FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

i recently just learned that you can use tap water to water my carnivorous plants but i heard they have to be a certain ppm number to use the tap water and to check that i have to buy myself a tds meter. Is there another way to check it without having to buy this? i currently live in New zealand auckland if that helps, and also we do drink our tap water since its safe to do so but personally i use a water filter to drink my water.

If you cant test it, try looking on your supplier's website, they may publish the water quality to your area.
Cheers
Steve

I also use tap water for all of my plants (VFT, sarr, sundews, neps). My TDS is 72. All of my plants are outdoors all spring and summer so they regularly get flushed with rain water. Occassionally, I will dump the trays they are sitting in and refill them, if I find that the TDS for the tray water has gotten very high. I'm going on 4 years now doing this with no problems but I have only had bulletproof plants up to this point. I'm adding some more finicky species now, so we will see how they do.

Like everyone else has stated, it really depends on the quality of your tap water and you'll need a TDS meter to determine if it might be safe. And then, you'll need to experiment with it to test the level of safety. We too are able to use tap water in Ashland, Oregon. But many places in the US, particularly in the midwest where using wells and groundwater for tap water is common, the TDS of the water is far too high in calcium and magnesium to be suitable to use for most carnivorous plants. Sarracenia are far more tolerant than Flytraps so, as others have already mentioned, it really depends on the species of carnivorous plant you will be watering as well.

Dini wrote:i recently just learned that you can use tap water to water my carnivorous plants but i heard they have to be a certain ppm number to use the tap water and to check that i have to buy myself a tds meter. Is there another way to check it without having to buy this? i currently live in New zealand auckland if that helps, and also we do drink our tap water since its safe to do so but personally i use a water filter to drink my water.

Buy a PPM/TDS meter fairly inexpensive but it will be your bff. I used it to measure our tap water and during summer we get 55 to 58ppm when rainy season it gets roughly 60 to 70+ppm.

During emergencies Inuse our tap water but I leave it for 48 hours for the minerals to settle down usually get 40ppm after.

Sent from my BISON using Tapatalk

I use 153ppm tap water for nepenthes and 120ppm mineral water for my VFTs. Zero issues. I read so many times that ppm should very very low that I’m scared to use tap water for the VFT, but I cannot afford buying distilled water as it’s very expensive here in Bali, where I moved almost 2 years ago, and I am supposing that VFTs may be more delicate than Nepenthes here in Indonesia, the Nepenthes paradise. But one of the myths that I could break here is re the distilled water, because I doubt local growers can afford it, and reverse osmosis systems are a very expensive alternative here, most appliances are either manufactured in Java, the main island, or imported, so shipping makes them expensive, and cheap high quality mineral water makes them be perceived as a luxury, so they’re priced accordingly. The other thing I realized it’s a myth concerns VFTs so called necessary dormancy period: no one, I mean no one here, makes their VFT go through dormancy, which would be crazy wrong if the plant is without food and there would be a winter but here we have a permanent summer, of about 28 Celsius average temp during the day, never more than 31 or les than 24 and about 24 C avg during the night, with 12 hours of sunlight every single day of the year, nice breeze and about 80% humidity in my area, so no dormancy but no stress: plenty of sun, plenty of natural live food. Frequent rain, more often between Nov to Apr, but also in the rest of the year mainly raining at night. I think if plants are born and raised here, even if they originate in the US as a species, here that you accidentally drop a pencil and it roots before you pick it up, and they get loads wild insects they can tolerate whatever water you give them, I’m no expert at all but I have seen this first hand here, and they grow and flower nicely without issues, and tap water rules, they probably would think I’m being silly for spending money in mineral water for just a bit of a drop in the ppm for my VFTs

I think the main thing is plenty of water, plenty of sunlight and wild insects always available in a natural way. About the soil, the NZ sphagnum moss is unfortunately difficult to find here and very expensive, but at least the Chilean is priced ok and easy to find in Bali; normally here they use only sphagnum for soil, so I’m imitating them in everything I can

Dini wrote: ↑Tue Jan 05, 2021 8:17 am i recently just learned that you can use tap water to water my carnivorous plants but i heard they have to be a certain ppm number to use the tap water and to check that i have to buy myself a tds meter. Is there another way to check it without having to buy this? i currently live in New zealand auckland if that helps, and also we do drink our tap water since its safe to do so but personally i use a water filter to drink my water.

Since this thread was brought back up it got me wondering what the OP chose for his water choice.
I'm no scientist (but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express years ago!) so I don't know if these mg/L figures can be equated as a 1:1 conversion to ppm....?????
Cornwall Road - Total Dissolved Solids mg/L 240
Bombay - Total Dissolved Solids mg/L 230
Helensville - Total Dissolved Solids mg/L 274
Muriwai - Total Dissolved Solids mg/L 270
Onehunga - Total Dissolved Solids mg/L 150
Waikato - Total Dissolved Solids mg/L 140
Wellsford - Total Dissolved Solids mg/L 165
etc., etc.,... https://www.watercare.co.nz/About-us/Re ... blications

California carnivores says you can use up to 100 ppm BUT you would have to repot every year as the solids build up over the year. Get a TDS meter and test, they are only about $20.