What water you guys use
 

Hi everyone

I'm just to bored...Studying for exam...Already read through and done like lots of exercise and well in a sense since its the early monthly test theres not much topic to even study...

Anyways back to the topic....I always read in 90% of websites that most CPs are sensitive to water which has minerals in it and only some say that neps are a little more tolerent to that..But in fact i find that in my experience totally not real..Why? Cause i've been growing for almost 3 years now with sarrs,droseras,VFTs and Neps and all seems fine with just a regular filtred water..Not RO just you know that round hard rocky thing to filtre...So any of you like purposely buy RO water to water your CPs or you guys just water them with normal drinking water? I have yet to use my drinking water on the urtic i recently got though...I went to 7 eleven to get a RO drinking bottle...But soon i will have to use my water cause i can't be buying it everytime it dries out wasting money..You think urtics will do fine?

Ken

Re: What water you guys use
 

I use mostly aged tap water, I have a big container which I fill and then use that to water my plants, all of the plants. However from time to time I do treat my American CPs (VFT and Sarracenias) to filtered water from water filling station, this has very little minerals (RO). So yes I do agree that it is not so important....... BUT.... it depends on where you live. There are parts that have very hard water and surely these won't be good for American CPs.

So bottomline the important thing is to check or ask what type of water you have on your tap.

My mother in law's home has very nice ground water which is from a lake, the N. Alata that I gave her grows fast and pitchers beautifully compared to mine.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: What water you guys use
 

i will try to share as much as i know, i have involved in selling water filter last time, I am glad that the knowledge is useful for CP too..

RO could be useful for most CP, because it is really "clean" in terms of free from high dissolved solids, minerals, organics & sediments. The only thing to watch out is that the dissolved oxygen level is lower & the pH of RO water is around 6.X, it is considered mild acidic.

I have a RO machine & diamond energy water filter at home, I normally use the RO for my marine aquarium but I drink only water from the other filter. Now I am using the RO for my CP as well, but i mixed in 25% of Diamond Energy water to get the pH back to around 7.2-7.4. Our tap water/city water usually gives pH around 7.8-8.5, which is considered hard water.
I have seen better growth by watering my other flowering plants with Diamond Energy Water, I believe that it may somehow benefit CPs as well but it may still contain too much mineral. Therefore i am mixing 75% RO to 25% Diamond energy water daily b4 i spray the water on the CPs.....As for Sarracenia, so far i only tried RO, I will try to mix the water to observe the effect on that. Will do that once i have more plants.

Generally I would say that, any-brand filtered water is a must, better than u dun have one, but it may not neccesary RO, all sediments & harmful dissolved things MUST be removed b4 watering the CPs. A simple DIY setup of 2-stage filters consist of a ceramic candle & a carbon filter will cost about RM100-150. These include 2 units of common filter housing. Regular cleaning if ceramic filter can be done by brushing off sediments stuck on it, the carbon module should be replaced once water output from it contains chlorine. A chlorine tester should costs around RM3 and can be used for years..

just my 2 cents....

Re: What water you guys use
 

I used normal filtered water too with no problems.

Re: What water you guys use
 

Hey guys thanks for the input...Looks like most CPs don't really care......How about urtics you think they'll do fine with just normal filtred water?

Ken

Re: What water you guys use
 

Here in Adelaide most CP will die in about 4 - 6 weeks on tap water due to salt build up. With Nepenthes they tolerant tap water but do better on rain water. If you water from above and keep the plants out of trays they will handle hard water better because alot of the salt gets washed out.
I would say Heliamphora do prefer R/O water, one of our members only uses R/O water for his heli and they are truely massive.

Re: What water you guys use
 

I normally use tap water straight from the source but for certain plants like paphiopedilum orchids and tillandsias I use aged tap water or standing rain water.

Re: What water you guys use
 

Hi guys.....

Aged tap water??? What does that do to affect the water? And you mean aged as in leaving the water there for how long?

Ken

Re: What water you guys use
 

i have tried watering my sarracenia from top so that the RO water can flush the media. I think it may help to flush out salts and unwanted things out, then just change the water in the water tray.

I did this weekly and can see the Sara like it

Re: What water you guys use
 

Hi Ken,

Rainwater is slightly acidic, so is considered 'soft' and is good for plants that need acidity in their subtrate or to counter high alkalinity. Tap water is also soft but it contains significant amounts of chlorines and minerals which can have negative impact on plant health in the long term. But not saying rain water is 100% good it depends on the area where you live sometimes rainwater is full of chemicals which can also affect plants that are chemical sensitive.

As for aging water, I normally leave it for at least overnight to make sure much of the metal particles like iron settle at the bottom and chlorine has evaporated, most of it.

This is how I do it. So this is my two cents...*biggrin2*

Re: What water you guys use
 

I use rainwater and my filtered water. No damaging effects so far.

Cheers

Re: What water you guys use
 

Water is a very important factor to make cps feel good or bad. Tap water is so different concerning hardiness depending on where you are living. Btw aged tap water has some advantage because the contained chlor can escape.
To really come to a conclusion you've to use a conductivity meter.
I mostly used rainwater which has a conductivity of 30 ppm when it is fresh. I collect it in a plastic rainwater barrel. After staying in it for some weeks the conductivity goes up to over 600 ppm. Using this water makes my cps looking unhealthy and some neps stop producing pitchers. After noticing this I used RO water. Bad thing was that my dogs had killed my conductivity meter so I didn't noticed that the filter of the RO machine wasn't working anymore. I guess it dried out. A few nep seedlings died. After getting a new conductivitiy meter I noticed that the "RO" water had a conductivity of over 400 ppm. This water was even worse than the old rainwater though it had a less hardiness than the old rainwater.
Utris reacted different to this hard water. While U. sandersonii had no problems with it U. livida (which had grown before like weed) was about to die.
My plants told me (in the way they are growing, colouring and pitchering) that they like fresh rainwater most. But also this might be depending on where you are living. If there is a sulfur cloud over your house than fresh rainwater might be also bad ;)

Re: What water you guys use
 

Wow, Boris, you sure know a lot! Thanks for the infor!

Speaking about rain, now KL is in the raining mood. I barely need to water my CPs at all, it keeps raining everyday.

Cheers

Re: What water you guys use
 

Yes, thanks for the info Boris. Our climate here is unpredictable in terms of temperature. Sometimes it can go without rain for days. Sometimes it will rain on one half of the day, say the afternoon, and sunny the next morning, and the cycle repeats for a week or two. When I was studying in Melbourne I also used a conductivity meter and used my aunt's plants as testers, which are actually Sarrs. They were responding well to the water quality too.

Re: What water you guys use
 

Hi..

Eventhough it rains here it doesn't help me...The most is the rain just wet the leaves of my neps...And after all i will still have to water it..

Ken

Re: What water you guys use
 

I water my CP with tap water whenever I am in a hurry. But my tap water is from storage tank so the water is probably aged. Sometimes I water my CP with left over RO from my tupperware which I take to work for drinking.

Re: What water you guys use
 

I also water my plants with rainwater from a tank. Im shareing the water from the roof of my garage no problems yet :1thumbup: