Water: Where do you get yours?

[Tripped circuits]

Seems a bit odd. You got talked out of buying a PPM meter, and given that you were talked out of buying it this must mean you agreed with his reasoning for not owning one. So why bother enquiring about ppm's of various waters. That in itself makes it sound like you should have bought a ppm meter (i will be like the hydro store guy and say don't bother, utter waste of money.

It's generally accepted that if you can drink it then so can your plant. Growing cannabis can get as intricate as you want it to be, but it's a plant, it will grow in just about any conditions and people just get far far too anal about this that and everything. A large number of very successful growers don't even bother PH'ing their water despite what all of these fancy nutrient ph charts dictate and they don't have an issue.

Cannabis growing is becoming like anything else in life, people are producing anything and everything and finding a way to persuade you that it is a requirement for growing. Water, air, nutrients and light, all you really need

the reason I was talked out of the ppm meter because of the nutes I am using. I am using house and garden aqua flakes which requires changing water every week. This being said you dont have to reup your nutes like your normally would with nutes. So a ppm meter in my case would be for an initial water reading only to know how much more nutes to add to reach desired ppm levels. Reason I ask about water and starting ppms is to get a database of store bought water in particular and see what the ppm's are to see which water is a good low ppm choice. I have been experimenting with different waters to see if i can get my ph under control. I have to ph down everyday. Trying to find the most stable store bought water. thats all and thanks for chiming in

 

[tip top toker]

Everyone has different experiences so i try not to criticise one way over another just state that i see no need due to my experiences. Growing is one of those things where there are 1001 different ways and they all work fine for someone or other. With regard to ph swings, again something i never checked. When i did check it i'd find that my plants had been sat in a ph solution of say 4.5 but i never changed anything and nothing ever happened to the negative. While i say that, i use canna nutes and it does specifically state on the bottle that you set the ph once and do not change it after that regardless of readings, i just put it down as encounraging advertising as is often the case with nute companies, but who knows.

 

[Humboldt DWC]

My county doesn't use chlomines so I just use a tallboy two stage filter. My pH after the filter is 6.9-7.1 PPM 60-70

 

[scooby419]

I just use my tap water. I am on a community well with 5 other houses. Never had to make any adjustments to it and it tastes great!

 

[Walter9999]

A 55 gallon drum can be had for 10 bucks and fresh water right from the sky. It's pretty easy, cheap and natural.

 

[Tripped circuits]

Everyone has different experiences so i try not to criticise one way over another just state that i see no need due to my experiences. Growing is one of those things where there are 1001 different ways and they all work fine for someone or other. With regard to ph swings, again something i never checked. When i did check it i'd find that my plants had been sat in a ph solution of say 4.5 but i never changed anything and nothing ever happened to the negative. While i say that, i use canna nutes and it does specifically state on the bottle that you set the ph once and do not change it after that regardless of readings, i just put it down as encounraging advertising as is often the case with nute companies, but who knows.

if that is the cause i might be switching nutes, this changing the ph to 5.8 everyday has got to go. But switching from tap to bottled spring water helped a bunch.

 

[Tripped circuits]

Scooby doobie doooo

 

[DrGreener]

WOW first time i herd of that hydro store talking you out of a item , any ways
here is my Take on all this
the 2 most important things for growing indoor is PH tester and a PPM meter
and why do i say this is most nutrients have a ph buffer in them so when mixing nutrients your ph can drop or climb dramatically
you here people mention i leave my water out 24 hrs that's to get rid of chlorine it will evaporate out first off when you leave water out your ph will drop also its becoming very knowledgeable, That clorine is needed in plant as well more or less ,
You here people mention they use RO water , again all i got to say to this is RO water is pure water great for drinking but for plants really not so great just look at issue's in this forum from people using RO water plants need minerals tap water has it also unless you actually took a sample of your tap water to a lab to find out , what it has more of or less of, We as growers are making it worse for a plant every you read up on some post on a site like this and people fall for it
You think farmers have 5 million barrel tank they let sit out for 24 hrs before they water there field ??? they use same underground water same as your driinking water oh by the way that orange sure tastes good huh ????

