Optimizing Culture

[dansyr]

Originally Posted by Ray

[*]Use as pure of a water source as possible – collected rainwater, distilled, or reverse osmosis being best. Here in coastal NC, my tap water is great, as-is.

Do you think there's a noticeable payoff to extreme water quality? For instance, my pleurothallids at the lab get ultrapure (18 megaohm) water & the rest get either DI or ultrapure water depending on what I feel like. Vs the pleurothallids at home get tap water (good quality, but definitely not DI). I know there are so many confounding factors, but I wonder if you have an idea how much, if anything, ultrapure water gives over RO or DI, all else being equal?

[Ray]

Originally Posted by dansyr

Do you think there's a noticeable payoff to extreme water quality? For instance, my pleurothallids at the lab get ultrapure (18 megaohm) water & the rest get either DI or ultrapure water depending on what I feel like. Vs the pleurothallids at home get tap water (good quality, but definitely not DI). I know there are so many confounding factors, but I wonder if you have an idea how much, if anything, ultrapure water gives over RO or DI, all else being equal?

Frankly, I think that once the level of dissolved solids is as low as RO, or maybe even higher than that, it doesn't matter.

Tropical rain forest rain probably isn't ultra-pure, and what the plants see is as much as 15-25 ppm TDS.