Tap water analysis

So got at tap water analysis done and wanted to know if I need to add any calcium or magnesium based on the readings.

pH 6.4
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 185
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.31
Cations / Anions, me/L 3.6 / 3.3
ppm
Sodium, Na 11
Potassium, K 6
Calcium, Ca 21
Magnesium, Mg 23
Total Hardness, CaCO3 148
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.5 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 5
Chloride, Cl 11
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 160
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 132
Total Phosphorus, P 0.04
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
"<" - Not Detected

All the mineral numbers are listed in ppms, it was on the page I copied but didn't copy for some reason.

Your non carb hardness is a little high. The conductivity seems low considering your TH is farly hard. Who did the analysis? Did they titrate?

Just because there's ca & mg doesn't mean it's plant available. Add a little cal mag or wait and see.

Ward laboratories did the analysis, I'm not sure what methods they used. And yeah that's why I asked I'm not really sure what I'm looking at other than ppms.

Looking at total dissolved solids at 185 ppm and a bit high in salt. Should be manageable with some runoff to be sure to not build up elements in the medium.

You didn’t mention medium however and it would need calcium supplementation somehow as the water doesn’t provide enough. And possibly magnesium as mentioned above.

Would work well in a limed peat lite mix or potting soil I think.

Would be hydro, probably flood and drain in pots of hydroton. Have ran a Dwc and that worked well but did get a few deficiencies on lower leaves.

Since doing hydro I would add a lil extra cal mag should help with that lower deficiency. Although if it's just yellowing I would just increase your base a lil to compensate for the lack of nitrogen. Depending on the cal mag your using you may be fine with just the increase in cal mag since each brand very in nitrogen content.

Buy an RO unit and stop worrying about your water.

Nothing nasty in there but at 185ppm you will have issues with excess minerals eventually.

That water report is less than complete so there may be other issues.

RO units waste so much water that it just isn't an option for me, I'll take a few deficiencies before running my neighbors and my well dry.

OldMedUser said:

Buy an RO unit and stop worrying about your water.

Nothing nasty in there but at 185ppm you will have issues with excess minerals eventually.

That water report is less than complete so there may be other issues.

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That ppm should be easily managed with good runoff and maybe a leaching once in a while.

MichiganMedGrower said:

That ppm should be easily managed with good runoff and maybe a leaching once in a while.

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True enough but many don't know that or practice it. RO just saves a lot of dicking around and I never have to wonder if my water is the cause of any problem I run into.

If I do have a bit of runoff I leave the plant sitting in it for an hour and if any left I suck it up with my turkey baster and shoot it into a plant pot that didn't have any left over.

Was talking to the owner of the Home Hardware about the RO units they sell to find that they use proprietary filters that cost twice as much as the regular ones that I use for my dugout water. Now I'm looking for separate components so I can just build my own unit. I don't need 75gal/day and if you get one that matches your consumption and has to run steadier they last a lot longer. A 5 or 10gal/day unit would be better for me and I have 200L worth of storage to keep extra in.

Going to replace the 5micron pre-filter with a 1micron. We already filter the dugout water to 5 so a second one is redundant and there would still be fine sediment after it that a 1 will catch. Can also get 0.5 micron in the standard 10 x 2.5" filters but not in the type that unit from the store has. The finest they have is 5 so not what I want.

Serverchris said:

RO units waste so much water that it just isn't an option for me, I'll take a few deficiencies before running my neighbors and my well dry.

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Couldn't run the reject water back to the well? Most only reject about twice as much as they pass tho it can be up to 4x as much depending on the quality of the source water.

My dugout is 50 x 80 yds/meters and 4 to 5 yds deep. Literally millions of liters of free water and it's all mine! Full to the brim right now with all the fresh snow melt too.

OldMedUser said:

Couldn't run the reject water back to the well? Most only reject about twice as much as they pass tho it can be up to 4x as much depending on the quality of the source water.

My dugout is 50 x 80 yds/meters and 4 to 5 yds deep. Literally millions of liters of free water and it's all mine! Full to the brim right now with all the fresh snow melt too.

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I'm not sure about that, I saw one system that did recirculate the waste water to the hot water side but it was pretty pricey. If I ran another line to well I could probably transfer it there, would be alot of work but probably cheaper than the other system.

Also meant to update, I think my biggest problem was an old bottle of nutrient solution. Everytime I mixed it up I would see this white powder in the bottom of the bucket. I didn't think anything of it but no matter what I did i couldn't get enough magnesium to the plant. I got a new bottle of foliage pro and calmag and ever since everything is clearing up and the plants have really shot up. I'm guessing the magnesium was turning into powder and becoming unusable for the plants.

Quite possible over time it reacted with something else in the bottle and precipitated out of sol'n.

That's why they can't put everything in one bottle and you never mix them together directly. Always Micro first with 3-part nutes.

Hope that fixes it up.

It was actually just one part cns17 grow, the cns17 bloom worked amazingly. With the dynagro using the same ppms everything has cleared up and they are growing like crazy. I really didn't know you could get a bad bottle of nutes but literally nothing has changed but the base nutes.