Phrag leaf tips turning brown

[Melody]

Originally Posted by slipperfreak

This is a misguided statement. Orchids (like all plants) need minerals, but in small amounts. Often times tap water is too hard for orchids. Phrags in particular are sensitive to hard water, so it is common practice to use rain, distilled, or RO water for them. Some people use pure water for all their plants. As long as they get frequent, weak doses of fertilizer they get what they need.

Of course if you watered with only pure water (or for that matter, only tap water) and never fertilized you'd have dying plants!

Well, I was just repeating what I was told, which makes sense to me. I know that some tap water is not usable for orchids, and I can see where you could use distilled in combination...but I still don't think straight distilled water is the best option (in my opinion). I know the pain of finding good water sources as I have kept aquariums for years and use to have tap water with a lot of copper in it that was unusable. If I was to use distilled water in an aquarium, I would first add minerals back to it, otherwise the fish would die, or use it in combination with tap. So it makes sense to me that this would be the case for orchids as well. A lady named Linda Thorne from Seagrove Orchids spoke about her struggle with finding a good water source for her plants and said to never use straight distilled. So that's where I'm getting this from. Like I said before, just my opinion, take it with a grain of salt since I am new to this.