PPM meters are a must when you become a good grower not only does it test for TDS - total disolved solids in your water / nutrient mix it can help you diagnose your plant if you got issues for instance you notice slight nutrient burn your feeding your plant 800 ppm of food you flush as your catch can fills you test ph ??? test ppm wow it reads 1150 omg i have a salt build up your ph reads 5.5 when it should be 6.8 your ppm should be less then 800 if plant is healthy and on right track but its not now see With ppm you can flush till you decide what ppm you want to be left in soil right
dialing in your feed schedule and room of course is key to gret harvests don;t second guess what might be your food strength
Do it right or don't do it at all

 

[Humboldt DWC]

A 55 gallon drum can be had for 10 bucks and fresh water right from the sky. It's pretty easy, cheap and natural.

• Sounds nice, all natural and hippy and all but I don't know where you can get a 55 gallon drums for $10, wish I did cause mine was like $75, its like this one,
  http://www.amazon.com/Hydrofarm-55-G.../dp/B00598BPH0
  
  as for the rest I guess if you live in the right part of the country then at the right time of year you could go that route, otherwise seems like you would need a massive res to save water during the dry periods.
  I you live in a area that's not to urban and polluted rain water would be great but in many places it would be filthy, full of smog, pesticides wh​
  
  
  
  

 

[Humboldt DWC]

WOW first time i herd of that hydro store talking you out of a item , any ways
here is my Take on all this
the 2 most important things for growing indoor is PH tester and a PPM meter
and why do i say this is most nutrients have a ph buffer in them so when mixing nutrients your ph can drop or climb dramatically
you here people mention i leave my water out 24 hrs that's to get rid of chlorine it will evaporate out first off when you leave water out your ph will drop also its becoming very knowledgeable, That clorine is needed in plant as well more or less ,
You here people mention they use RO water , again all i got to say to this is RO water is pure water great for drinking but for plants really not so great just look at issue's in this forum from people using RO water plants need minerals tap water has it also unless you actually took a sample of your tap water to a lab to find out , what it has more of or less of, We as growers are making it worse for a plant every you read up on some post on a site like this and people fall for it
You think farmers have 5 million barrel tank they let sit out for 24 hrs before they water there field ??? they use same underground water same as your driinking water oh by the way that orange sure tastes good huh ????

PPM meters are a must when you become a good grower not only does it test for TDS - total disolved solids in your water / nutrient mix it can help you diagnose your plant if you got issues for instance you notice slight nutrient burn your feeding your plant 800 ppm of food you flush as your catch can fills you test ph ??? test ppm wow it reads 1150 omg i have a salt build up your ph reads 5.5 when it should be 6.8 your ppm should be less then 800 if plant is healthy and on right track but its not now see With ppm you can flush till you decide what ppm you want to be left in soil right
dialing in your feed schedule and room of course is key to gret harvests don;t second guess what might be your food strength
Do it right or don't do it at all

So it may be different where you live but in Cali farmers water is not chlorinated. Chlorine is added to municipal water much after the point that farmers take it. Thats why we let water sit out. Plants do need an array of micronutrients (about 13) to be healthy but that does not necessarily mean the best way to get them is to use tap water. There are products specially designed to meet this need. I use one called mineral matrix.

That being said if you live in an area with good tap water (not to much sulfer, lead ect) and your community does not use chloromines, you should be able to use tap water for soil gardens with no filtering. You will still have to adjust the pH. I used unfiltered city water for over a decade, three different municipal water systems, never a problem.

I also did indoor soil grows for 1998 to 2010 (and I mean consistently) without owning a ppm or tds meter. If you over/under fertilize it very easy to diagnose visually and correct.

