Can the waters PH cause this?

[BeardedGuyGrows]

if growing with organics, ditch the r.o water.......your not using synthetics that would benefit from it. no need for using it. just bubble away for 24h.

 

[Dtraderbudz23]

honestly my friend with living soil i go water straight out of the tap into 30 gal res. bubbled for 24 hours before use......then use kelp juice to lower my ph to the right level....i dont even ph anymore i just know im in the right spot and no problem....i also grow using living soil and have great looking plants......dont use molasses.....its not needed...just...just water...that is all.

I have a rock air pump thing I assume using that gets rid of the chlorine? I've seen mrcanuk do that. I originally bought that for compost tea but haven't used it yet.

 

[BeardedGuyGrows]

I have a rock air pump thing I assume using that gets rid of the chlorine? I've seen mrcanuk do that. I originally bought that for compost tea but haven't used it yet.

Yessir. That'll do. Mister Canuck knows his stuff. Im based off his grow and it's provin to work. Switch to what Aquaman and I said to do and give it a few days things should do smooth back out. It'll always take extra time with organics.....it's not a fast fix.

 

[MIGrampaUSA]

if growing with organics, ditch the r.o water.......your not using synthetics that would benefit from it. no need for using it. just bubble away for 24h.

I use RO water to eliminate chloramine. Choramine is much more common in municipal water supplies now and it doesn't dissipate like chlorine gas. (Bubbling will not eliminate chloramine as it takes months to break down) I also don't want my microbe colonies affected by a disinfectant even if they do eventually replenish themselves.

@BeardedGuyGrows what's your reason for bubbling your water for 24h?
I bubble mine, but not until I remove the chloramine and have my Terp Tea in the water. After 24 hrs, I have a foaming frothy nutrient tea to serve my babies. The microbes are well oxygenated and the O2 seems to be the catalyst to getting the microbes to break down the organics for faster use by the plants.

 

[BeardedGuyGrows]

Honestly your making much work r.o water has all your good taken out of the water. I live in municipality and all I do is bubble the water. As long as the smell is gone you're good. If using r.o. calcium... magnesium isn't really much in r.o water as it's e.c is 0....ECT. could be a start to his problem.

 

[MIGrampaUSA]

My municipality uses chloramine and no amount of bubbling will remove it effectively.

You can filter it out using a carbon filter or you can neutralize it using ascorbic acid (vitamin c)... But you won't remove chloramine through dissapation. Bubbling only works using chlorine gas which is no longer the industry standard.

Epsom salts replaces magnesium stripped out by the RO process. Cheap and easy...

 

[BeardedGuyGrows]

Where trying to fix his problem though..not you'res lol. Let's see what this does to fix his lol. If he's unsure or not.....it's the the place to start. R.O water has its place....just not in organics....I'm my opinion. Others may chime in here.

 

[BeardedGuyGrows]

My municipality uses chloramine and no amount of bubbling will remove it effectively.

You can filter it out using a carbon filter or you can neutralize it using ascorbic acid (vitamin c)... But you won't remove chloramine through dissapation. Bubbling only works using chlorine gas which is no longer the industry standard.

Epsom salts replaces magnesium stripped out by the RO process. Cheap and easy...

though if you have good progress using r.o water.....thats awesome. my water is really very good so i dont need r.o.....i could actually give it right to the plants but i take precautions lol.....i know more then a few people who do using r.o water with organics and have had 0 issues.....i think it all comes down to plants genes maybe...

 

[MIGrampaUSA]

Where trying to fix his problem though..not you'res lol. Let's see what this does to fix his lol. If he's unsure or not.....it's the the place to start. R.O water has its place....just not in organics....I'm my opinion. Others may chime in here.

I absolutely feel like RO water has it's place, and the original poster has legitimate concerns about dumping non-filtered water that has been chemically altered by his municipality to a pH of between 9-10. If he doesn't remove that, then his water will affect the soil and it's buffering ability over time.

 

[BeardedGuyGrows]

I absolutely feel like RO water has it's place, and the original poster has legitimate concerns about dumping non-filtered water that has been chemically altered by his municipality to a pH of between 9-10. If he doesn't remove that, then his water will affect the soil and it's buffering ability over time.

i really dont think his plants look all that bad lol.

 

[freezeland2]

i really dont think his plants look all that bad lol.

Because he cut off all the effected leaves

 

[MIGrampaUSA]

i really dont think his plants look all that bad lol.

I don't either tbh ... but he still has legitimate concerns over that chemically altered high pH. Municipalities do this intentionally to prevent lead leaching into drinking water supplies.

