FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I’m going to be making a couple tweaks to my RO system system tomorrow and wanted to organize my chicken scratch notes into a flow chart for reference. I may have been procrastinating gotten a bit carried away making it pretty..

Wow. You must need a lot of water-on-demand for your plants. I use Zero Water for my fairly small collection. I wait until the the filtered water starts to taste a bit weird (around 4-5 ppm tds) and then start filling gallon jugs with it until the filter blinds up. I find the filters will still work even at 15-20 ppm and the plants don't mind.
Do the filters in your system require backflushing to clean the membranes or do you just replace as needed when the flow drops?
Nicely done!

Gary wrote:Wow. You must need a lot of water-on-demand for your plants. I use Zero Water for my fairly small collection. I wait until the the filtered water starts to taste a bit weird (around 4-5 ppm tds) and then start filling gallon jugs with it until the filter blinds up. I find the filters will still work even at 15-20 ppm and the plants don't mind.
Do the filters in your system require backflushing to clean the membranes or do you just replace as needed when the flow drops?
Nicely done!

The humidifiers are much thirstier than the plants! And they’re swap out and/or refillable filters. I try to replace filters or filter media as needed on DI resin and once a year on sediment filter and GAC.

Yeah, humidifiers can chug the water. I use a small ultrasonic humidifier in the house just for keeping the air comfy during the winter; the monsoons take care of humidity in the summer. That thing uses around a gallon of distilled water every day. I did try using Zero Water in it, but I found a fine white dust on the floor around the humidifier. The TDS meter said the water was at "0" but now I'm thinking of getting a new meter.

If you use ultrasonics humidifiers, the particles of water that make the cool mist are just that, small particles of the same quality of water you start with. If you use a heated humidifier, it boils off the steam, and the hot mist is in fact free of minerals and TDS, so you can use plain tap water and be safe around Carnivorous Plants. I am sure you knew this but just stating it for any new folks reading your post.

Thanks Supercazzola. Yes, I use ultrasonic cool mist humidifiers rather than evaporative. Aside from not coating the home with mineral dust, using RODI water more importantly keeps particulates out of the air we are breathing, causes less scale build up and biological growth in the reservoirs and is not electrically conductive which is a big plus for the grow tent.