Hard Water? High PPM Tap water and Hydroponics.

hey guys, i need some help. I have 4 plants in Bubblebuckets and i do not have a RO Filter. My water PPM comes out of the tap at 320, does this mean if General Hydroponics feeding chart calls for 800ppm, do i include my hard water ppm or should i negate it? e.g. add 800 to res so the end PPM would come out to 1120ppm. Or should i add 480ppm of nutrients to bring the total PPM to 800?

Will my plants get deficiencies?

can i get nute burn?


What are the negatives of hard tap water?

RO water is about 25 cents a gallon if you fill it up yourself from the machines at grocery stores. It is worth it.

I have well water and it comes out about 200 PPM and I thought that was high. 320! Makes me wonder what exactly is in your water.

I've seen people say just add the normal nutrients to the water and don't worry about the base PPM. I don't want to take the risk. I tried it for a week and they burned. Could be my own error and not the water but I have no idea what that 200 PPM is in my water. Likely calcium and some other harmless stuff but I am not in a position to test it on my whole batch. I buy RO water and it is one less thing I worry about now.

I do however top off with my well water when I am out of RO and things seems fine. I am a week into flowering and my girls are tougher now so that 200PPM isn't jack when I am running them over 1kppm.

Personally I would go with RO while they are little. Maybe half way through veg start using tap or a mix. I plan on setting up an isolated system for one plant and run only my well water next cycle. Some claim that their well water was beneficial. You could spend the money to have it tested. See whats in it.

PetFlora said:

12 ozs of tap v 12 oz RO. Add 1-2 drops MAX of dish soap. Shake both vigorously,

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We don't have MAX dish soap up here. i got palmolive dish soap... that work?

Well to be honest 200ppm isn't that bad for hydro if u use well water make sure u uae h202 every 3-4 days ul be fine try testing ur system out u could be wasting money

My ppm is 200ppm and I have no issues

PetFlora said:

320 probably means old pipes, but no matter, it's not good for much of anything

Try this test

12 ozs of tap v 12 oz RO. Add 1-2 drops MAX of dish soap. Shake both vigorously,

Let them stand for 10-15 minutes

and observe the neg effects of hard water

Now imagine what it is doing to your skin, anything you cook with water, laundry...

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Wha are the negative effects of the had water that will be observed? Sounds interesting.

And n e dish soap works because if u have hard water which is mostly calcium and magnesium which stops soaps from foaming up

Just wondering how this test means n e thing?

PetFlora said:

MAX = maximum not sa brand name.

Fazr & ringlead3r I led you to water and you're too fucking lazy to drink

Why I rarely bother to respond to such threads

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No guy I don't have hard water so I can't do the experiment. It was a simple question.

69Bandit said:

hey guys, i need some help. I have 4 plants in Bubblebuckets and i do not have a RO Filter. My water PPM comes out of the tap at 320, does this mean if General Hydroponics feeding chart calls for 800ppm, do i include my hard water ppm or should i negate it? e.g. add 800 to res so the end PPM would come out to 1120ppm. Or should i add 480ppm of nutrients to bring the total PPM to 800?

Will my plants get deficiencies? .

can i get nute burn?


What are the negatives of hard tap water?

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it just depends whats in your tap water. you wouldnt count the ppm of your tap tho. the ppm of my tap is @460 (almost 1 ec) i know several ppl that grow with it with no issues. i use it when i'm too lazy to go get water, and tbh the only issues ive ever had with water is cal/mag def when i use ro and no calmag. again it depends on whats in your water to begin with. alot of areas publish water quality reports on the web

If your tap ppm is mostly from Ca,Mg,Fe, the ppm it adds is indeed nutes as the pH down will substitute with the carbonates forcing out the CO2.

If it's been through a softener, it's all sodium and useless/problematic.

We had 450ppm at 7.6pH tap for a while but recently it started coming out 450ppm at 6.5pH.. I think the landlords added a water softener or something, so we were forced to get RO. The RO machine took out all the guesswork of whether it's Ca,Mg, or Na,Cl.

I figure if pH is high with a high ppm, you can assume the ppm is from Calcium and Mg carbonates (lime) and not sodium.

1itsme said:

it just depends whats in your tap water.

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