I'm the absolute worst when it comes to keeping up on this page. I wish there was a nice simple mobile version, but I digress. This time around I've got a bunch of different strains in my little room. I've got Blue Hash Plant, Confidential Cheese, Stacked Kush and one lonely Cotton Candy. I normally do 6, but I'm doing a favor for a friend in exchange for some more tattooing. This bunch is doing insanely better than my last run, without realizing it my RO filter crapped out and I was killing my roots...this time around I've been using distilled water until I can motivate to move my RO to a different part of the work space and replace all of the cartridges. I must say, even a small bit of chlorine and whatever other awful stuff is in my water made a huge difference in the growth of the buds. I sincerely wish I had nice well water. Well anywhoooo here are some photos of whats cooking....they're all chopped at the end of the month. I'm letting the BHP go an extra week and pulling everyone at 9 since the rest are all 8-9 or 9-10 week.
So you're running an RO filter system on "city water", I've not heard of this before. I've always had the understanding that folks with city water simply needed to let the water sit out for a day or so to allow the chlorine to dissipate. I'm not quite sure what you're filtering out besides Chlorine here.... Now I'm not sure about this but I think a simple active charcoal filter will eliminate most if not all of the chlorine from the water. I'd suggest a little investigative work on your part to check that out before buying replacement R/O elements, might save you some dough... Also, I've found that the prefilters on my R/O will clog up well before the expensive "polishing" filters will. Looking good though Duc
Duc, Theres a ton of sediment (and heaven knows what else) in the water as well, it's a disgustingly old infrastructure here and any time there is a fire or broken main within a mile or two of the house we can't drink our water for a few days. Had I realized how quickly this was crapping up my charcoal filter, the RO would have been fine. I replaced the charcoal and was still getting chlorine in the reservoir. I didn't know until more recently (after buying the filter replacements) that I could use a fish tank bubbler to help take care of that problem. No matter the case, switching from my crap municipal water to bottled distilled has lent itself to roots coming out the bottoms of my pots again...so theres something that's doing damage. I haven't changed anything I've done or fed them...so I'm sticking to blaming water. If it wasn't such a pain in the ass to buy gallons of water constantly I wouldn't even waste my time with the RO. Thanks, they're looking much better than I had expected considering my total fail on my last run.
opcorn-2: I use an RO filter on municipal water. This eliminates one source of variation, along with the chlorine. PPM is 300 outta the tap, not sure what's in it, but don't care now that I have RO. Caution using RO water in a clonerator. I learned the hard way to use de-chlorinated tap for clone machines. SOD you mentioned your filter woes. I have had mine going for 3 years or so and have only changed the pre-filters once - never the polishing membrane. Dunno what's in your water that is clogging your filter, but it might be worth a shot to just change the pre-filters (@$30) and see if that helps. How are you checking for chlorine in water after it's been thru the RO filter?
I've already replaced the charcoal filter, I have the other pre filter and a new RO membrane. I'm just replacing it all and starting over. It was suggested to me by a hydroponics/grow shop owner to just replace the charcoal every three months (once I get it back up and running), add a fish tank bubbler, and that should be sufficient. I won't even drink my tap water anymore, I even buy bottled to drink it's just so gross. I have chlorine test strips that I use to check the levels in the water.