If your doing hydro/areo then the ppm meter becomes an absolute must and using filtered water (at lest 2 stage) does as well. Unless you have excellent tap water, then you can just let it sit out and use it.
If you want to have bennies (microbiological beneficials) then you need to get the chloromines out, otherwise don't worry about chloromines.

also ppm meters cant really do TDS. Most actually test electro-conductivity and use a conversion factor based an educated guess of what salts are in the solution, in what proportion and knowing how conductive the various salts are, to convert the EC reading into a PPM educated guess. Then based on the assumption that all the soilds in the solution are conductive (which salt fertilizers are) they call that PPM reading total dissolved solids, bullshit. That's why Europe, old school hydroheads and myself pretty much prefer EC to PPM.

And for organic nutes which are often not in the form of salts, meters are less useful.

If you have money buy the cool tools for sure.

P.S. I love my blue lab combo meter.

 

[Chemdog1989]

U don't want to use hydrogen peroxide kills ur microbes in ur soil its a disinfectant u don't want to use carbonated water that's co2

 

[ThE sAtIvA hIgH]

i used to use ro water. I just use tap now. It comes out at about 7.0 doesnt seem to make a difference to me as far as growing goes, but if your being real precise with your ppms then it may. Unless you live in a 3rd world country like russia where the water is so bad, it will make your teeth fall out over time, your tap is probably fine. There is some nasty shit in tap but it's so minute it probably wont make a diff in your grow. My tap comes from lake michigan. It's great water but still has very small amounts of radioactive decaying materials, lead, copper, harmful bateria. They add a lot of chlorine and flouride but if you let it sit it will evaporate. Also even if you dont let it evaporate it's not really as bad as people say for your plants. It will never kill your plants. Few times when i been in a rush i didnt let it evaporate. You wouldnt even know the difference in your plants.

dude, russia isnt a 3rd world country .they are one of the richest countrys in the world .

 

[DrGreener]

So it may be different where you live but in Cali farmers water is not chlorinated. Chlorine is added to municipal water much after the point that farmers take it. Thats why we let water sit out. Plants do need an array of micronutrients (about 13) to be healthy but that does not necessarily mean the best way to get them is to use tap water. There are products specially designed to meet this need. I use one called mineral matrix.

That being said if you live in an area with good tap water (not to much sulfer, lead ect) and your community does not use chloromines, you should be able to use tap water for soil gardens with no filtering. You will still have to adjust the pH. I used unfiltered city water for over a decade, three different municipal water systems, never a problem.

I also did indoor soil grows for 1998 to 2010 (and I mean consistently) without owning a ppm or tds meter. If you over/under fertilize it very easy to diagnose visually and correct.

If your doing hydro/areo then the ppm meter becomes an absolute must and using filtered water (at lest 2 stage) does as well. Unless you have excellent tap water, then you can just let it sit out and use it.
If you want to have bennies (microbiological beneficials) then you need to get the chloromines out, otherwise don't worry about chloromines.

also ppm meters cant really do TDS. Most actually test electro-conductivity and use a conversion factor based an educated guess of what salts are in the solution, in what proportion and knowing how conductive the various salts are, to convert the EC reading into a PPM educated guess. Then based on the assumption that all the soilds in the solution are conductive (which salt fertilizers are) they call that PPM reading total dissolved solids, bullshit. That's why Europe, old school hydroheads and myself pretty much prefer EC to PPM.

And for organic nutes which are often not in the form of salts, meters are less useful.

If you have money buy the cool tools for sure.

P.S. I love my blue lab combo meter.