 

[BeardedGuyGrows]

I think he ment his r.o water was that high didn't he lol. I'm confused now lol.

 

[MIGrampaUSA]

I think he ment his r.o water was that high didn't he lol. I'm confused not lol.

His RO water is running a high pH ... but the reason it's high isn't because its RO water. It's because the pH remains unchanged after the RO process. This is normal despite sounding against the logic of filtering it. This stripped water, even though its still has a high pH, has zero buffering ability and will be easily handled by his soil. At least with my municipal source, it takes a lot to move the needle downward on it's pH if it's left unfiltered. After filtering, pH is easily altered by the soil because the water has been stripped of its buffers.

 

[BeardedGuyGrows]

Right. So instead of using r.o...use tap water...less problems to work out......even better actually ive started using rain water...properly pHed. I myself couldn't figure r.o water out lol....I killed a bunch cus I sucked at using bottle nutes lmao.

 

[BeardedGuyGrows]

His RO water is running a high pH ... but the reason it's high isn't because its RO water. It's because the pH remains unchanged after the RO process. This is normal despite sounding against the logic of filtering it. This stripped water, even though its still has a high pH, has zero buffering ability and will be easily handled by his soil. At least with my municipal source, it takes a lot to move the needle downward on it's pH if it's left unfiltered. After filtering, pH is easily altered by the soil because the water has been stripped of its buffers.

btw i love your outdoor green house.....looks amazing

 

[MIGrampaUSA]

Right. So instead of using r.o...use tap water...less problems to work out......even better actually ive started using rain water...properly pHed. I myself couldn't figure r.o water out lol....I killed a bunch cus I sucked at using bottle nutes lmao.

In his case, that's not correct. That tap water, unfiltered with a chemically altered high pH will affect the buffering ability over time. Why? Because that high pH is not naturally there ... They are adding chemicals to raise the pH to a level that makes it difficult to leach lead from old pipes. This was not the problem it is today in my area prior to the Flint, MI municipal water issue where lead leached into the municipal water supply. Before that, I didn't have the issues I have with my water source that I have today.

P.S. Thanks on the greenhouse ... It's still a work in progress. New pictures will be coming soon.

 

[MIGrampaUSA]

In his case, that's not correct. That tap water, unfiltered with a chemically altered high pH will affect the buffering ability over time. Why? Because that high pH is not naturally there ... They are adding chemicals to raise the pH to a level that makes it difficult to leach lead from old pipes. This was not the problem it is today in my area prior to the Flint, MI municipal water issue where lead leached into the municipal water supply. Before that, I didn't have the issues I have with my water source that I have today.

P.S. Thanks on the greenhouse ... It's still a work in progress. New pictures will be coming soon.

Replying to my own post ... lol

I wanted to follow up on this ... When I left college in the 80's, my first job was with a municipality. Chlorine gas was the standard back then. It's horribly dangerous stuff! So the switch to chloramines was motivated by safety as much as it was it's stability dissolved in water. Much has changed in the industry since I left it and I don't pretend to know how its done today.

I'm from Mid Michigan. I'm in the capital area about an hour's drive from Flint. It used to be my water pH'd in the low to mid 8's out of the tap. Then suddenly it began pHing high 9's to low 10's. I looked at a lot of issues ... I thought it was a soil issue. I changed from Ocean Forrest to Lush. Lush is a much richer in organics product but the switch didn't fix the problem all by itself. Filtering my water did as long as I added back the magnesium and to a much lesser extent ... calcium.

Now much of what has been said is true about water ... normally ... but there's something different about my source water today when comparing it to even a few years ago. I went through a few grows that I was disappointed with before I switched to filtering and then re-adding the minerals at the end. The original poster's story mirrors mine to the point where it seems like his water source may be the same as mine. His experience is almost identical.

 

[N1ghtL1ght]

Question is what is that for a soil because pots are large plants are small... even a less rich organic soil should already contain enough food to carry through veg... even with RO as calcitic or dolomite used to buffer the peat up to ~6.5pH.

 

[Aqua Man]

Imho:

Chlorine can be off gassed and chloramine cant. The limit to drinking water is 4ppm with most being around 1-2ppm.

With organics ideally you want it out but its not going to wipe out you microbes as when it reacts it is destroyed in the process and there is simply not enough unless severely flushing the media to be a concern.

In teas however this is a different story and should be considered for removal.

If your worried wither way 1 gram per 100gal of water of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) will remove 1 ppm of either chlorine or chloramine.