Using well water

[Archaic]

A water softener is basically a cation exchange system the precipitates out magnesium and calcium and replaces them in your water with sodium. It would not be unusual to see fairly high sodium levels in softened water.

once a sodium levels get over 200 parts per million they can become problematic for plants. Level that low are not catastrophic but they're not helping at all, sodium is purely make a contaminant in a growing medium.

If you're using softened water, and your base PPM is 200 or more you should probably use an RO system.

 

[Machamillion]

A water softener is basically a cation exchange system the precipitates out magnesium and calcium and replaces them in your water with sodium. It would not be unusual to see fairly high sodium levels in softened water.

once a sodium levels get over 200 parts per million they can become problematic for plants. Level that low are not catastrophic but they're not helping at all, sodium is purely make a contaminant in a growing medium.

If you're using softened water, and your base PPM is 200 or more you should probably use an RO system.

I run no water softener and ppe is at 386.

 

[Archaic]

Maybe, maybe not. You are in that grey area with near neutral pH and moderately high TDS. If you don't mind, approximately where do you live? I don't need a zip code, just state and direction (east Texas, south Ontario, east Anglia, etc.)

Trying to see if I can guess your water quality by rough geologic location.

I don't know a lot about your nutes, so I'm not going to speak to whether base TDS affects it or not. My tap water from City is around 200 ppm. I just use that as a base and add 500 ppm of MegaCrop. Seems to work for me. Now, if all 200 of those base ppm were sodium - it might be slightly detrimental - but probably not enough for a non-botanist to diagnose.

I run no water softener and ppe is at 386.

 

[Machamillion]

Maybe, maybe not. You are in that grey area with near neutral pH and moderately high TDS. If you don't mind, approximately where do you live? I don't need a zip code, just state and direction (east Texas, south Ontario, east Anglia, etc.)

Trying to see if I can guess your water quality by rough geologic location.

I don't know a lot about your nutes, so I'm not going to speak to whether base TDS affects it or not. My tap water from City is around 200 ppm. I just use that as a base and add 500 ppm of MegaCrop. Seems to work for me. Now, if all 200 of those base ppm were sodium - it might be slightly detrimental - but probably not enough for a non-botanist to diagnose.

I live in Eastern Ontario, Canada
.