Hard water micro + R/O water = bad news

[sickboy]

Im new to these forums. Not sure how to put pics in the posts themselves, but I managed to put some in my gallery of some sick plants I've been dealing with. I put them up because I was planning to ask for help. Now I believe I have the problem figured out but want to explain why I only have pics of sick plants. Here it goes.
To make a long story short, after I figured out that my hard water was too damn hard, I bought a R/O machine and began using that water to mix nutes. Well I was also still using the GH Micro for hard water and I believe this lead to my current situation. I was seeing signs of nutrient shortages but had no idea why. I was using super clean water, measuring the nutes carefully, ending up at about 900 ppm. Should be good. So as I was typing the message to ask for help from you guys, it came to me. I was thinking the hard water micro is fromulated for hard water by not including (at all or as much) certain shit, namely cal, mag, iron, zinc, and whatever else because they assume you'll be getting these things from the water itself. Me using R/O water caused the plants to not get these things from the water or the nutes. I was shorting them from both sides. What I came up with is to cut my R/O water with my hard water to the tune of about 300 ppm or so, PH balance it, then add nutes. I started this last night and I think I'm already seeing signs of improvement. Not a lot just yet, but there were a couple leaves that showed just the slightest bit of interveinal yellowing, and I believe that they've already started to green back up for me. Problem solved? I hope so. They're scheduled to go into the flowering room in a few more days and I'm hoping to have them all better by then.
Thanks anyways for the help I know I would have gotten had I asked for it. If anybody has anything to add, I'd love to hear it.

 

[REGISTRD]

just use CAL-MAG
No need to mix ro and tap together to get your base.

 

[5tickynubz]

Sounds like you figured it out. Although it's probally worth picking up a bottle of regular micro. The problem with adding tap water is your adding an unknown amount of cal,mag,sodium,etc. So you lose some of the benefits of RO. Here's a good read on cal/mag you might find useful.

 

[PureSugar]

If you continue mixing RO and tap water make sure your tap water doesn't contain chloramine as that isn't good for plants and can't be evaporated like chlorine. Also if you find that your tap water doesn't contain chloramine, that you let it sit out for at least 24 hrs and preferably 48 hrs or even longer to allow the chlorine to evaporate.

 

[sickboy]

Thanks for the tips, guys. The water coming out of my faucet is straight up well water. No softener, no chlorine, no chloromine, no nothin. Measures like over 800 ppm by itself. I've been going back and forth about the cal-mag vs. cutting the ro w the hard water, and the main reason is this: because my water is so hard, and because it's so cold here in michigan, my ro machine takes for fucking ever to produce anything. That being the case, the main reason I would continue cutting w hard water is so it won't take as long to make the water for my res changes. I'm running two at 75 gallons a piece. Thats 150 gallons a week, not counting the everyday top offs. Bottom line is I know I'm supposed to use the cal-mag or regular water micro, and thats what I'll do. Cutting the ro is just allowing me to get by. Thanks again for the help, guys.

 

[truckn]

Hello, I know this thread is exactly a year old but I found it on google. Because it seems reading your post you had the same problem as me. I also live in michigan and I was using hard water then I switched to RO and everything went to hell. I've been trying to use cal mag and bushmaster ( in case it was lock up ). Nothing has seemed to help I was also using GH micro before this to and I don't have any real micro nutrient because I always figured that the advanced line up should account for everything.

I know i'm a new user here and my first post is sort of thread jacking with a combination of grave digging threads but this seems extremely similar to my situation so I was hoping if the OP is still active mind sharing what brand of micro you used. And if the problem eventually subsided. Thanks.