Using tap water ?

[southbayLA154]

so i want to use my tap water ..
Its reading 180-200ppm
I got the camco kdf carbon filter with the pressure regulator hooked up directly to my outdoor faucet
But im getting the same ppm reading ..
Am i using it wrong or are those filters no good

Or can i use the the tap water at 180-200ppm and dechlorinate with air stone pump and just add my nutes after?

 

[Johiem]

Yes, you can use de-chlorinated tap water. Since you won't know what that 180-200ppm consists of I would start with a softer dose of nutes, just to be sure of possible chemical interactions and acceptance from the plant.

 

[southbayLA154]

Thanks , yeah ill go light on the nutrients ..
When should i start feeding nutes?
So the clones i transplanted into some ocean forest with extra perlite and put them outside in a greenhouse to flower ..
The soil should be good for 2-3 weeks till nutes are needed right?

 

[Johiem]

I'm not your dude for soil, strictly hydro, hey @WillieP know anyone playing in soil? Listen to this dude, period. He knows his shit. Little light in the experience department, but his first grow out performed my first probably 3... combined. I'm closing in on the end of my third grow and I think I might finally get closer to what he got off of one plant. I drool thinking about his girl. (That went a little weird, sorry)

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Thanks , yeah ill go light on the nutrients ..
When should i start feeding nutes?
So the clones i transplanted into some ocean forest with extra perlite and put them outside in a greenhouse to flower ..
The soil should be good for 2-3 weeks till nutes are needed right?

I take 3 or 5 gal ocean forest pots 6-8 weeks (starting with first transplant after true leaves form). Haven't seen it get "drained" yet

 

[WillieP]

I'm not your dude for soil, strictly hydro, hey @WillieP know anyone playing in soil?

I do not, Sorry no help here.
WillieP

 

[kratos015]

PPMs of what, exactly?

Could be why it seems that your filter doesn't "work". If the carbon filter is only designed to remove chlorine, but the ppms in your water is chloramine or something else then your filter won't "catch" them because it isn't designed to do that.

If you need to remove chloramine from water, it takes a bit of extra effort but is very much doable.

I would fill a sturdy rubbermaid tote with my tap water, then bubble it with airstones and chloramine remover for 24 hours or so.

Something like this will work.

Thanks , yeah ill go light on the nutrients ..
When should i start feeding nutes?
So the clones i transplanted into some ocean forest with extra perlite and put them outside in a greenhouse to flower ..
The soil should be good for 2-3 weeks till nutes are needed right?

What nutes are you using? Bottled products or organic top dress?

FFOF is good stuff, capable of being a good quality living soil. The problems arise when you use Fox Farm's bottled products, these products are synthetic and will kill off the microbes in your soil. This will effectively turn your grow into a psuedo-hydro grow, with the soil as the substrate.

Unless your plant is a heavy feeder, FFOF should last a young plant for 6-8 weeks. The benefit of a good top dress is that you can top dress 4-6 weeks in, this way it will be readily available in the next few weeks after decomposing.

Neem/kelp/crab meals combined are all you need for a top dress.

Once my seedlings are around 4 weeks, I top dress with neem and kelp meals, then cover that with compost. I do this every 1-2 weeks during veg, supplementing with fish emulsion in veg if a strain is a heavy feeder.

During flower, I like Dr Earth's "Life Organic All Purpose Fertilizer (4-6-5 NPK) because its a nice balanced blend of amendments that won't cause issues in the form of being "too hot". I supplement with fish hydrolysate during flower for heavy feeders.



You'll notice I omit Crab Meal; its amazing stuff but my water has so much calcium carbonate in it that the calcium levels in Crab Meal combined with my water results in Calcium toxicity. If I used RO water, I'd definitely use Crab Meal.

Be mindful of the contents of your water when considering nutrient blends/amendments.

Your first step is looking up your city/county's water report and finding out what the 180-200ppms consist of, then use that information to plan your nutrient regimen accordingly.

 

[PadawanWarrior]

PPMs of what, exactly?

Could be why it seems that your filter doesn't "work". If the carbon filter is only designed to remove chlorine, but the ppms in your water is chloramine or something else then your filter won't "catch" them because it isn't designed to do that.

If you need to remove chloramine from water, it takes a bit of extra effort but is very much doable.

I would fill a sturdy rubbermaid tote with my tap water, then bubble it with airstones and chloramine remover for 24 hours or so.

