Distilled Water in DWC

Just want to let y'all know that running a DWC system using all distilled is baaad. After about 2 months of using a distilled sterile UC RDWC, and switching over to 75% filtered tap/25% distilled, many problems have been alleviated. The pH is now stable between 5.6 and 6.0. The PPM is dropping consistently rather than spiking at random times. Plants are showing no more evidence of burn/deficiency combinations. Root growth is much more robust and a lot cleaner looking. New growth is a much more fluorescent lively color rather than being a dark forest green. Plants are also drinking at least 50% if not 2x as much water. Judging solely off the past 3 days of vegetative growth, using filtered hard water cut with 25% distilled can probably provide you a plant 3-4x the size that distilled water could in 1 month of veg. and probably 8-9x as large by harvest. The aromas emanating from the plants are also much better. My dick might get a little hard every time I LST <3 <3 TFW LST aromaz.

I have decent tap water where I'm at now as well - it's nice not having to buy gallons at a time. When my plants are small I do a single pass through a carbon filter to reduce the minerals down to about .1 EC. But once the plants get bigger and start to take off in growth, I don't bother passing through the carbon filter. The water where I am has a decent amount of calcium in it so I haven't needed any Cal/Mag supplementation either.

Aye, I would use straight tap on the mature babies, but my region of the country is undergoing heavy fracking. I can taste the water quality going down almost weekly. In fact, I can't even drink more than a few sips of tap water anymore. There's too much chloramine/discarded chemicals from all the addicts pee in the city for me to feel safe running it in DWC without having a sterile system. So long as I'm doing semi-organic and using bennies, I'm going to keep carbon filtering and cutting with distilled water.

PetFlora said:

This makes no sense

Distilled water is simply water void of measurable dissolved solids. DS can be naturally occurring from the underground aquifers, but do they exist in the ratios we want? NO!

And when deficient to neutralize the water, so that it doesn't prematurely eat the concrete water pipes, the municipal water plants add hardness. Who knows what quality they buy? Probably cheap shit from China, or some country where standards are not important

Back to the OPs issue, most likely you are using a nutrient made for tap water, and therefore void of CaMg and other mineral elements.

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Sewer pipes and storm drains are concrete. Water pipes are not concrete. Concrete has compression strength but water pressure pushing it apart would cause failure.

Yep. My bad. Will edit my post, but the rest is spot on.

SnapsProvolone said:

Sewer pipes and storm drains are concrete. Water pipes are not concrete. Concrete has compression strength but water pressure pushing it apart would cause failure.

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PetFlora said:

This makes no sense

Distilled water is simply water void of measurable dissolved solids= hardness. DS can be naturally occurring from the underground aquifers, but do they exist in the ratios we want? NO!

And when deficient to neutralize the water, the municipal water plants add hardness.

Who knows what quality they buy? Probably cheap shit from China, or some country where standards are not important. All calcium is he same right? Not if it's contaminated

Back to the OPs issue, most likely you are using a nutrient made for tap water, and therefore void of CaMg and other mineral elements.

Add Ca Mg, or if your nutrient lacks microminerals, CaMg+

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My tap water comes from an aquifer that is high in calcium (from shell material/sandstone). If I add additional calcium I run into issues. Every tap water is different. You are painting with a broad brush there. Some have decent water sources, some don't. Where I'm currently at, I love the tap water; nice pH and mineral content for growing that isn't too high on the hardness scale.

This is complete nonsense. Like Pet flora said, distilled water is just water. You are responsible for making sure the right stuff is in the water.

Of course DWC won't work if you just use water. You're supposed to add nutrients!

Moishe said:

Just want to let y'all know that running a DWC system using all distilled is baaad.

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churchhaze said:

This is complete nonsense. Like Pet flora said, distilled water is just water. You are responsible for making sure the right stuff is in the water.

Of course DWC won't work if you just use water. You're supposed to add nutrients!

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Who said anything about not using nutrients? lol

I must have misread something through the thread, what is the controversial nonsense? Using tap water instead of RO? At my last location, the tap water was too hard and I had to use RO - where I'm at now, the tap water is actually really decent according to water quality analysis and plants are doing great with it and plus I haven't needed to supplement Cal/Mag. It's all good either way as far as I'm concerned but I don't miss filling jugs or buying Cal/Mag.

Base hydro nutrients already include calcium nitrate. GH flora micro, for example, is mostly made of calcium nitrate. If you're using distilled or RO, you might have to use more of the "micro" bottle.

My point is that distilled water is just plain water. Of course plain water alone is bad. You've gotta add nutrients! Distilled water + nutrients is no longer distilled water, it's salty water.

SableZen said:

Who said anything about not using nutrients? lol

I must have misread something through the thread, what is the controversial nonsense? Using tap water instead of RO? At my last location, the tap water was too hard and I had to use RO - where I'm at now, the tap water is actually really decent according to water quality analysis and plants are doing great with it and plus I haven't needed to supplement Cal/Mag. It's all good either way as far as I'm concerned but I don't miss filling jugs or buying Cal/Mag.

