Water Quality???

[Tindomul1of9]

I didnt know much about the importance of water quality till I came to this board.
Is store bought spring water good? Or bad?
How about distilled water?? I have regular access to both. Would like to know your thoughts. Thanks.

[uncasteeb]

Spring water is very variable & can contain quite a lot of impurities.
Distilled water is a perfect base to start with.
I would add 10% tapwater to distilled water & then use your regular fert.
If you don,t add the tapwater the Ph could drop like a stone when you add fert.
Your tapwater could be fine & if your plants are doing ok & distilled is not to expensive then go for a 50/50 mix.
Obviously getting your tapwater checked would be a good idea.

[Piper]

I took a low-tech/lazy approach to the problem of water quality and installed a reverse-osmosis filter on my shower head. I either water my plants in the shower, or I fill a bucket with the shower water for those I bottom water (paphs and blooming plants.)

I use regular tap water with fert maybe once a month to pick up and balance out the other trace elements.

Water quality is important to orchids, but you've got to find a solution that's practical with your lifestyle.

Julie

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

I think that water that is too pure (dd H2O) or something like that, it deprives the orchids certain trace elements essential for robust growth.
But if I have to choose between spring water and distilled water, distilled water is better since you can add a balanced fertilizer containing needed trace elements. I interchange the waters, like using tap water for one week, rain water another week, distilled water another week or something like that, and certainly you can make it practical to your lifestyle as Julie said. Orchids will do just fine if you use tap water for a while, just don't overfertilize them, since that would add a lot of salts to the growing medium.
Have fun.
Cheers. Hoa.

[Tindomul1of9]

Thanks everyone. I have a Haraella odorata on a stick inside my 55 gallon vivarium I spray each morning with distilled water, but I got to thinking that distilled water alone would deprive the plant of some much needed nutrients etc... So after misting, I would wet the stick with Poland spring water. Is that ok? I dont use the whole bottle, since I also need to drink.

By the way, I work in a lab and distilled water in free and possibly never ending, so long as I got electricity.

So I'm thinking I should mix some either bottled spring water, or tap water with distilled water???? I learned to mist my vivs with distilled water becuase when I misted at home with tap water, the accumulation of salts was incredible. All the leaves on my plants(outside the viv) would look dusty, and the glass sides on my viv would get a real build up. And in just a few weeks, not even months.

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

You are right. Misting with tap water would be too much. The salt residues are so visible and I am familiar with it. This is what I do for mounted plants: misting them with distilled water/rain water everyday or other day, then using tap water every other day, when feeding time comes (once a week), I just add fertilizer into the water - any water is OK, it does not matter at this point since we will add a lot of salts! If all I have is tap water, I still can use it to mist the plant but once in a while, I would use distilled water to wash the plants/roots in order to remove all the accumulated salts.