TLO Growing - RO water? or de-chlorinated tap?

[Team Microbe]

Hey all, another organics question from yours truly!


With super soil (just-add-water) - are RO units necessary?


I checked with my water board and they confirmed that they don't add chloramine. Therefor, I'll be left with 120ppm de-chlorinated tap water after letting it sit out for a day.

Does anyone know if there are any other impurities in tap water that would disturb the microbial life in my soil? With the tap coming out at 120ppm I feel like thats relatively clean, but if an RO unit would make a noticeable difference I'll pick one up. I know there's cal mag already in tap water + other minerals, so I don't know if it's better to go with RO or if I should take advantage of those minerals....


Help!!!!

 

[Rickman]

Hey there my friend, I see this is a few months back, but I have recently initiated a full-scale TLO grow after reading the book front to back and back to front. I don't think a RO unit is necessary for a small personal grow because the decent one I had my eye on, the HydroLogic 100 GPD unit, is about $175 and I get 2.5 Gal of distilled water jugs at my grocery store for under $2.50.

Thus, you'd have to ask yourself:

1) how much water do I need
2) how long will this operation last

you can easily calculate where the tradeoff is $ wise if you can answer those two. i'm on the fence myself, I've got it on my list but it's low priority underneath some other TLO goodies hope this helps somehow

cheers!

 

[Rickman]

I would not even bother with tap water, and I live in a small city with exceptional quality and low TDS. Ideally even after supplementing something like General Organics' CaMg+, PPM shouldn't run above 60, especially because it's important to leave some TDS wiggle room for compost teas if I'm interpreting correctly. Thus, even if you don't want an RO system, I'd still opt for distilled as mentioned in a lot of other spots in the book. I've been having good results with distilled. I would get that RO system if i confirmed the lease on my house was going for another year, but for now I only have 6 months left which doesn't quite justify that purchase.

 

[bosshogg]

Go for the ro microbe...according to rev n his tlo style which im.really getting into not to expensive i believe u can puk one up at home depot for 200 max but dont quote me....on the cal mag only think i know is that botnicares is not 100./. Organic opt for general hydroponics csl mag which is. Good luck n overgrow..........peace n chicken grease

 

[Granger2]

Your 120 tap should be just fine. Cheap and convenient. If you insist on using RO/distilled, a 3rd factor to consider is the PITA of loading/hauling water. An RO unit saves all that. It's right there 24/7, and you can take it wif you. -granger

 

[Team Microbe]

Go for the ro microbe...according to rev n his tlo style which im.really getting into not to expensive i believe u can puk one up at home depot for 200 max but dont quote me....on the cal mag only think i know is that botnicares is not 100./. Organic opt for general hydroponics csl mag which is. Good luck n overgrow..........peace n chicken grease

Thanks bosshogg, I actually ended up going with the RO filter it works great!

I was using botanicare's calmag + but just substituted it with some crab shell meal in my soil to go true living organics.

You know the Rev too?! I just tried mainlining for the first time... it was pretty interesting. I'm reaching the flip right now so I don't know how it'll be yield-wise but the girls are looking healthy as can be and with Soma's supercropping techniques I bulked these stalks out pretty fat to support the mainline:

 

[Shiva Blaster]

Glad you went with the RO filter......with organics it's pretty much necessary with all the municipalities using Chloramines. Even as a non-organic grower, I won't touch my tap water unfiltered....chloramine, hard water, fluouride, yuck. I bought a small little Stealth RO unit for my current grow, and it's probably the best $200 I've spent on my grow to date. Has a special catalytic carbon filter that takes out the fluoride and chloramines and now I can tap fresh RO water right into my room.....no more lugging 5 gallon jugs to the grocery store every couple of days, woo-hoo!

Good luck with your grow

 

[Shiva Blaster]

and ps. Great looking plants!

 

[Team Microbe]

Glad you went with the RO filter......with organics it's pretty much necessary with all the municipalities using Chloramines. Even as a non-organic grower, I won't touch my tap water unfiltered....chloramine, hard water, fluouride, yuck. I bought a small little Stealth RO unit for my current grow, and it's probably the best $200 I've spent on my grow to date. Has a special catalytic carbon filter that takes out the fluoride and chloramines and now I can tap fresh RO water right into my room.....no more lugging 5 gallon jugs to the grocery store every couple of days, woo-hoo!

Good luck with your grow

Yeah, I learned that fast once my plants weren't really eating enough. The microbes were being killed off by all that shit in the tap! I spent the same on mine, 200 gpd does me just fine for the small grow I'm running. Dude get this... I used to BUY RO water in gallon jugs when I ran coco. Talk about a waste of money.. couldve bought 2 RO filters with all the money I pissed away LOL

Thanks man, hope you have a great year this year

 

[onavelzy]

TM, really nice looking plants. i was following a mainlining grow on another site. he had probably thirty colas and a canopy height that was flat as a crew cut. just looked awesome. how long have you been using TLO?

 

[Team Microbe]

TM, really nice looking plants. i was following a mainlining grow on another site. he had probably thirty colas and a canopy height that was flat as a crew cut. just looked awesome. how long have you been using TLO?

Thanks man, I appreciate that. I have yet to flower a main-line grow (we just began obv) and I've been practicing TLO for a month or so now. I dove into it pretty fast because I wanna know what I'm doing before I compromise any babes lol