My tap water ph is too high

Jjgrow420 said:

oh ya mines literally the same thing. just diff size. i only have 1 membrane for ro
yours just does more gallons per min than mine
but i dont need a high output

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I bought the prefilter unit separately. Im just saying it will help the lifespan of your filters, which are very expensive. The main filter for mine is like $300.

lusidghost said:

I bought the prefilter unit separately. Im just saying it will help the lifespan of your filters, which are very expensive. The main filter for mine is like $300.

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300?! i would buy a new filter every time it goes out vs spending 300 for only the ro membrane ? thats crazy.

Wizzlebiz said:

Me and my entire grow circle use tap water. In fact it preferred. Not only does it generally cut the need for cal mag but it has a ton of the micro nutrients the plants need.
TLDR: tap water is fine.

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Same reason i use tap. no need in calmag usually. Between my bag of soil and my tap , i have 100% of a plants needs before i break out any extra food.

getogrow said:

300?! i would buy a new filter every time it goes out vs spending 300 for only the ro membrane ? thats crazy.

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Somewhere in there. They are like twice the size of normal filters and last a really long time. Especially if you use the prefilter. I've had it for about two years and the PPMs are still in the low teens. Aside from the high flow rate, the other nice thing is the waste water is significantly less. It cut my water bill in half.

CikaBika said:

yeah they go so much great together that with bio bizz I have last 2y shitty grows.. First braniacs conviced me that there is no need to adjust ph..
Coz soil is buffer..MY d*** it is. But what ever I do i get def.. Funniest thing is its always cal mag.. with amount limestone in my water? like how?

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Because the extra Ca is blocking the N and Mg and other essential elements. It just so happens when you add calmag, then the Mg is instant and will help them look better but then all the extra Ca kicks in and none of it is available anymore.

Nobody has a "calmag def" . its either one or the other. Its very rare that you see a Ca def using tap water. Its also very rare that yuo see a ph problem in good soil. Use your regular food and add some epson salt if you feel they need something and you will see a world of difference.

getogrow said:

Because the extra Ca is blocking the N and Mg and other essential elements. It just so happens when you add calmag, then the Mg is instant and will help them look better but then all the extra Ca kicks in and none of it is available anymore.

Nobody has a "calmag def" . its either one or the other. Its very rare that you see a Ca def using tap water. Its also very rare that yuo see a ph problem in good soil. Use your regular food and add some epson salt if you feel they need something and you will see a world of difference.

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Beastly RO filter aside, I'm starting to agree with this. I've been seriously considering switching to tap water after the filters jam up. If I lived somewhere with high PPMs then it would make sense, but it's only around 90 here. I'm starting to feel like all I'm doing is replacing free calcium with expensive calcium.

lusidghost said:

Beastly RO filter aside, I'm starting to agree with this. I've been seriously considering switching to tap water after the filters jam up. If I lived somewhere with high PPMs then it would make sense, but it's only around 90 here. I'm starting to feel like all I'm doing is replacing free calcium with expensive calcium.

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If its only 90 then thats pretty low. but i agree i bet 50 ppm of that is Ca and yuo replace it with expensive Ca. No big deal. 90 is much lower then i am used to but im sure if you follow that advice you will be happy.

The only time i call it "normal" for plants to have constant defs is in organic soil. Thats a fun game that is often called "easy" and its not at all. Hydro is easy.

getogrow said:

If its only 90 then thats pretty low. but i agree i bet 50 ppm of that is Ca and yuo replace it with expensive Ca. No big deal. 90 is much lower then i am used to but im sure if you follow that advice you will be happy.

The only time i call it "normal" for plants to have constant defs is in organic soil. Thats a fun game that is often called "easy" and its not at all. Hydro is easy.

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I just checked and it's 115. Which is a little higher, but still low enough to where a RO filter is mostly just being counter productive.

lusidghost said:

I just checked and it's 115. Which is a little higher, but still low enough to where a RO filter is mostly just being counter productive.

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i 100% agree with you .... 115 is "clean" no need in further cleaning it.

getogrow said:

Because the extra Ca is blocking the N and Mg and other essential elements. It just so happens when you add calmag, then the Mg is instant and will help them look better but then all the extra Ca kicks in and none of it is available anymore.

Nobody has a "calmag def" . its either one or the other. Its very rare that you see a Ca def using tap water. Its also very rare that yuo see a ph problem in good soil. Use your regular food and add some epson salt if you feel they need something and you will see a world of difference.

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I dont ever never ever add cal mag while I'm using tap water.. And I use bio bizz whole lineup by the feed chart..If I remember right i read somewhere that using epson salt is. useless, because it needs weeks to be active to what it needs to do.. Maybe I'm wrong, or I mixed something up?

The tap water ph is too damn high!

This is same like you are hungry bare handed and farmer asks would you like to have bread? So here is my field of wheat - all you can eat... high EC of tap water does not mean there are calcium and magnesium in availible forms (soluble or slow release) for plant uptake. If it is, than all of the coco growers would be crawing for high EC tap water. Another thing is most of the people are reading articles about soil. True is that most of them are growing in soilless so these articles are all just for nothing unless you are growing outdoor in your flower bed. No clay no soil no need to use lime no 6-7 pH range. These mixes are limed to 5,5 and you root zone pH barely exceeds 6,2 even if you water all the time with tap 7,8. Buy soil pH pen and stick it in, than water whatever pH and check the readings, you gonna understand instantly what does it mean “buffer”. Problems are calcium carbonate deposits which can occur by the time with frequent watering with high EC tap and wet-dry cycles. This makes the medium to crash because of CEC and lead to all kinds of nutrient uptake problems.

