I want to touch base on my water just to cover all the details..When I first started with living organics, I had an idea of what it was but not what it really was.I said to myself, " hmm ok all natural,renewable resources,organic,wow this guy grows some really nice bud,those are some healthy plants,they said it is super easy, how can I do this?" The more questions I asked,the more I observed and the more I read the one thing on my mind that I overlooked was water.Oh no, I have the soil mix,the seeds,the space,the lights, the schematics to rule the world ( yeah right ) but what about my water? The more I read, this guy here was using Reverse Osmosis, this other guy was traveling miles to stock up on RO from a grocery store,they were siphoning glacier water from a secret location,he said use tap,she said use distilled, don't do this,don't do that..Yeah I quit....Not..I looked into the subject further and came across a bit of information that put me in the right direction.." Microbes consider Chlorine and Chloramine unfavorable and these contents will actually diminish and destroy what you are trying to achieve." Sure, some of you might say, yeah no shit.Well, watching everyone water house plants straight out of the tap or just hit it with the garden hose as a kid, this was new.Ready to get growing, I put in hours of reading, book after book,numerous websites and questions replied.A few grows in and countless trips to the store lugging in bottles of distilled water,it was time to figure out exactly what I was working with from the tap.Through recommendation, I hopped on Amazon and ordered myself a TDS pen and a cheap PH pen ( which works really good for $11 ).Now from my reading I knew a TDS pen and a PH pen I could pretty much toss in the garbage with living organics, fagetaboutit! I invested it them though to confirm my tap water situation.I retrieved a local water report,the tools arrived and I did some testing.Testing and reports confirmed, 7.9 PH 80 PPM Chlorine and Chloramine used.I dug into the Rev's " True Living Organics " book as well as communicating with him through e-mail and came to the conclusion I was in the clear PPM wise..In other words, it wasn't too way out of wack that my soil couldn't handle it.Then brought me to the chlorine and Chloramine.Now what do I do?Aerate for 24 hours? Sure that will gas off some Chlorine.Do I need a multiple stage RO system?( Which in some cases you do and pure water is best) From my water report,my amounts weren't to heavy,so I settled on a Hydrologic small boy with a KDF carbon and sediment filter.I figured let's see how this works, it claims 99% removal and in worst case scenario there was an upgrade option to attach an RO filter.Which brings me to the system I use now,tap water through the filter into a 5 gallon bucket, heated with an aquarium heater (especially in the winter from the hose ) and aerated with (2) 4 inch airstones from a cheap elemental pump.( This is just for my plain water, I have a larger pump and a bubblesnake from Tealab for my AACT's.) Now I do PH my water to 6.5 with Earth Juice crystals EVERY time I water, ( never pH compost teas) but you don't have to.I PH my water out of habit and I've heard it eases the workload on the microbiology though they will stabilize things where they need to be as well as your soil buffering inputs ( lime,oyster shell flour )..This has been working for me,so I'm happy with that.I've included a few pages of info on water below..The pages are in order starting with the first pic.
