"City Water" & Organics. BAD IDEA!

[vonforne]

whats the name Unite? Brinkle or something?

 

[minds_I]

Hello all,

Sproutco,

I read elsewhere where you mention that the bubbling of tea for to long displaces CO2 molecules in solution causing pH to get very alkaline.

I bubble my water continuously. But it has a pH out of the tap at 7.8 and stays that way even after weeks of bubbling.

Why is that?

minds_I

 

[sproutco]

Let me look that up maybe I was stoned...Okay, bubbling for as little as 30 seconds would put more carbon dioxide (total disolved gases) into the water. Carbon dioxide would form carbonic acid and make the ph drop. If your water is highly buffered to a certain ph then the ph may not drop much because CO2's effect is weak. The ocean's surface water has gradually become more acidic from carbonic acid in time partially because of CO2 emmisions into the air like from car exhausts.

I, sprout, do not certify that any of that information is real or factual because I just smoked 1/2 joint.

 

[muddy waters]

re: chlorine, i do not de-gas my water with my bio-organic setup and have no problems, because i am also using a small percentage of fresh tap water in proportion to fish-tank/res water. a little bit of chlorine, as was stated, is actually helpful as it is a micronute plants use. if you are not replacing your entire rez with chlorinated tap water, the chlorine will be used and gassed off without killing the beneficial bacteria.

re: chloramine, yes, this needs to be treated with specific chemical tablets available at any decent aquarium store. chloramine will not gas off.

re: CO2, bubbling causes CO2 to leave water as gas. i suspect minds_I that your water has a high alcalinity (buffering capacity), hence no change in the pH with dissipated CO2.

re: distilled water, i would only opt for this in cases of extremely hard, alkaline water. otherwise the minerals contained in tap/well water are pretty valuable.

 

[sproutco]

^^ bubbling puts carbon dioxide into the water with other gases not out of it.

 

[Guest423]

whats the name Unite? Brinkle or something?

mine is called PUR, works good

 

[The Dopest]

hey guys how would i get a city water analysis to know whats in my water? also who here runs an R.O. filter? i have one and i swear i get 172 ppm from tap and 194 from the r.o.! wtf? somethins not right. i ask myself "do i have it hooked up backwards?" j/k but does anyone else have these probs?

 

[muddy waters]

sproutco actually i think it depends on how you're bubbling the water and how much CO2 is present in the water and in the atmosphere but as a general rule, in aquatic gardening where the plants can only get CO2 in solution, it's common knowledge that any disturbance at all of the water surface tends to cause CO2 to leave water for the atmosphere.

 

[sproutco]

^^ Actually I think we are both right. Disturbances would cause co2 to leave but bubbling would be adding more gases back in. There would be an equilibrium of how much co2 is disolved in the water.

 

[Closet Funk]

I used some city water for one watering on my mums and one of them died. I think it fucked up the PH. The other one survived though.

 

[pico]

I have used city water all over the place and never really had too much trouble with it.

The best grow I have done yet was off the water grid. I was living in a place where there was no city water and so we piped the water from the rain gutters in to giant holding tanks. The holding tanks were then hooked up to a pressurized system to push the water in to the house etc. I didn't really think about it at the time, but the plants were the healthiest I have grown yet. It was a soil organic grow with all kinds of good stuff mixed in to the soil.

Maybe I should start collecting rain water again.

 

[Guest]

I use distilled water since I have the stuff to make it myself. As for it being bad I don't know what your talking about as I do not usually give the plants just plain distilled water. The reason I use it is because I like to start fresh knowing what I am giving to the plants. Distilled water is just plain water with all the minerals removed. It still is real water as it is still H2O in the molecular form. It is PH balanced and is easier to work with in my opinion. As for harming the production of beneficial soil micorbes I add them through a nute that also supplies food for them.


If you really are interested in learning more about distilled water check out wikipedia Distilled Water - Wikipedia.org

 

[ballast]

i use rain water when available, else let tap water sit several hours til that swimming pool smell is gone, shallow container works best. never use softened water; the excess sodium bad for plants...

 

[SCF]

i use rain water when available, else let tap water sit several hours til that swimming pool smell is gone, shallow container works best. never use softened water; the excess sodium bad for plants...

Rain water can carry spores and bugs gotta be carefull. But does have a little bit of Nitrogen in it

 

[ballast]

Rain water can carry spores and bugs gotta be carefull. But does have a little bit of Nitrogen in it

oops doh wasn't thinking of that, been used to outdoor growing (veggies!) long time and need to get used to being careful of what comes indoors, thanx man can we filter rain water to use it safely without removing valuable nitrogen and trace minerals?

 

[SCF]

Yes sir. Only way would be to boil it, which would kill off just about anything. More of a pain than its worth. Thats what kelp is for. But if your outdoors. More the better hehe. ANd its freaking hot right now holy cow

 

[Soulstice]

What about spring water?

 

[allorganic]

Here's my 2 cents. Personally I think reverse osmosis water is the best you can use as long as you are using a complete nutrient package. I just read an experiment where they tested two sets of plants, one with pure water and another with pure water that had been microwaved. The plants that were given the water that had been microwaved did very poorly. It didn't say but I thought that you may get similarly poor results with distilled water. It isn't vibrated like the microwaved water but it's molecules are vibrated when it's boiled off and converted to steam.

Another story I read said that municipal water treatment plants are moving away from chlorine and using chloramines instead. The difference is that chloramines are more stable and will not outgas like chlorine does. Even when exposed to sunlight and oxygenated, the chloramines in the water could last for weeks.

If you're going to use city water and are not sure which they use you can call your water company and ask, tell them you keep aquariums if you need a cover story.
Or just buy an RO filter.

Now that I think back, my first crop was grown with water that I distilled in a machine that made 4 liters in 18 hours, and I don't remember any water related problems and the weed was excellent.

 

[BLunTeD4LifE]

i been using bio bizz nutes for the past 2 grows now, mixing with tap water that i left sitting overnight...

never had any troubles... and always have really nice and healthy plants to...