Mixing well water with RO water instead of cal-mag?

Justin Freidman

Justin Freidman

Well-Known Member
Hey Guys,

I live in a country where it's hard to order things in. Before I had been ordering cal-mag but recently our local customs grabbed each shipment claiming some bullshit that I must have an agricultural license to import.

At my grow room I have a deep well. When I did my first grow I used well water and nutes and had all sorts of issues, ie.. lock-outs, etc. So I decided to go straight RO + Cal-mag and it worked well. But now I can't get cal-mag.

Just wondering if I can use some of the well water instead? The TDS of the well water is around 300. So was thinking maybe 30% well water and 70% RO? or even 50/50% - would this work?

Thanks in advance,
J.
 
hotrodharley

hotrodharley

Well-Known Member
Justin Freidman said:
Hey Guys,

I live in a country where it's hard to order things in. Before I had been ordering cal-mag but recently our local customs grabbed each shipment claiming some bullshit that I must have an agricultural license to import.

At my grow room I have a deep well. When I did my first grow I used well water and nutes and had all sorts of issues, ie.. lock-outs, etc. So I decided to go straight RO + Cal-mag and it worked well. But now I can't get cal-mag.

Just wondering if I can use some of the well water instead? The TDS of the well water is around 300. So was thinking maybe 30% well water and 70% RO? or even 50/50% - would this work?

Thanks in advance,
J.
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Do you have an EC meter? If so what is the EC of the well water? Do you have a water analysis on it? Wondering how you know it has calcium.
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
So you cant go to a garden centre and buy a massive sack of calcium nitrate and a bag of magnesium sulphate?

Just going to have to be trail and error then.
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Your best bet is to get a full analysis of your well water so you know exactly what you're working with.

At 300ppm you can bet it's high in Mg and Ca. A trip to the library or some web searching can find out what elements are found in your local water.

I'm trending more toward organic and natural growing so have been using some of my own dugout water in my grows. Comes out of my taps at 400ppm and pH 8.4. It's good water otherwise with lots of tiny fish, frogs and damned mosquitoes. We only filter it down to 5 micron so has a lot of beneficial organisms in it too I hope.

:peace:
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
Your feeble attempt at sarcasm has been noticed as has your lack of spelling and punctuation skills.
Click to expand...
It did come across as sarcastic, I was just rushing my post. Wrote a genuine question and then added an extra line last second without thinking how it reads.
Punctuation is my weakness, always has been. Spelling mistakes?
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Justin Freidman said:
Yes, EC of well water is 0.5. Unfortunately we're not able to do a water analysis on it here. The plants we water with it grow very well outside! :)
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Like you, our, (my wife's really), garden does great outdoors with the dugout water but then it all gets diluted and pH adjusted by the purer and lower pH rain water.

Rain water is basically distilled water and that has no real pH of it's own but changes by what pollutants it absorbs from our atmosphere. Thanks to our burning of fossil fuels there is lots of sulfuric and nitric oxides in the air. Good old acid rain so the pH of rain water is on the low side. As low as 5.5 in some places.

It doesn't take much to make a big change in pH with pure water. 1 ml of pH up or down would change the pH of pure water a full point where it wouldn't move a 10th of a point in my dugout water because of amount of minerals in the original water.

Water chemistry is very complicated. I went back to school in my 30s for 3 years to get a diploma in environmental chemistry so know from where I speak.

:peace:
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Justin Freidman said:
LOL. No worries. I think I might try 25% well water and cross my fingers and hope it's OK. Obviously I'll be checking the total EC of the complete mixutre when I've added nutes - so hope it's ok!
Click to expand...
The thing is, is to keep track of what you do so you make educated judgements for further grows.

Good Luck!

:peace:
 
xtsho

xtsho

Well-Known Member
Are you growing in soil? Use eggshells, grind them into a powder, and add them to your soil as an amendment. Or make liquid eggshell plant fertilizer. https://homeguides.sfgate.com/homemade-eggshell-plant-fertilizer-42947.html Either method should provide you with plenty of calcium. You don't have to pay for some pre-bottled additive. The plant doesn't know where the calcium came from.

For magnesium use epsom salts or make make a solution using matches.

Matches
The old-fashioned easy-strike matches are a great source of magnesium. To use this as a fertilizer, simply place the whole match in the hole with the plant, or soak the matches in water. The magnesium will dissolve into the water and make application easier.
 
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