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churchhaze said:

My point is that distilled water is just plain water. Of course plain water alone is bad. You've gotta add nutrients! Distilled water + nutrients is no longer distilled water, it's salty water.

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Ok, not trying to be a smartass - but for the second time, why are you talking about this when no one has mentioned otherwise?? I don't get it.

PetFlora said:

This makes no sense

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Totally agree. Read this the other night and went to reply but then remembered the saying "if you don't have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all" lol

Either way, happy for you OP if what you're doing is working. Regardless of the science behind it (or lacking of).

Distilled water has no buffers like a city source will and also since it is so pure the nutrient mix needs to be changed accordingly. I found that using my city tap water makes for much more easily controlled res.

Moishe said:

Aye, I would use straight tap on the mature babies, but my region of the country is undergoing heavy fracking. I can taste the water quality going down almost weekly. In fact, I can't even drink more than a few sips of tap water anymore. There's too much chloramine/discarded chemicals from all the addicts pee in the city for me to feel safe running it in DWC without having a sterile system. So long as I'm doing semi-organic and using bennies, I'm going to keep carbon filtering and cutting with distilled water.

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then you are all set

Is there anyone who's had a lot of success with distilled in DWC? I'm only going off experience, as I haven't been able to find much on the science behind distilled water. It just requires too much micromanagement. It makes plants really touchy, your pH will go fucking nuts, and it'll show signs of deficiencies and burn from too much nutrient all at once >.< Like I said, this is just from experience, and I wasn't able to find too much good information on using distilled before I started things out, but I won't be using 100% distilled water again. If someone does use distilled in DWC and it works out better than slightly harder water, let us know what's up.

Moishe said:

Is there anyone who's had a lot of success with distilled in DWC? I'm only going off experience, as I haven't been able to find much on the science behind distilled water. It just requires too much micromanagement. It makes plants really touchy, your pH will go fucking nuts, and it'll show signs of deficiencies and burn from too much nutrient all at once >.< Like I said, this is just from experience, and I wasn't able to find too much good information on using distilled before I started things out, but I won't be using 100% distilled water again. If someone does use distilled in DWC and it works out better than slightly harder water, let us know what's up.

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I've used both and there's pros and cons to each. There's a lot of voodoo beliefs around water sources with cannabis growers... plus the only other people that responded seem to have made baseless assumptions about not using nutrients at all or something. But you are right, when plants are small and you either haven't started using nutrients yet, or are only using a small amount, pH swings more with distilled water because there is absolutely no buffering at all. The trace mineral content in tap water acts as a little bit of a buffer so it's easier to manage pH at first. This becomes less of an issue as the plants get larger and nutrient strength is increased though since hydroponic nutrients are usually strongly buffered.

Distilled water and RO filtered water works fine as well as long as you supplement micro nutrients as needed. For the people that have bad tap water or that are afraid of chlorine/chloramines, it's not a bad way to go if RO water isn't available for cheaper.

SableZen said:

Ok, not trying to be a smartass - but for the second time, why are you talking about this when no one has mentioned otherwise?? I don't get it.

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I'll try to make my point a 3rd time. Distilled water is just water without nutrients (aka, water). Once you add nutrients, it's no longer called "distilled water".

This thread starts off by saying that "distilled water is bad". Right, so don't use "distilled water" (aka water without stuff in it), use "nutrient rich water" (aka water with stuff in it)! Of course using pure distilled water in a DWC is bad. You've gotta mix it with stuff first, then it's no longer distilled water!

Those nutrients you add ARE the buffer. Yes, you have to mix the nutrients SLIGHTLY different, but not really.

The main buffer in a hydroponic reservoir is phosphates.

My point is that water is water! It's not like starting with pure water inherently ruins your grow op, you just have to change what you put in it slightly. Where water comes from is not important if it ends up as an equivalent solution in the end.

SableZen said:

This becomes less of an issue as the plants get larger and nutrient strength is increased though since hydroponic nutrients are usually strongly buffered.

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This is basically what my point was when i was saying to grow in nutrient rich water, not pure/distilled water. My point was that you must eventually put "stuff" in it, so it doesn't matter that distilled starts with 0 buffering.

Start using nutrients on day 1 in DWC.

SableZen said:

But you are right, when plants are small and you either haven't started using nutrients yet

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churchhaze said:

Start using nutrients on day 1 in DWC.

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I was with ya till ya spit this nonsense! lol

Try it. You won't regret it. Just start off with 600-800ppm as soon as the roots touch the water and you'll be amazed, and wonder why you were so scared.

Noobs overfed for so many years, the pros kept screaming "overfeeding". Now everyone is underfeeding. The biggest problem DWC noobs have these days is underfeeding babies and suffering a loss in growth early on. 600ppm is by no means "too high" for anything. To correct deficiency, they're advised to lower the ppm even more! Ridiculous!

Even SableZen was saying that higher concentrations are better at pH buffering. The next step to that reasoning is to raise the concentration to achieve that pH buffering.

SnaFuu said:

I was with ya till ya spit this nonsense! lol

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