Problem with tap water

[Deriksson]

I have been having problems in flower twice now with the same problems, It all started when I moved. The tap water here is extremely high sodium and I think it's building up causing a nutrient lockout. My humidifier builds up in salt right away aswell.

Can I use tap water if I water with a lot of Runoff? I mean this is a pic from a just cleaned showerwall, all that salt from letting the showerhead drip

[Rwise]

Get the water tested so you know for sure whats in it.
Salt is bad for the plants, can you get a filter?

[User420111]

When it comes to "salt" it could be any number of different elements. Calcium salt, Magnesium salt. All metals can form salts. I quote wiki "In chemistry, a salt is a chemical compound consisting of an ionic assembly of positively charged cations and negatively charged anions which results in a compound with no net electric charge"

So if I were you I'd consider what is actually in your water. It may be possible to get a report from your local surveyor's office. Or use a home test kit to narrow down what is the element you're dealing with and then try to counteract it accordingly.




Or, simpler, just use bottled water. =D

[GreenState]

By the time you finish your grow with store bought bottle water, you could have paid for a Home Depot water softener

[Deriksson]

Store-bought water is very cheap here, still don't want to haul all that water the issues with my plants looks like, calcium and potassium Def. But I use premium soil and nutrients.

Don't mind paying for something to fix it, what is a water softener and how will it help my plants? Googled and it said that its get higher in sodium with a softener, could it get worse if my water is already high sodium?

[Tone3000]

I watered my first grow with softened water (high sodium content). It looked far worse than that by the time it was that far into flowering. I think you are onto something with the cold floor being the issue. High sodium would have caused more overall yellowing and nutrient lockout.

[Deriksson]

Update. I don't know why but decided to check the temps under the pots which happened to be 15c. The floor outside the tent is 20c so never bothered to check, raised the pots now

I think that when the roots hit the bottom of my cloth pots they got shocked and that's why both looks like this. Because they just started showing thru the bottom

[hairyman]

The tap water where I live is super hard. I got much better results when I switched to R/O (reverse osmosis) water.

[SwitchH2O]

Whatever you do DON'T USE SOFT WATER on your plants. A water softener will not help and your plants will suffer. RO water is best. Have you tried using a garden water filter. Just search that on Amazon and you'll come across some garden filters that may help your issue.

SwitchH2O
_______________________________
4’x4’x8’ frame built grow room
Spider Farmer SE3000
4” Vivosun powered intake
8” Vivosun outtake with 8” Filter
RDWC (Recirculating Deep Water Culture System)
Rockwool starter with clay pellet medium
Combination of Remo, Advanced Nutrients and a proprietary blend.
2nd last grow - 19.98% THC
Last grow - 22.23% THC

CURRENTLY GROWING
White Tahoe Cookies - 3rd week of flowering

[Cali]

I use the boogie blue plus hose filter. I used to go and buy 5 gallon jugs which was like a buck. But I got tired of having to buy water so I went the hose filter route no issues. I grow in living soil though not sure if your medium has any buffer zone? When using bottled nutrients the plant and soil are dead, on life support and you are the machine keeping it alive. That is why you see commercial growers with systems in place like at the hospital to feed the plants thru tubes automatically like someone or something on life support.