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HELP! How to deal with high (700) EC/PPM tap water?

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4202020

New member
Hi GWE community, I've been checking out some guides on mixing nutes.
I'm going to water my girls for the first time today after they sprouted but I noticed that my tap water has a very high ppm/EC.

I'm not too familiar with the nomenclature and people seem to talk about EC in terms of 0.X - whereas my EC meter gives me a ~700 μs/cm which I think is very high. My PPM measurement is ~360

Please help me:
- How do I convert my EC reading to the 0.X format? (Or is this just measuring milliSiemens?)
- in terms of mixing nutes what's the better measure of strength?

Thanks everyone
 
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im not familiar with the 0.x either. Im guessing it is just a truncated version. for example, 1000 EC on my tds meter is also read as 1.0. I may not be using the right words, but im still working on my first cup of coffee. I think you are right with your reading being microSiemens and people use miliSiemens in posts...

As far as better measurement my opinion is EC is more reliable as PPM has at least two different conversions (that i can think of off the top of my head) that can make different readings. PPM is actually a conversion off EC. https://manicbotanix.com/ec-to-ppm-conversion-chart-2/
 
The ppm it’s on a 500 scale. Meaning every 1000 micro Siemens= 500ppm so 0.5 convention scale

Your ec meter shows micro siemens and not mili Siemens. The convention from micro to mili its 1000, so your 700 micro it’s 0.7 mili.

Both are are showing the same result, if you multiply your 700 micro Siemens times the scale of the meter then you get ppms. 0.5 x 700 = 350

i have much harder water at 1400 micro Siemens = 1.4 mili Siemens= 700 pmm and I dilute 1:1 with RO water to get a starting water just like yours. After adding nutrients it gets up to 2500 micro Siemens = 2.5 mili siemens = 1250 ppms
 
Thanks for the reply guys.
I'm really unsure of which version of the ppm scale my meter uses - there seems to be quite a few.

I'll keep my eyes on it, but I'll maybe look at a water softener or similar..
 
4202020 said:
Hi GWE community, I've been checking out some guides on mixing nutes.
I'm going to water my girls for the first time today after they sprouted but I noticed that my tap water has a very high ppm/EC.

I'm not too familiar with the nomenclature and people seem to talk about EC in terms of 0.X - whereas my EC meter gives me a ~700 μs/cm which I think is very high. My PPM measurement is ~360

Please help me:
- How do I convert my EC reading to the 0.X format? (Or is this just measuring milliSiemens?)
- in terms of mixing nutes what's the better measure of strength?

Thanks everyone
Click to expand...

any doubts and you have ...IMO mix in a min of 50/50 tap to Ro water even more if you have more doubts
slowly adjusting them to your tap water as they age over the next 90 days

good luck
 
Thanks! That video explained everything perfectly and I now see I'm using the salt scale with a conversion of 0.5
 
Hey everyone, thanks for weighing in. Thought I'd revive this thread rather than make a new one...

Is there an easy & reasonably cheap way to get suitable water for my plants?

I'm finding it extremely difficult to balance my coco nutes with my 0.7 EC tap water. In fact, of 3 seeds I started roughly 2 weeks ago, only 1 is showing 3rd set of leaves (4th set? 3rd tri/5 fingered) and the other 2 look like they've been alive roughly less than a week, are extremely nute burned, have signs of all kinds of deficiencies, and regularly exhibit run off of source+0.3-0.4 EC with Ph levels being very high compared to source (e.g. 5.6 in yielded 6.1 out)

What I've tried:
  • I've currently bought some 5gal bottles of spring water from a shop, but this is going to get very expensive/time consuming and I don't want to lug 4 of those home every week :)
  • I can filter tap water through a drinking water filter jug to make it close to 0.5 EC but this is time consuming and costly.
  • I've looked into an RO system and I'm ... very very lost, plus it's pretty $$
  • Can I distill? Use rain water? How does the GWE community handle it if they have seriously high EC hard water like mine?
On an aside: I'm tempted to begin another few seeds - this time I'd start 3/4 and pick the best 2.
I think there may be timing issues with flowering/drying with this, but has anyone got experience with growing plants at multiple stages in the same space? Any tips?

Thanks GWE
 
Again. I use way harder water and then dilute to end up with a water like yours. I think it’s more likely that the ph is off. Have you calibrated your meter recently?
Another thing to consider is your coco. Where did it came from? Was it branded and bagged or bricked? Did you soaked and washed the coco before using? What nutrients you using?
 
9fingerleafs said:
Again. I use way harder water and then dilute to end up with a water like yours. I think it’s more likely that the ph is off. Have you calibrated your meter recently?
Another thing to consider is your coco. Where did it came from? Was it branded and bagged or bricked? Did you soaked and washed the coco before using? What nutrients you using?
Click to expand...

