chloramine is the devil bobby boucher!!!!!

[Mal420xl]

sorry low-rdr didnt mean to imply the genetics question was invalid, it is until you add in the fact the my buddy can get the exact same seeds under essentially the same conditions excluding that he has well water and i have city. but just for the sake of this conversation lets eliminate the plants altogether. lets just go with the water for a sec. right now i have a couple jugs of water one filtered thru the brita and no ph adjustment metered in at 9.2 per municipal regs before filtering and 8.0 after and one with non filtered but ph adjusted to 6.5 down from 9.2. i checked them both yesterday afternoon. i checked them again last nite and the non filtered was still at 8 and the non filtered was jumping back and forth between 6.6 and 6.7. at this point ill chalk that up to the meter or temp change, coincidence etc. so im checking them both now again and they are at filtered 8.0 non filtered is 6.8. im still willing to call that an anomaly since it hasnt been 24 hours after starting to test the jugs. but if the trend of the non filtered waters ph to rise continues would you agree that something is causing the ph to re-adjust? and if the filtered water continues to flatline or rise far slower it would be reasonable then to surmise that whatever that something is has been removed or reduced yeah? i am sure there other chemicals that affect ph to some degree added in also but chloramine im pretty sure is the main one. the reason i can get the filters cheap is because i have a friend that works a graingers, one of the perks of being contractor but i have to ask why would i filter the rainwater versus the house water "On to the next subject, sourcing water. Using your current gutter system you can obtain up to 300 gallons of water per year (depending on the size of your home) by simplying routing your gutters through a filter and into a reservoir." hehe i got a pic to show you guys why i dont use our rainwater. one we dont a ton of rain this time of year its mostly snow. the one good thing about snow is when it rains right afterwards you get a reeeeal good picture of whats in your air. if it looks like this youre gonna need a bigger filter Attachment 290019Attachment 290020
and no there wasnt a fire, no volcanoes thats just what gets dredged outta the air whenever it rains right after snow around here. its scary sorta. anyway i think the more definitve answer will come when i start checking the pots of soil if the non filterd ph rises over time then something is building up in the soil and i can only see that being chloramine. but i wont know that for a few weeks.

[Mal420xl]

oh and i am using store bought water for now not happy about it but there ya have it. oh yeah i screwed this up "i checked them again last nite and the non filtered was still at 8 and the non filtered was jumping back and forth between 6.6 and 6.7." the filtered one was at 8.0 still.

[Mal420xl]

ok i guess ill look into the vitamin c thing that sounds pretty good.

Weezard, i took a look at one of the plants roots, they looked ok. they are only going on 2 weeks above ground tomorrow so the roots were not too extensive but they looked ok. i didnt see anything funky anyway. nice and white like the inside of a radish kinda.

[pushit]

Ive talked to many people about this same thing also. My tapwater was coming out about 8.3ish. It took a lot of ph down to get it around 6.5ish. I was having a lot of ph issues while doing this. I then got on ebay and ordered a small RO system for around 160. To make a long story short, i tested the same water out of the RO system and the ph read around 7. Rusty told me that the RO doesnt affect ph (i have yet to look this up because I trust the source). So either something in my tap water was either affecting my 2 ph pens(incorrect readings) or the ph down i was using. Either way, whatever the RO was filtering out has made all the difference in my grows. Now i just prefill my gallon jugs and when its time to water i just add a little molasses and water. Happy little plants now. Just something you might wanna check out.

[Mal420xl]

if one of your stages is a carbon filter that can take whatever is changing the ph like chloramine or chlorine with ro. i just have a problem with the waste and the fact it takes hours to make a gallon. that and i just cant see not using my tap water if i can get around the ph issue. from what weezard and low-rdr were telling me about vitamin c that sounds like a real good option too. i just dont want whatever is causing my ph to change building up in the soil.

[Weezard]

Chloramine breaks down to halo methanes over time so, no buildup.
And, it is usually measured in parts per billion so It would take years if it did.

However, from your description, it sounds like your water is chock full of alkaline salts.
So, your PH down is producing salts that will accumulate.

Chasing alkaline water with PH down is like playing peek-a-boo with a 2 year old, it never ends.

And not for nothin', PH readings on distilled water are meaningless because most PH meters actually read conductance.
Distilled water is an insulator, no conductance to read.

Aloha,
Weeze

[Mal420xl]

well ill admit i dont know a lot about my meter as far as the probe goes id hazard to guess it may work that way. as for the salt wouldnt i get a high reading for e/c? my tap water reads 9.2 ph , .17-.22 e/c , and 145-167 ppm. i thought the e/c would read higher just because we do get so much snow and use salt to control ice. or is that high? seems low or normalish to me. no readings or inaccurate reading on distilled kinda sucks but i can use my drops to at least guesstimate the run off i suppose.
and yeah it is like chasing 2 year olds. i did my time , im too worn down to chase much of anything these days

[Mal420xl]

ok chloramine may not be the devil but it is an archdemon when it comes to ph and soil anyway.
i had 4 jugs of water one straight tap, one filtered and ph adjusted to 6.5, one non filtered but adjusted to 6.5, and one non filtered and adjusted to 10.
i had 4 containers of ffof no plants and 4 ffof with seedlings.
everyday i checked the ph on the water and everytime i watered the plants i checked the runoffs including the pots without plants.
jug of straight tap, ph gradually lowered but never below 8. filtered and ph'd to 6.5 jug climbed the upper 8's. non filtered 6.5 climbed back up but not as fast and not as high. non filtered 10 ph stayed about the same.
run offs for straight tap were around 5.6-5.8 in both pots with a plant and without. the filtered 6.5 runoffs were in the 7' at first and jumped up to mid/upper 8's over time in both. the non filtered 6.5 runoffs were both in the low 4's.
the non filtered 10 runoffs were both 6.5-6.8. the plant in the ph 10 and oddly enough the straight tap(soil turned toxic ec was at 6 or so) plant survived. the plant in the toxic soil is severely stunted and is sorta like bonzai the other is super healthy by comparison. the best i can come up with is when you filter the water it breaks some of the chloramine bonds and leaves the ammonia and chlorine both in the 11's for ph behind. why it behaves the way it does in the soil i can only attribute to some reaction between the chemical content in the soil and the chloramine or the byproduct from filtering. either way its a pain in the sack. i would never have guessed i need to raise the ph when it comes in at 9.3 to begin with. the meter is a good one, i calibrated it over and over thinking i was insane but it is right on the money. the other factor is the seed is from northern mexico, thats the only thing i know for sure. that and the soil in northern mexico can be very alkaline. it sounds crazy i know but the proof is in the plants. the 2 here are the high ph and toxic tap water. on my current grow(since i figured it out) i have been using non filtered ph adjusted to 10 water with a little calmag and ff big bloom(more recently) 2 out of them have recovered pretty much all the way and 2 seems to be taking longer but are getting there. all this adds up to in my case is a good argument for some sort of hydro. the pic of the little plant came out crappy but then it is a crappy little plant

[Mal420xl]

bimp