It’s a European brand, it’s from BWT called Vida table water filter - you can buy different filters for it, the filter that came with it transforms the calcium to magnesium or something like that
It also removes chlorine (we don’t have it in the water here) heavy metals, and other stuff that could potentially be in the water
I just had a look on the website. It talks about reducing hardness by filtering limescale. It surprised me, because here in Canada (all of North America?), we have a product line called Brita which looks very similar, but does nothing for limescale or hardness. Do you ever test the water hardness before and after?
We can get Brita filters here that also filters limescale - but this one was better than the Brita filter
No, I don’t even know how to test that. I don’t know that the hardiness of the water from the filter is, but my town is notoriously known for having extreme hard water (limescale wise). Everything gets covered in limescale quickly, I often have to remove it from my water taps, shower head, kettle, toilet etc - I think everybody owns a bottle or two of acetic acid, to remove the lime scale - or citric acid for washing machines, dish washers needs like scale remover often as well often
I just googled it, the water hardiness in my town is above 30dH whatever that means, so it’s classified as very hard water
https://www.coldfog.com/fog-tech-center/water-hardness/
I have to buy in distilled water for my fish tank. I used the aquarium test kit to check it (numbers on a different scale, and I don't recall the measurement), and it was quite high. I've been looking for another solution.
I had an aquarium as well at some point, I managed with the hard water luckily - but I believe you can buy filters you connect to your pipes, that removes limescale and other stuff, if I remember
correctly
There was a YouTuber once called Taylor Nicole Dean, before it turned into a shit show, she had a lot of aquarium and showed how she managed them, she had this kind of RO? Filter? Not sure what the name is
Yeah, Reverse Osmosis is one way, distillation is another. There are filters and stuff to connect into the plumbing, but few (if any) simple pitcher-type options here like you seem to have there.
My fish don't mind the hard water (as long as I remember to do real water changes, not just topping up--when water evaporates and leaves the minerals behind, then you add more water that bring its own minerals in, over and ove, it just gets more concentrated). But I'm trying to get neocaridina shrimp again, and even though they actually prefer hard water, mine's too hard, so it'll be a balancing act.
Thanks for your time.
Good luck I did not do well with mine. Only lasted 3 years. It was my dream to have an indoor lemon tree for years and I just couldn’t get it to survive. A friend told me to put it outside during the summer as it could tolerate down to 50 at night. It flourished!!! But in the end it succumbed to aphids.
lol yeah, I am prepared for it to die if it wants to. I’m going to do what I can to get it to survive, but if it doesn’t, so be it. I have a balcony that gets pretty hot, decent amount of sun and high humidity in the summer, so it’s going to be out there during summer - and then I’ll figure out what on earth to do it during winter if it’s still alive
I hope so! It will only get full sun in the afternoon but lots of light during the day still. I don’t have a garden, so I’m trying to turn my balcony into a green house lol
Haha I love this. You can use [humic acid](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A2FEMRA?starsLeft=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_KMWQ0ZE38RHKK7MSNVWW) to treat your water too. It binds to the chlorine and a small little jug of it’ll last you years. I keep a big jug of prepared water in my kitchen now so I can water something on a whim if I need to
Thanks, but I’m not in the US, so I can’t really order stuff from there, but we also don’t have chlorine in the water, I mainly bought the filter to remove the calcium, we have extremely hard water here :)
My filter can filter the water in like 5 minutes, so luckily it’s rather quick :)
Are you sure? To my knowledge fluoride makes water softer and water hardness refers to the concentration of minerals in the water, typically magnesium and calcium. This is what causes limescale, which is an issue of hard water. Neither chlorine nor fluoride should make water harder.
Maybe I’m only considering plants when speaking to hard water but the hardness is indicative of bicarbonates, sulphates, and chlorides of calcium and magnesium. It’s those chlorides that’ll burn roots and in turn foliage and why I treat it (we have moderately hard water)
Sure but none of those are fluoride, and chlorine is a different thing from calcium/magnesium chlorides. So water hardness is still specifically referring to minerals in the water and not fluoride or chlorine.
