I notice a good majority of you all buy water from stores. But in the long run this can seriously get expensive and most important the hassle of making the trips to the supermarket to buy precious water. I've decided as a lot of others do, to use tap water. I know with tap water you find chlorine, fluoride and many other unwanted chemicals in it that wont benefit your plants, or could potentially harm it. I'm wondering, is there any tips of tricks to get the most beneficial tap water? I live in a city, so I'm not getting my water from a well. I've heard (correct me if I'm wrong) if you leave a jug of water out for 24 hours, the chlorine will evaporate? Anyone have any suggestions on getting better tap water? Thanks.
what i do is... i have a brita drip filter and some corkable jugs... i just run all my water through the filter and pour it in the jugs... pH balance to 7.0, let the jug sit for a day to evaporate gases, and cork it... always worked for me...
When I do a straight watering without nutes I use tap water. I live in a mountain state in a city and have reasonably decent quality water for plants. My city's water quality report with all of the nutrient, ph, and ppm analysis in available online. One thing that it does state is that chloramine is used as an additive. Choramine is a combination of chlorine and ammonia and is much more stable than chlorine and will not evaporate like chlorine does. If your water source is not fairly close to a pure source ... i.e. mountain resorvoirs ... chances are that you will have a lot more minerals in your water and it might not be good for plants. If your water comes from a well you will most certainly have high concentrations of minerals. If you live in the plains or coastal areas your water quality will probably be suspect. In these areas you would be better off with distilled or RO water with Cal Mag supplements. The age old advice is to leave your tap water out for 24 hours to evaporate the chlorine. This works for chlorine but not chloramine. If you really want to make sure you are being safe with tap water you should dechlorinate it, or remove the chlorine and chloramine from it. The most accessible way to do this is to go a pet supply store and go to the fish supplies section. They will have water purification additives that will neutralize the additives in tap water that would kill fish. The logic here is that if it is safe for fish then plants will be okay with it as well. Some of the drops that are available also condition the water with some sort of bacteria that is good for fish ... I'm not so sure thatis a good thing for plants so I just buy the drops that say they dechlorinate water and nothing else. While I have definitely seen a better response from my plants using the pet store drops, I do have a feeling that these drops might also inhibit calcium, magnesium, iron, and sulphur which are all helpful in small doses to MJ but might not necessarily be good for your guppy. These minerals are normally present in tap water but the purification drops do neutralize some unspecified minerals. So I am starting to think that I need to be using either a Cal Mag supplement or some other trace mineral supplement when I do not use these drops ... i.e. nutes with distilled or RO water. Dolomite lime will provide calcium and magnesium. Epsom salts provide magnesium and sulfur. And if you are in flowering and feeling spunky black strap molasses will give you calcium, magnesium, and iron. Obviously I am still trying to figure this out but I think that what I represent as fact is accurate. One other thing I should add is that the plants also seem to respond better to luke warm water over cold water. Not cold but not hot either. Plants do not like very cold water. That is the best way to see how plants react to overwatering. Also, most tap water is going to be alkaline so you need to get that ph down to around 7 or a little lower for the ideal feeding. This is my experience getting the most of my out of my tap water so I can limit my purchases of distlled water. It is still a work in progress but I thought I would share what I have learned. I hope this helps.
I keep a 5 gallon bucket 3/4 full bubbling for a 2 or 3 days and then I jug it, no problems yet. I reserved distilled for the little gals.
I use tap water but RI has great water. I like sickbastards line of thinking if I lived in an area with hard water. RO machines are awesome also.
Thanks everyone and especially OneSickBastard for there response. This will give me something to think about. I might check out my local pet stores and see what they have in the fish section.