Reverse osmosis, remineralization or not??

When selecting a reverse osmosis system should I get the one that has a remineralization stage to add trace minerals back into the water? Im not sure if it is better to just add micro nutes and cal mag or if the trace minerals help.

No, just buy a bottle of cal-mag

Depends. How much more does it cost?

A bottle of micros or cal/mag will work just fine.

You are correct about having to choose one. RO or distilled water can actually rob nutrients from the plant.

I use a 7 stage RO/DI setup for my water. I never trust a TDS reading above 0 because it means there is something in the water I didn't put in it and I have no idea what it is unless I test for it. Just speaking for myself and coming from a reef aquarium background where water quality and parameters are of the utmost importance.

Thanks I am probably going to get a 5 stage that has Reverse Osmosis and Deionization, but going to skip the added minerals. I am also going to be drinking the water and I don't really like water with added minerals. Being able to control exactly what gets added makes more sense

Does anybody know how to give people +rep? I'm a newb

whitebb2727 said:

Depends. How much more does it cost?

A bottle of micros or cal/mag will work just fine.

You are correct about having to choose one. RO or distilled water can actually rob nutrients from the plant.

Click to expand...

It only costs about $40 more for the extra minerals stage, but I'm gonna skip it

Check out apec they are American made RO untis. You can also use a big blue filter housing with crushed sea coral calcium filter to remineralize

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Rollitup mobile app

Those are the exact ones I've been looking at, they have portable ones that attach to the sink

p0opstlnksal0t said:

Check out apec they are American made RO untis. You can also use a big blue filter housing with crushed sea coral calcium filter to remineralize

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Rollitup mobile app

Click to expand...

just a R/O system is fine , no need to add back anything if your organic then your mix will handle the R/O just fine like rain water ,
for bottled nutes add your Cal/Mag to the R/O water 1st before adding anything else to the water Very Important !
keeps the nutes from combining into solids & settling useless on the bottom of of yer res / tank / bucket
when mixing up your nute concoction pay attn to the fact if u add your cal/mag after adding the nutes it will soon be sand like

Been using hydrologic for years. Good products

If you a human drink ro water , calcium from you're bones will be leached , the mineral additive is probably a form of chalk or lime stone with cal and mag , for feeding plants with the ro i do agree with just adding some calmag .

The remineralization option is great for drinking water and would probably be fine for the plants too but the water comes out at pH 8 or so and that's not so good. If that part can be switched off so you can just make plain RO water for your plants it would be perfect. We buy RO water for drinking and for my plants as we don't have town water and get our house water from a large dugout on my property. Fine for showering or washing clothes but not fit for human consumption. The pets and chickens get it tho and seems fine for them.

I grind a little pink Himalayan sea salt into my glass of RO water and put some on the top of the coffee when I make a pot too. Tastes a lot better with the salt which is not salty tasting like table salt.

I used RO water with DWC for over 10 years without ever using CalMag and never saw deficiencies but have been using it for the last few years at about 1/4 to 1/2 of the recommended dose. I have always used a bit of epsom salts when growing tho as I used to get a little Mg deficiency. CalMag is way over-used by a lot of people and ends up causing problems. Especially those that use tap water which usually has more than enough Ca and Mg in it that extra CalMag is overkill.

Quality nutes already have Ca and Mg in the proper proportions in them so very little CalMag is needed.