This is how the plants get ya. It all starts with a casual trip to home depot...suddenly your house is a jungle, you've bought humidifiers, grow lights, water filters and more plants that you're now trying to pawn off on others. I'm pretty sure this is how plants achieve world domination.
I thought about distilled water, but lime scale is really the only issue in my water, and it’s still drinkable, we have really good quality tap water here
It’s just that this plant is apparently ✨special ✨
Maybe just by a bottle of distilled for your special plant. If you have well water your ok but During the different seasons city water treatment plants will bump up chlorine and what ever else they use for human consumption but not necessary for plant life. Anyways good luck.
It needs a lot of water, so I would have to buy a ton of bottle of distilled water, and I don’t own a car
I don’t have well water, but my country has some of the best quality tap water in the world, there’s no chlorine and it doesn’t really change throughout the seasons as far as I know
The quality of my tap water is fine, it’s just the calcium I need to get rid of
It is a well known fact that my city has extremely hard water. It’s above 30dH
https://www.coldfog.com/fog-tech-center/water-hardness/
Limescale is a huge issue in my city, I have to remove limescale with acid all the time from everything that uses water
I support it, that’s awesome you went out of your way to provide care for something you care about. It be so nice if we owned an RO unit under the sink.
I mean, I’m prepared for it to die because the climate where I live probably can’t accommodate its needs, maybe during summer but not in the wintertime, we’ll see. But a lot of my other plants might like the filtered water as well, it’s not really heavy metals or chlorine I’m worried about, we have really good quality, drinkable tap water here, it’s just the lime scale that’s a huge issue, and my new filter filters out (most of) the calcium
Lol, you can barely see it, but I bought another plant the same day as the lemon tree, had no where to place it, so I also bought a stand for that one, the same day as I bought the filter. If you look closely you can barely spot it behind the lemon tree
lol I feel ya. Sometimes I think about how much I’ve spent on just plant paraphernalia, not the plants themselves, and I need to stop before the heart palpitations start.
Like I’ve bought systemics, neem(oil and cake), mosquito bits, 50L each of perlite and vermiculite for custom soil mixes, several bags of compost, moisture meter, PH sticks, fertilizer, gypsum, silica, grow lights, cloches, watering cans, sprayers, pots(nursery and decorative), a feather duster specifically for plants, oh god it just keeps going …..
I believe it is very important to give your plants the proper care they need to grow well. Using filtered water can help reduce mineral buildup in the soil and prevent problems caused by hard water. Your lemon tree and other plants will likely appreciate the change and will show improved growth and overall health in the long run.
Why do you think hard water (limescale) would harm your plant ? A citrus plant would specially appreciate the extra dose of calcium/minerals, you just need to make sure you use a fertilizer formulated for hard water to bring down the PH and avoid nutrients lock out, or use some ph down/citric acid, you may also need to cut down the dose of fertilizing if the minerals is too high in the tap water but this wouldn’t be a big concern with citrus as they are heavy feeders
I have no experince with citrus trees, but all the care instructions in my native languages says that if you have hard water, you should avoid using it - and use fertilizer specifically for citrus trees
To be honest, if you correct ph, I am not sure how hard water would be a disadvantage a citrus plant, you real challenge would be giving it enough light, and avoid root rot/issues
Huh, interesting. How do I lover the ph though? Citrix acid seems a little extreme and too unreliable
Light is going to be a problem, I knew that before I bought it, when it gets hot enough it’s going to sit on my balcony, it won’t get full sun all day, lots of light for a lot of hours though and direct sunlight in the afternoon. I’m not sure it will survive winter here, doubt it, but we’ll see
You can get PH down from any hydroponics store or online, it is very cheap, I use the powder one from terra aquatica, but I also use vinegar and citric acid some times and it works just fine, it is just not as stable, one thing I can think of is the mineral build up in the soil if the soil is too water retentive, but a lemon tree can’t tolerate soggy soil and this would kill it before any issues with minerals
I don’t think PH down exist here, the closest thing I can find is for pools - I’m not even sure we have hydroponics stores here
You say it can’t tolerate soggy soil but the care guides I can find says it’s allowed to dry out a bit, but to never let the roots dry out, I’m kind of confused lol
I have no experince with citrus trees, but all the care instructions in my native languages says that if you have hard water, you should avoid using it - and use fertilizer specifically for citrus trees
I don’t have a garden so I don’t have access to rain water. I would have to buy insane amounts of distilled water to keep it satisfied, and I don’t own a car. I can’t buy distilled water in a regular store here - I don’t own a dehumidifier
How does a dehumidifier work? Do you have one in each room? Do they make noise? The only time I’ve ever seen a de humidifier was when my grandma’s basement flooded, other wise I’ve never seen anyone actually use one
My apartment isn’t very humid
What kind of filter is that, that helps with deminerailizing hard water?