EC meters (electrical conductivity)
TDS metwes (total dissolved salts/solids)
PPM meters (parts per million)
All of these meters do basically the same exact thing (just using different measurements). All of them use electricity to find out the electrical conductivity (EC) of a liquid, and give you a number from that reading. The nutrient solution is made up of many mineral elements, and not one of these meters can tell you what your nutrient solution is made up of. You will often hear people speak of there water supply having a certain PPM to start with. That is because unless it's distilled water it will have some elements in it (even if it is filtered). Again none of these meters cant tell you what's in it, or in what quantity each element is in. Not even if they are desirable elements or harmful ones.
If you want to decide when to change the nutrient solution simply by the EC/TDS/PPM readings. The answer is simple, you never need to change the nutrient solution. All you need to do is adjust the readings by adding more nutrients to raise the numbers, or just add plane water until it's diluted to the range you want. Doing that you can keep the nutrient solution within a specific range indefinitely (even 20, 30 years if you wish).
But here's the problem, as I mentioned not one of these meters can tell you what's actually in the liquid, and/or how much of each there is. For the nutrient solution to be beneficial to the plants, all the mineral elements within it need to be somewhat in balance. But plants don't absorb the all the elements within the water in a balanced fashion, they use only what they need, and leave the rest behind. This creates an unbalanced solution. The farther unbalanced it gets, the more the elements the plants are using in larger quantity become depleted, and faster than the other elements (thus unbalanced). Because some elements were used, that will drop the EC/TDS/PPM readings.
The simple fix is to add more nutrients and bring up the readings to the acceptable levels again. This would work except that as I mentioned, the elements the plants don't use were left behind, and by adding more (balanced) nutrients to the solution, your also replacing more of the elements that the plants didn't use in the first place. So you still wind up with an unbalanced solution (even when your meter readings are in the correct range). Too much of this leads to the elements the plant isn't using building up in the nutrient solution, to a point they reach toxic levels. Your meter is just telling you the total amount of elements in the water. So you wind up with toxic levels of some elements, and deficiency of others, but together they add up to the right number of elements in the water.

 

[DrGreener]

If you can drink out of your tap water then there is no reason your plant can't survive giving it tap water you see so many threads pop up having plant issues then when you see type of water there using one begins to wonder RO water etc
why you here i set it out for 24 hrs to rid the chlorine, but you never thought wow sitting water out effects my ph as well you got to realize plants only use up elements it needs and discards the rest right ????? So if you got notice not drink your tap water then don't use it if you havn't by all means use it and forget sitting out 24 hrs i live in a area where chlorine levels are in my water and very high levels you can smell it, i still use it make my mixture of food non ph adjusted and feed look starting week 6 today green and happy.

 

[Flowerinafield]

U don't want to use hydrogen peroxide kills ur microbes in ur soil its a disinfectant u don't want to use carbonated water that's co2

Chemdog - only using peroxide above a certain level will kill microbes...(I think the ratio is 1:16) otherwise, it's fine. - It's good to use carbonated water to spray the leaves because only the leaves actually utilize CO2 for photosynthesis...


DO NOT use carbonated water to water because the Co2 is heavier and will push the oxygen out of the soil thus suffocating the roots...

 

[Humboldt DWC]

That's a good argument for just changing the water weekly.

DrGreener, I don't see why you quoted me in your post? You didn't elaborate on, or correct anything I said. Its not really correct to say that the nute sol "is made up of many mineral elements" for a couple of reasons, A mineral is an element or chemical compound that is normally crystalline and that has been formed as a result of geological processes, most of the compounds in fertilizers don't meet this definition. Using the word elements is also questionable because we are discussing a topic relate to chemistry, when you say element people think of the word in context to chem i.e. the elements of the periodic table. Since no elements are minerals, their is no such thing as a "mineral element" unless you are using the word element in non-chemistry context. For example, This week a new element was introduced to the plot of Breaking Bad.

 

[Humboldt DWC]

If you can drink out of your tap water then there is no reason your plant can't survive giving it tap water you see so many threads pop up having plant issues then when you see type of water there using one begins to wonder RO water etc
why you here i set it out for 24 hrs to rid the chlorine, but you never thought wow sitting water out effects my ph as well you got to realize plants only use up elements it needs and discards the rest right ????? So if you got notice not drink your tap water then don't use it if you havn't by all means use it and forget sitting out 24 hrs i live in a area where chlorine levels are in my water and very high levels you can smell it, i still use it make my mixture of food non ph adjusted and feed look starting week 6 today green and happy.

Dude, this was edited? The post reads like a drunk person talks, what where you trying to say?