What are you using for water?

ExoticKangaroo

Well-Known Member
Curious what everyone uses for water? I'm using rainwater right now but sometimes my supply runs low and I'm in an area that rains a fair amount even. My tap water has chlorine and fluoride and a bunch of other junk in it. Does everyone make their own RO water or what?
 

TreeFarmerCharlie

Well-Known Member
Curious what everyone uses for water? I'm using rainwater right now but sometimes my supply runs low and I'm in an area that rains a fair amount even. My tap water has chlorine and fluoride and a bunch of other junk in it. Does everyone make their own RO water or what?
The chlorine/chloramine in tap water would need to be about 100x above acceptable levels to even begin to be a problem with plants. I used to filter my water through an RO filter, but got tired of all the waste, so I switched back to tap water over a year ago and have noticed no difference at all in the health of my plants. Believe it, or not, chlorine is actually an essential micronutrient for plant growth. If they get to toxic levels of chlorine then they will get burned leaves in a similar way that they do when they receive toxic levels of nitrogen.
 

ExoticKangaroo

Well-Known Member
Wow. If I could have simply been using tap water I'm gonna get a wicked good laugh out of this. I've been busting my ass setting out five gallon buckets under my and my neighbors rain gutters and then transferring that water into gallon jugs for storage when I'd see rain on the forecast. Hahhaha. Well I have some plants 4 weeks into flower right now should I do what I've been doin or try the switch to tap now?
 

2Hearts

Well-Known Member
No tap water is a killer, i read that here in a thread where the grower killed his plants and family letting them drink from the chloride fountain.

But if you wanted to check can you get a water report online, your company is legally bound to post it unless you live in some country like Sierra Leone. Normally chlorine and fluride has to be within safe and very low levels which is totally fine to drink and use on plants.
 

TreeFarmerCharlie

Well-Known Member
Wow. If I could have simply been using tap water I'm gonna get a wicked good laugh out of this. I've been busting my ass setting out five gallon buckets under my and my neighbors rain gutters and then transferring that water into gallon jugs for storage when I'd see rain on the forecast. Hahhaha. Well I have some plants 4 weeks into flower right now should I do what I've been doin or try the switch to tap now?
My plants seem pretty happy with unfiltered tap water.
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Oldreefer

Well-Known Member
Guess I'm lucky to live over one of the largest aquafers in the USA...getting my water from a well....a slight ph adjustment and I'm good.
For seedlings I only use DI for the first two weeks.
 

Chief_Broom

Well-Known Member
Nothing wrong with tap water but for my outdoor grows it always seemed to me that plants prefer rainwater. The day after a good soaking rain my plants always appeared to put out the most new growth compared to the day after watering with tap water.

I even go so far as to set up a couple of rain barrels to catch rainwater off my house for watering.
 

ExoticKangaroo

Well-Known Member
I’ve never seen rainwater with a pH of even 6. And I live in the middle of nowhere in Interior Alaska. Not some industrial setting.
I'll send pictures if you need proof I guess. Like I said I would assume it is from running through the gutters. They aren't pristine by any means. And regardless I'm not here to argue the validity of the ph of my rain water lol
 

ExoticKangaroo

Well-Known Member
After doing a minute of research I find the ph of roofing shingles to be about 9. The rain hits my shingles first and then the gutters. I would assume this accounts for the difference in ph.
 

NightOwlBono

Well-Known Member
I use my aquarium water and rain water in veg.
Switch to straight rain water in bloom

I live where chloramine is only used heavily in the spring melt off and maybe if a massive rain comes through and raises the river level.
When rain water isn’t available I just airate my tap water in a 20 gallon garbage pail and use that.

I run a 3.5w dual outlet air pump and top off my bucket with tap water after watering it takes no time of of my day and maybe cost $1.50-$2 a month on electricity

My organic soil doesn’t seem to mind
 
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ExoticKangaroo

Well-Known Member
I use my aquarium water and rain water in veg.
Switch to straight rain water in bloom

I live where chloramine is only used heavily in the spring melt off and maybe if a massive rain comes through and raises the river level.
When rain water isn’t available I just airate my tap water in a 20 gallon garbage pail and use that.

My organic soil doesn’t seem to mind
What's your aquarium water levels like ph and ppm wise? I have two aquariums. Are you using your water from water changes then?
 