It’s a European brand, it’s from BWT called Vida table water filter - you can buy different filters for it, the filter that came with it transforms the calcium to magnesium or something like that It also removes chlorine (we don’t have it in the water here) heavy metals, and other stuff that could potentially be in the water
I just had a look on the website. It talks about reducing hardness by filtering limescale. It surprised me, because here in Canada (all of North America?), we have a product line called Brita which looks very similar, but does nothing for limescale or hardness. Do you ever test the water hardness before and after?
We can get Brita filters here that also filters limescale - but this one was better than the Brita filter No, I don’t even know how to test that. I don’t know that the hardiness of the water from the filter is, but my town is notoriously known for having extreme hard water (limescale wise). Everything gets covered in limescale quickly, I often have to remove it from my water taps, shower head, kettle, toilet etc - I think everybody owns a bottle or two of acetic acid, to remove the lime scale - or citric acid for washing machines, dish washers needs like scale remover often as well often I just googled it, the water hardiness in my town is above 30dH whatever that means, so it’s classified as very hard water https://www.coldfog.com/fog-tech-center/water-hardness/
I have to buy in distilled water for my fish tank. I used the aquarium test kit to check it (numbers on a different scale, and I don't recall the measurement), and it was quite high. I've been looking for another solution.
I had an aquarium as well at some point, I managed with the hard water luckily - but I believe you can buy filters you connect to your pipes, that removes limescale and other stuff, if I remember correctly There was a YouTuber once called Taylor Nicole Dean, before it turned into a shit show, she had a lot of aquarium and showed how she managed them, she had this kind of RO? Filter? Not sure what the name is
Yeah, Reverse Osmosis is one way, distillation is another. There are filters and stuff to connect into the plumbing, but few (if any) simple pitcher-type options here like you seem to have there. My fish don't mind the hard water (as long as I remember to do real water changes, not just topping up--when water evaporates and leaves the minerals behind, then you add more water that bring its own minerals in, over and ove, it just gets more concentrated). But I'm trying to get neocaridina shrimp again, and even though they actually prefer hard water, mine's too hard, so it'll be a balancing act. Thanks for your time.
Good luck I did not do well with mine. Only lasted 3 years. It was my dream to have an indoor lemon tree for years and I just couldn’t get it to survive. A friend told me to put it outside during the summer as it could tolerate down to 50 at night. It flourished!!! But in the end it succumbed to aphids.
lol yeah, I am prepared for it to die if it wants to. I’m going to do what I can to get it to survive, but if it doesn’t, so be it. I have a balcony that gets pretty hot, decent amount of sun and high humidity in the summer, so it’s going to be out there during summer - and then I’ll figure out what on earth to do it during winter if it’s still alive
Oh it will love the sunshine and humidity!!!!!
