so that special measures are called for.

A lot of people seem to completely replace their hard water with RO water, but it seems to me that you could just add enough RO water to lower the PPMs to an acceptable level and have the benefit of free Ca/Mg.

Sources for more info:

• Your local water utility's website (but their reports can be hard to read if you don't have a chemistry background)
• Your local hydroponics shop (but beware the know-nothing clerk who confidently tells you a bunch of folklore that's half true and half BS)
• Your local gardening club
• Your county agent or other government farming/horticulture agency

Practically speaking, you can just try your water and see how it does. It may not require any adjustment.

I hope that helps...

You and I row the same boats. My water is around 25-50 depending on the day. I'd only invest in a RO system if it were higher.

 

[TrailerTrash]

I'm no chemist or expert grower, but there is definitely something wrong with my well water. By itself the pH drops show about 7. But when I mixed a gallon of Gen Hydro Flora series at just 1/4 strength, after 10 days the pH went from 6.5 to 8. How the hell did that happen, just sitting in a gallon jug, not part of a hydroponic system? (I'm growing in soil.)

And even worse, the plants hate my water. Check out my avatar or my journal to see what it is doing to them. The problem showed up even before the first feeding. The pH of the soil at the bottom of the fabric pot is at least 7 and may be as high as 7.5. It's hard to tell for sure without a decent tester.

So now I'm gathering up a bunch of containers to collect rain water, since it's supposed to be a big rain tomorrow night. No, the bad water thing is not just internet hype. Growers who can use their well water untreated are very fortunate, and I am glad for their good fortune.