Something like this will work.





What nutes are you using? Bottled products or organic top dress?

FFOF is good stuff, capable of being a good quality living soil. The problems arise when you use Fox Farm's bottled products, these products are synthetic and will kill off the microbes in your soil. This will effectively turn your grow into a psuedo-hydro grow, with the soil as the substrate.

Unless your plant is a heavy feeder, FFOF should last a young plant for 6-8 weeks. The benefit of a good top dress is that you can top dress 4-6 weeks in, this way it will be readily available in the next few weeks after decomposing.

Neem/kelp/crab meals combined are all you need for a top dress.

Once my seedlings are around 4 weeks, I top dress with neem and kelp meals, then cover that with compost. I do this every 1-2 weeks during veg, supplementing with fish emulsion in veg if a strain is a heavy feeder.

During flower, I like Dr Earth's "Life Organic All Purpose Fertilizer (4-6-5 NPK) because its a nice balanced blend of amendments that won't cause issues in the form of being "too hot". I supplement with fish hydrolysate during flower for heavy feeders.



You'll notice I omit Crab Meal; its amazing stuff but my water has so much calcium carbonate in it that the calcium levels in Crab Meal combined with my water results in Calcium toxicity. If I used RO water, I'd definitely use Crab Meal.

Be mindful of the contents of your water when considering nutrient blends/amendments.

Your first step is looking up your city/county's water report and finding out what the 180-200ppms consist of, then use that information to plan your nutrient regimen accordingly.

I have water similar to yours, and you were the one that made me realize what was going on. I too have excess Ca in my well water. Then combined with crab meal, or oyster shell flour, it just adds more Ca. Causing problems due to the Ca toxicity. So I try to go super easy on amendments with more Ca.

I've started using a little citric acid in my water sometimes to remove some of the excess Ca from my soil. I read that it can bind with the Ca in the soil so that it can be flushed out. I know I'm not saying that right, but I forgot the scientific terms. Chelate it maybe, lol.

Anyways, I know runoff isn't a good way to test soil pH, but if I test it after watering with citric acid, the runoff is higher than normal. This makes me think that the Ca is getting released and raising the pH. If I keep giving the citric acid pH'd water the runoff slowly gets lower and closer to what my actual soil pH is.

I have the BlueLab soil probe too and my soil pH isn't high. It's around 6.3-6.5 usually, but the runoff can read 7.5-8.0 sometimes. I'm still using a little too much Ca in the amendments I'm using, but I'm starting to figure it out thanks to you.

You also reminded me to use more paragraphs to make everything easier to read, lol.

Thanks Kratos.

 

[kratos015]

I have water similar to yours, and you were the one that made me realize what was going on. I too have excess Ca in my well water. Then combined with crab meal, or oyster shell flour, it just adds more Ca. Causing problems due to the Ca toxicity. So I try to go super easy on amendments with more Ca.

I've started using a little citric acid in my water sometimes to remove some of the excess Ca from my soil. I read that it can bind with the Ca in the soil so that it can be flushed out. I know I'm not saying that right, but I forgot the scientific terms. Chelate it maybe, lol.

Anyways, I know runoff isn't a good way to test soil pH, but if I test it after watering with citric acid, the runoff is higher than normal. This makes me think that the Ca is getting released and raising the pH. If I keep giving the citric acid pH'd water the runoff slowly gets lower and closer to what my actual soil pH is.

I have the BlueLab soil probe too and my soil pH isn't high. It's around 6.3-6.5 usually, but the runoff can read 7.5-8.0 sometimes. I'm still using a little too much Ca in the amendments I'm using, but I'm starting to figure it out thanks to you.

You also reminded me to use more paragraphs to make everything easier to read, lol.

Thanks Kratos.

Interesting about the citric acid; I think the "technical term" you're looking for is breaking apart the molecular bond of the Calcium Carbonate itself?

I believe people also use citric acid for chloramine (chlorine+ammonia), because the citric acid breaks apart the molecular bond of chloramine and separates it into separate chlorine and ammonia molecules which allows it to evaporate. It could perhaps be this same thing happens with Calcium Carbonate, where the acid separates the Calcium from the Carbonate, thereby allowing it to become soluble with water so that it may evaporate?

I've never explored with citric acid, but if it seems to be providing good results for you then it must be breaking apart the molecular bond. Unless someone more knowledgeable has a better explanation, I'm just speculating at this point.