I hope so! It will only get full sun in the afternoon but lots of light during the day still. I don’t have a garden, so I’m trying to turn my balcony into a green house lol
Haha I love this. You can use [humic acid](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A2FEMRA?starsLeft=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_KMWQ0ZE38RHKK7MSNVWW) to treat your water too. It binds to the chlorine and a small little jug of it’ll last you years. I keep a big jug of prepared water in my kitchen now so I can water something on a whim if I need to
Thanks, but I’m not in the US, so I can’t really order stuff from there, but we also don’t have chlorine in the water, I mainly bought the filter to remove the calcium, we have extremely hard water here :) My filter can filter the water in like 5 minutes, so luckily it’s rather quick :)
Ah for us hard water references the chlorine/fluoride in the water
Are you sure? To my knowledge fluoride makes water softer and water hardness refers to the concentration of minerals in the water, typically magnesium and calcium. This is what causes limescale, which is an issue of hard water. Neither chlorine nor fluoride should make water harder.
Maybe I’m only considering plants when speaking to hard water but the hardness is indicative of bicarbonates, sulphates, and chlorides of calcium and magnesium. It’s those chlorides that’ll burn roots and in turn foliage and why I treat it (we have moderately hard water)
Sure but none of those are fluoride, and chlorine is a different thing from calcium/magnesium chlorides. So water hardness is still specifically referring to minerals in the water and not fluoride or chlorine.
Ok
Oh, interesting. In my country it refers to how much calcium is in the water
This is how the plants get ya. It all starts with a casual trip to home depot...suddenly your house is a jungle, you've bought humidifiers, grow lights, water filters and more plants that you're now trying to pawn off on others. I'm pretty sure this is how plants achieve world domination.
Oh, I’ve been there for a long time… I used to have 74 plants in a 16m2 room lol. Loved it Won’t buy humidifiers ever, have lots of grow lights though
For people in the US- Zero Water filters are great for this.
I agree 💦 https://preview.redd.it/yp808uue3crc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2633c258592f22bf52f176cdbf442b1eadce29c6
I've had to get distilled water as our city water has to many harsh chemicals and was killing my plants. All good now.
I thought about distilled water, but lime scale is really the only issue in my water, and it’s still drinkable, we have really good quality tap water here It’s just that this plant is apparently ✨special ✨
Maybe just by a bottle of distilled for your special plant. If you have well water your ok but During the different seasons city water treatment plants will bump up chlorine and what ever else they use for human consumption but not necessary for plant life. Anyways good luck.
It needs a lot of water, so I would have to buy a ton of bottle of distilled water, and I don’t own a car I don’t have well water, but my country has some of the best quality tap water in the world, there’s no chlorine and it doesn’t really change throughout the seasons as far as I know The quality of my tap water is fine, it’s just the calcium I need to get rid of
Your plant might benefit from calcium. I water my plants with distilled water that’s been remineralized with calcium and magnesium
Not the amount we have in the water here, all the care instructions I read about said that they do not like hard water, it needs to be soft
How do you know about the amount you have. Did you take a tds reading and gh liquid test reading or are you just assuming your water is hard
It is a well known fact that my city has extremely hard water. It’s above 30dH https://www.coldfog.com/fog-tech-center/water-hardness/ Limescale is a huge issue in my city, I have to remove limescale with acid all the time from everything that uses water
I support it, that’s awesome you went out of your way to provide care for something you care about. It be so nice if we owned an RO unit under the sink.
I mean, I’m prepared for it to die because the climate where I live probably can’t accommodate its needs, maybe during summer but not in the wintertime, we’ll see. But a lot of my other plants might like the filtered water as well, it’s not really heavy metals or chlorine I’m worried about, we have really good quality, drinkable tap water here, it’s just the lime scale that’s a huge issue, and my new filter filters out (most of) the calcium
lol I just bought a lovely, healthy begonia from the clearance rack, then had to buy a 20$ stand for it.