Hey there 9fingerleafs, I've come a hell of a long way in terms of understanding over the last week or so and now fully understand what you're talking about :)
I think mixing with half/half store bought spring water might help me.

On Ph: I think you might be correct - I have 2 Ph meters - 1 reads slightly higher than the other and I can't be confident either are accurate.
They were both cheap, basic models from EB/Amz - I'd considered investing in a slightly higher end one but had hoped this might be ok; they're both less than a month old.

In terms of materials:
I bought Canna coco pre-buffered, which I further washed with normal tap water non ph adjusted (7.05) before use, mixed it 70/30 with perlite.
I've been feeding it with ph of around 6.0-6.2 at the beginning, had to drop to 5.9, then 5.6 when runoff ph kept coming back too high.

Using the Canna coco range
Calmag (currently not really used as hard water, started adding 1/4 strength doses after switching to store bought spring water)
Rhizo - full dosage used so far
A+B - I may have given full strength doses whilst a little too faded one night, but otherwise using the 'light' feeding schedule with 0.7 EC water as per their site.
Haven't even gotten to the Cannazym yet :)


Feels like for all the theory, practical is always more difficult.



On another note, I've started another 4 seeds - 2 of each.
They're sat point down in Jiffy plugs and under a dome. I soaked the Jiffies in ph 5.8 spring water with a quarter strength dose rhizotonic.
Honestly though, when you see this picture you'll probably understand why.

Click image for larger version Name: Untitled.png Views: 0 Size: 1.62 MB ID: 414904


These are all just under 2 weeks since planted as seed.
Guess which 2 the Gelat.OGs are... light is white, not sure why it's giving a yellow tint... but those 2 GOGs have dark green veins with light green leaves. 1 is doing a little better than the other, but both look like they're on the way out.
The BK is doing well I think - I haven't got much to reference it by, but it definitely seems to have survived my mistreatment and I might transplant this one soon. Leaves are greener than the other 2, but still not the dark green I'd expect with Marijuana.
 
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To my understanding you are using the best available nutrients for hydroponics. If you follow the recipe ratios (1/2 or 1/4) strength all the nutrients are there so the plant is not able to absorb them. So we can rule out the nutrients and the coco. That leaves us with ph again. Here’s what I would do. Actually it’s what I do. Get some ph paper strips, they are super cheap. Then forget about accurate readings and learn to get the right color to match ph 6. Once you are sure the ph is around 6 then you use your meters to see how off are they, or what they show when the ph is 6. That way you can always double check ph. I can tell you by experience that underground water changes ph over time and with the seasons and digital meters will always drift off calibration
 
I think you should use both calmag and canazyme. Well water usually has some calcium but mostly sodium and other stuff. Not magnesium or iron which you need. And canazyme helps break down Organic matter and waste the roots don’t need
 
I like the old school test for verification, and its cheap. I do use Calmag at full strength, but as 9fingerleafs pointed out I do walk up on the full recommended dosage. (Ended up using at full dosage while nutrients was as 2/3 dosage.
 
Can you explain that part to me guys? Walking up I mean.
I'd originally wanted to start them off at 1/4 strength according to the bottle, but then I found the online feeding schedule and just followed that - are you saying I should work up to that dosage too?
I'm guessing runoff EC levels are what you use to determine whether to use more or less? Or is there a more refined way of establishing these things?

BTW I'm not using well water, I just happen to live in a part of the country where the water comes out of the taps at 0.7EC heh..

Thanks to you both
 
I guess he means work your way up with the dose. The ppm readings will help you understand your water, your plants and your nutrients. The best way to know what the plant needs is paying attention to the plant itself. The ppm will aid as a numeric scale you can use to quantify the nutrient to water ratio that best works for you. For example some people may feed at super high ec other people super low. The important part is when you need to increase or decrease concentration you have a numeric scale more accurate than ml/gal. For example. Right now you are feeding at what ec? Once the ph is balanced you’ll know if you need to increase Nutrients. If you do you can use ppm reading to see how much you are actually increasing. One ml of calmag is not the same as one ml of A or B. I hope this wasnt more complicated. You are just establishing a base number you can then compare too
 
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Sorry that's exactly what I meant, start low, watch your ppm and your leaves, increase (walk up) on your nutrients. Sorry for confusion.
 
Not at all, thanks for the patience in dealing with my questions. OK I'm gonna give that a try, ph strips arriving later and I reckon my new seeds will pop soon. Feeling much less jittery for round
2 thanks to you guys/girls
 
My strips arrived.. And I've taken the chance to calibrate my meters. It was basically perfect... So I don't think it's a pH meter issue.

My last thought is that I need to let my pH adjusted nute mix sit for a few hours before I check it for pH again and adjust. I've noticed a tendency for my pH to go back up to the high 6s overnight even if I left it at 5.8

Is that something you both have to do too?
 
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