CikaBika said:

I dont ever never ever add cal mag while I'm using tap water.. And I use bio bizz whole lineup by the feed chart..If I remember right i read somewhere that using epson salt is. useless, because it needs weeks to be active to what it needs to do.. Maybe I'm wrong, or I mixed something up?

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No, epsom salt is fully soluble immediatelly availible magnesium and sulphur. Problem is that Calcium and magnesium needs to be in correct ratio...

So stumbling across this post. I currently am setting up for a hydro set up and my water quality is shit, EC .93ms from the well, I’m on well water, after that it gets chlorinated, softened and then a charcoal filter. So I think I’m going to just set up a small RO system for hydro, my question is will this unit work good?


with it being only a 50GPD filter it’s take me 15 hours to getthe 30 gallonsI need for my 2 dwc totes, I’m going to pre make my water through the week andfill up a 55gallon drum.

not that I’m trying to highjack the thread…or am I hmm butt…..

NoobgrowerLbc said:

My ph water out of the tap is 8.5. My questiom is if i filter it. Will it fome out more nuetral closer to 7?

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Ph down! I have the same issue Once the plants are over a foot and a half tall I don’t worry about pH no more

HydrizzalE said:

So stumbling across this post. I currently am setting up for a hydro set up and my water quality is shit, EC .93ms from the well, I’m on well water, after that it gets chlorinated, softened and then a charcoal filter. So I think I’m going to just set up a small RO system for hydro, my question is will this unit work good?

AQUATIC LIFE RO Buddie Four Stage Osmosis System, 50-gal - Chewy.com

Buy Aquatic Life RO Buddie Four Stage Osmosis System, 50-gal at Chewy.com. FREE shipping and the BEST customer service!

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with it being only a 50GPD filter it’s take me 15 hours to getthe 30 gallonsI need for my 2 dwc totes, I’m going to pre make my water through the week andfill up a 55gallon drum.

not that I’m trying to highjack the thread…or am I hmm butt…..

Initial well water quality

I have some questions/concerns with my well water quality. I think it’s a bit harsh for hydro but RO isn’t an option at the moment. Have the potential to set up a rain barrel down the road like next spring lol. So my well water is about all I have to use results: Hardness - 336ppm EC - 0.93ms...

www.rollitup.org

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That will work if you get a floater valve, but the smaller systems slough off a ton of waste water and the filters burn out too quick. I have one of these along with a prefilter unit:

I didn't realize that I already responded to this thread a couple of months ago. Disregard my second sales pitch.

lusidghost said:

That will work if you get a floater valve, but the smaller systems slough off a ton of waste water and the filters burn out too quick. I have one of these along with a prefilter unit:

Hydro Logic Evolution-RO High Flow RO System, 1200 GPD

Evolution-RO1000 High Flow RO System, 1000 GPD

hydrobuilder.com

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yea I’m not an overly big fan of the smaller systems but hoping a small system will work for the hydro cause that’s all I’d be using it for.

HydrizzalE said:

yea I’m not an overly big fan of the smaller systems but hoping a small system will work for the hydro cause that’s all I’d be using it for.

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That's all I use mine for and just got tired of buying new filters or waiting an ungodly amount of time for them to fill the tank. I could have probably avoided the tank by getting a floater valve and running it directly into my res, but they were set up in my kitchen and I had to slowly fill up a bunch of 5 gallon buckets and carry them to my grow room. Now the RO unit is in the grow room and everything is a lot easier.

So yeah, you can probably get away with it.

lusidghost said:

That's all I use mine for and just got tired of buying new filters or waiting an ungodly amount of time for them to fill the tank. I could have probably avoided the tank by getting a floater valve and running it directly into my res, but they were set up in my kitchen and I had to slowly fill up a bunch of 5 gallon buckets and carry them to my grow room. Now the RO unit is in the grow room and everything is a lot easier.

So yeah, you can probably get away with it.

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About how long/how many gallons did the filters last you with the smaller unit?
Another thing you did remind me of is waste. I’m curious how much waste the small one produces(and water quality I’d imagine would have a large factor in determining that) I don’t want to blow through 5 gallons of water for 1 gallon of filtered water.
You know you think you got it all figured out and then bam 3 weeks from clone receiving you find out how fuck you are lol I just never really thought of water as a factor, waters water right lol smh obviously not for hydro lol fuckin noobs

HydrizzalE said:

About how long/how many gallons did the filters last you with the smaller unit?
Another thing you did remind me of is waste. I’m curious how much waste the small one produces(and water quality I’d imagine would have a large factor in determining that) I don’t want to blow through 5 gallons of water for 1 gallon of filtered water.
You know you think you got it all figured out and then bam 3 weeks from clone receiving you find out how fuck you are lol I just never really thought of water as a factor, waters water right lol smh obviously not for hydro lol fuckin noobs

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Man Don’t remind me dude I fucking killed three clones of black jack super lemon Mac fucking with the bubbler system not adjusting the pH some of the roots weren’t getting wet because they were top route instead of bottom rooted man