Tap water in most areas is highly chlorinated, this does not appear to harm Cannabis; and countless fine crops are raised with water straight from the tap.
Chlorine is introduced to water as the gas Cl(subscript)2 which formulates slightly acidic water, the chlorine could possibly influence the plants indirectly, by killing some beneficial microorganisms in the soil; however, neither effect is expected to be serious. Organochlorine takes longer than chlorine to dissipate, so the best procedure is allowing the water to stand in an open container for three days at room temperature.
If the water has dissolved CO2 in it (like some bottled water labeled as pure), the pH will rise as that comes out. Letting it sit out is used to evaporate the chlorine, which is fine if thats what your district uses. Some areas have switched to chloramine, which is chlorine and ammonia. This will not evaporate and you need a reverse-osmosis filter (or a distiller) to remove chloramine.
To determine which is in your water, have a sample tested or call your utility company. Even with chlorine or chloramine, your plants may grow fine from the tap, but if you wouldn’t drink it, why should your plants?
Test your water before you use it. You should understand basics like hardness, PH, and other contamination. From there you can further treat your water if needed.
Chlorine and other chloramines can be easily defeated with the addition of organic matter. There is little disinfectant properties by the time it reaches you.
Simply throw a little compost or dirt into your watering can, and you have disabled the chlorine.
Below is a tea that I brew, its a fungal dominant tea, and I use tap water, there are bacteria swimming and alive in the tea. So in my situation, untreated tap does not cause problems with microlife.
Thanks bro, I’ve been following Dr Elaine Ingham, and Jeff Lowenfells and it only seemed natural to buy a microscope to verify my tea or soil microlife with the various brews.
This tea was spiked with Great White inoculant and is marketed as a mycorrhizal inoculant, and I observed fungal hyphae growing within the tea.
Unfortunately the bacteria do not show up well in this wet mount because of low magnification, but they are there, at the 1 o clock position you can see a few bacteria.
All my teas are done with tap water. Its reasonable to assume that if my untreated tap water isn’t stopping microlife in a tea its reasonable to assume that there will be little to no issues with my plants.
Tap water is ok for me if it stays in bucket at least few hours. 30 minutes should be enough if I am in a hurry, but I have best results 1-2 days after filling the bucket. Our town takes water from water dam so it´s suitable even for aquarists. EC is 0,27.Maybe too much iron due to old water pipe.
Where I live the tap water has chlorine and a high ph (7.8 to 8.5, usually the higher range). If straight tap w is used, the plants have all kinds of problems, such as multiple deficiencies, failure to thrive, dull, lacking shine, leaves. After trying many approaches for many years, the solution came from the “Organics for Beginners” thread at icmag. I add ascorbic acid to bring down the ph, and neutralize the chlorine. In a 5 gallon bucket, I add a handful of ewc, plus molasses to feed soil life, humic acids, seaweed, mycorrhizae and beneficial bacteria, plus trichoderma. This works fantastically well in organic soil grows. Actually, the main posters in the thread claim that adjusting the ph is unnecessary if dolomite lime is incorporated in the soil. But I do it anyway because the ascorbic acid also takes care of chlorine.
Yes, if the water is out of spec, then it does make sense to treat water. As I said before, know your water. then treat accordingly.
My water is slightly alkaline, with a bit of calcium, ~100PPM, My city has a detailed water report. Causes very little issues.
Yes I agree with ascorbic acid or sodium thiosulfate if you want to remove chlorine. Its recognized as a chlorine neutralizing agent as well as PH modifier, but if you are adding other organic matter the chlorine tends to be weak . And given the high ph of your water, ascorbic acid would bring it down…
Out of curiosity. What is your dose of ascorbic acid for 5 gallons?.
Well, before using the ewc, etc., I was using a buffered ascorbic acid, which has pure aa, plus potassium, calcium, magnesium and zinc ascorbates. I was adding enough of this to bring the water to 6.2 to 6.4. But it was amusing, to me, that after some time, overnight, say, the ph went back up! The amount was around .5 teaspoon. Now, using ewc, molasses, humics and seaweed, I just use around .25 teaspoon, a pinch actually. And I sometimes use the straight aa, and sometimes the buffered one. Sorry for the excess verbiage. I actually stopped checking the ph and am having the best results ever. Don’t mean to advise others to abandon ph metering, just that when I follow the advice of “burn one” in the Organics for beginners ic mag thread, it is, in my case not necessary. Peace