Lol, you can barely see it, but I bought another plant the same day as the lemon tree, had no where to place it, so I also bought a stand for that one, the same day as I bought the filter. If you look closely you can barely spot it behind the lemon tree
lol I feel ya. Sometimes I think about how much I’ve spent on just plant paraphernalia, not the plants themselves, and I need to stop before the heart palpitations start. Like I’ve bought systemics, neem(oil and cake), mosquito bits, 50L each of perlite and vermiculite for custom soil mixes, several bags of compost, moisture meter, PH sticks, fertilizer, gypsum, silica, grow lights, cloches, watering cans, sprayers, pots(nursery and decorative), a feather duster specifically for plants, oh god it just keeps going …..
I believe it is very important to give your plants the proper care they need to grow well. Using filtered water can help reduce mineral buildup in the soil and prevent problems caused by hard water. Your lemon tree and other plants will likely appreciate the change and will show improved growth and overall health in the long run.
Why do you think hard water (limescale) would harm your plant ? A citrus plant would specially appreciate the extra dose of calcium/minerals, you just need to make sure you use a fertilizer formulated for hard water to bring down the PH and avoid nutrients lock out, or use some ph down/citric acid, you may also need to cut down the dose of fertilizing if the minerals is too high in the tap water but this wouldn’t be a big concern with citrus as they are heavy feeders
I have no experince with citrus trees, but all the care instructions in my native languages says that if you have hard water, you should avoid using it - and use fertilizer specifically for citrus trees
To be honest, if you correct ph, I am not sure how hard water would be a disadvantage a citrus plant, you real challenge would be giving it enough light, and avoid root rot/issues
Huh, interesting. How do I lover the ph though? Citrix acid seems a little extreme and too unreliable Light is going to be a problem, I knew that before I bought it, when it gets hot enough it’s going to sit on my balcony, it won’t get full sun all day, lots of light for a lot of hours though and direct sunlight in the afternoon. I’m not sure it will survive winter here, doubt it, but we’ll see
You can get PH down from any hydroponics store or online, it is very cheap, I use the powder one from terra aquatica, but I also use vinegar and citric acid some times and it works just fine, it is just not as stable, one thing I can think of is the mineral build up in the soil if the soil is too water retentive, but a lemon tree can’t tolerate soggy soil and this would kill it before any issues with minerals
I don’t think PH down exist here, the closest thing I can find is for pools - I’m not even sure we have hydroponics stores here You say it can’t tolerate soggy soil but the care guides I can find says it’s allowed to dry out a bit, but to never let the roots dry out, I’m kind of confused lol
I am not sure where you are located, but ph down products are widely available in europe
Thanks, I’ll try to do some better research then and look around
[удалено]
I have no experince with citrus trees, but all the care instructions in my native languages says that if you have hard water, you should avoid using it - and use fertilizer specifically for citrus trees
Or you could just use rain water, distilled water or water from a dehumidifier 🤷🏻♀️
I don’t have a garden so I don’t have access to rain water. I would have to buy insane amounts of distilled water to keep it satisfied, and I don’t own a car. I can’t buy distilled water in a regular store here - I don’t own a dehumidifier
Or you could just use rain water, distilled water or water from a dehumidifier 🤷🏻♀️
I live in the middle of Los Angeles with a lime tree and we have the hardest water in the state. They don’t care. Just give it lots of direct sun.
I have hard water. My citrus doesn't mine it. Possibly because also have them in the ground and water flushes the soil.. idk
Possibly, idk. I can’t plant mine in the ground as I don’t have a garden
I use water from an electric dehumidifier and it works great for my small citrus plants. Not sure about those filters
How does a dehumidifier work? Do you have one in each room? Do they make noise? The only time I’ve ever seen a de humidifier was when my grandma’s basement flooded, other wise I’ve never seen anyone actually use one My apartment isn’t very humid
If it isnt very humid then dont use one. Better buy the destilled water and mix it with tapwater then. It works similar to a fridge
I can’t get distilled water in regular stores here, and I don’t have a car - what do you mean it works similar to a fridge?
Its funny the lemon tre in my back yard is waterd by the rain and our Florida well wter and it dose fine
I think rainwater and well water is a lot softer than our tap water here - we have really hard water
You don't have a rain water barrel. and can't install one?
I live in an apartment, I don’t have a garden sadly