NightOwlBono

Well-Known Member
My tap averages 7.0-7.6 ph 170-220 ppm
My aquarium is pretty heavily planted and moderately low stock so my nitrates rarely hit 30-40ppm at that point I’ll w/c

If I had fed the plants compost tea recently I’ll use rain water or “cleaner” aquarium water.
If I haven’t fed tea recently I’ll take a sponge out of one of my filters and clean it in 5 gallons of tank water and feed the heavy nitrate water to the plants
-edit-ppm in aquarium usually 240-300 depending if I’ve added any thrive+s all in one shrimp safe fertilizer
Ph 6.8-7.3
 

xtsho

Well-Known Member
Straight from the tap. No bubbling, sitting out, etc... I have chlorine and chloramine in my water. The quantities used to keep tap water safe are not enough to cause any harm to your plants. However, there are places that have other crap in their water that needs to be taken into account. But chlorine and chloramine won't hurt a thing even in soil grows. They've done studies where they found that any microbial life harmed by those chemicals rebounds to previous levels within days. People water houseplants all the time with straight tap water. It doesn't kill them. Cannabis isn't some plant that requires anything different or can be harmed any easier than other plants.

Cannabis can be grown the same as any other plant. Same water, same nutrients, etc... and thrive. In fact when I was doing flood and drain I used sodium hypochlorite AKA chlorine - Clorox bleach in my reservoirs to keep everything sterile and prevent root rot. Same thing with DWC. People bubbling and doing all these extra steps with their water are just wasting time in most cases.

The damn nutrients I've been using for years have chlorine listed as not more than 2.00% I've never had any issues at all. Unlike what I see in the Marijuana Plants Problem section where people are bubbling, boiling, sitting out their water for days and using product X, Y, and Z plus another half dozen things and have crappy unhealthy plants. It's a plant. Give it tap water and food and it will grow.
 
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NightOwlBono

Well-Known Member
Straight from the tap. No bubbling, sitting out, etc... I have chlorine and chloramine in my water. The quantities used to keep tap water safe are not enough to cause any harm to your plants. However, there are places that have other crap in their water that needs to be taken into account. But chlorine and chloramine won't hurt a thing even in soil grows. They've done studies where they found that any microbial life harmed by those chemicals rebounds to previous levels within days. People water houseplants all the time with straight tap water. It doesn't kill them. Cannabis isn't some plant that requires anything different or can be harmed any easier than other plants.

Cannabis can be grown the same as any other plant. Same water, same nutrients, etc... and thrive. In fact when I was doing flood and drain I used sodium hypochlorite AKA chlorine - Clorox bleach in my reservoirs to keep everything sterile and prevent root rot. Same thing with DWC. People bubbling and doing all these extra steps with their water are just wasting time in most cases.

The damn nutrients I've been using for years have chlorine listed as not more than 2.00% I've never had any issues at all. Unlike what I see in the Marijuana Plants Problem section where people are bubbling, boiling, sitting out their water for days and using product X, Y, and Z plus another half dozen things and have crappy unhealthy plants. It's a plant. Give it tap water and food and it will grow.
I agree with you keep it simple it’s a weed it will grow.

But one thing I will mention is the plants don’t care about chlorine or chloramine,and your right the microbes it kills will come back in ....days.
All I’m saying is if I have rain water or aquarium water I’d rather have those beneficial microbes alive as long as possible before killing them for no reason.
 

2Hearts

Well-Known Member
Thats the problem with cannabis thesedays, so much bad ph info that most rock up here never even having tried it and already spent big on ro ph meters and drops.

If something has 100ppm of acid or akali thats really fuck all in the grand scheme of things when it comes to water for soil even most soiless.
 

2Hearts

Well-Known Member
I think it was Springwarch on the uk tv channel BBC1 yesterday that said there were 7 billiin microbes in a table spoon of soil - tap water chlorine wouldnt even touch the edges of that, death would be few and far between and probably replaced in a matter of hours at most.

I agree with you keep it simple it’s a weed it will grow.

But one thing I will mention is the plants don’t care about chlorine or chloramine,and your right the microbes it kills will come back in ....days.
All I’m saying is if I have rain water or aquarium water I’d rather have those beneficial microbes alive as long as possible before killing them for no reason.
 
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