The only thing that worked for me was to remove all traces of Calcium from my soil mix. I stopped using OSF and Crab Meal entirely, which kind of sucks because I like Crab Meal a lot. Fortunately, Insect Frass has Chitin in it and is a good substitute.

Glad I could help. Good to help others learn things faster than I did. My yields were crippled until I figured out the Calcium issue. Funny thing is the Calcium toxicity isn't so much toxicity from excess Calcium per se but it actually has to do with how Calcium reacts with pH. Calcium itself is the pH buffer, so having too much Calcium in your soil will show you the exact same problems that excess Lime will cause.

Happy to be of service.

 

[PadawanWarrior]

Interesting about the citric acid; I think the "technical term" you're looking for is breaking apart the molecular bond of the Calcium Carbonate itself?

I believe people also use citric acid for chloramine (chlorine+ammonia), because the citric acid breaks apart the molecular bond of chloramine and separates it into separate chlorine and ammonia molecules which allows it to evaporate. It could perhaps be this same thing happens with Calcium Carbonate, where the acid separates the Calcium from the Carbonate, thereby allowing it to become soluble with water so that it may evaporate?

I've never explored with citric acid, but if it seems to be providing good results for you then it must be breaking apart the molecular bond. Unless someone more knowledgeable has a better explanation, I'm just speculating at this point.

The only thing that worked for me was to remove all traces of Calcium from my soil mix. I stopped using OSF and Crab Meal entirely, which kind of sucks because I like Crab Meal a lot. Fortunately, Insect Frass has Chitin in it and is a good substitute.

Glad I could help. Good to help others learn things faster than I did. My yields were crippled until I figured out the Calcium issue. Funny thing is the Calcium toxicity isn't so much toxicity from excess Calcium per se but it actually has to do with how Calcium reacts with pH. Calcium itself is the pH buffer, so having too much Calcium in your soil will show you the exact same problems that excess Lime will cause.

Happy to be of service.

Since my pH is showing good with the BlueLab, I was thinking the excess Ca was causing lockouts of other nutrients instead of the pH being the issue, but I'm still trying to figure this stuff out. This Ca issue is actually why I bought the BlueLab.

This Mulders chart made me start thinking more about how Ca works with other nutrients, but I still don't fully understand it.

 

[Moldy]

so i want to use my tap water ..
Its reading 180-200ppm
I got the camco kdf carbon filter with the pressure regulator hooked up directly to my outdoor faucet
But im getting the same ppm reading ..
Am i using it wrong or are those filters no good

Or can i use the the tap water at 180-200ppm and dechlorinate with air stone pump and just add my nutes after?

Those are pretty low numbers compared to what I use. I have 350-450 ppm and I just use it out of the tap after sitting in a watering can overnight. Fuck it, I've used straight RO water, 50/50 with tap, used an air stone overnight, and now just tap water with no air stone. But I don't use nutes, all organic soil amendments. I figure it doesn't kill my lawn and flowers so why not? Of course for cloning I use straight RO with a drop of hydrogen peroxide and soak the root riots in light solution of KLN first but after going in dirt they get tap water.

 

[RonnieB2]

so i want to use my tap water ..
Its reading 180-200ppm
I got the camco kdf carbon filter with the pressure regulator hooked up directly to my outdoor faucet
But im getting the same ppm reading ..
Am i using it wrong or are those filters no good

Or can i use the the tap water at 180-200ppm and dechlorinate with air stone pump and just add my nutes after?

I use tap water for everything. Its naturally 5.5-6,0 ph. 22ppm. And will put my plants in the ring with anybodys

 

[Dig it man]

I use tap water for everything. Its naturally 5.5-6,0 ph. 22ppm. And will put my plants in the ring with anybodys

New here i second that I use tap water on my plants all the time and I have monsters in gorgeous ones don't know how to do a picture yet but they're beautiful or just straight tap water

 

[RonnieB2]

Test your tap water regularly. Ph especially

 

[GrOwThMoNgeR]

I use tap water for everything. Its naturally 5.5-6,0 ph. 22ppm. And will put my plants in the ring with anybodys

We're sitting about the same ph but I checked the local water authority website that offered a little more info. For hydro you can use hard-water canna products which rock. Never had any cal-mag deficiency problems except for outdoors where they get ridiculous amounts of rain.

 

[GrOwThMoNgeR]

Can anyone help translate the cal and mag concentrations?