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Airborne water contamination?

Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2019 2:09 am
by CarnivoresUnite
My poor D Filiformis..

I had the cuttings in an open water dish with distilled water to propagate. For the last 6 days they have grown and improved while I waited for them to start reproducing.

Today, they started to droop and look poorly. The top ends have actually withered some and turned dark red. They are the Florida Red variety. I took a TDS reading. PPM was 47 ppm.

I immediately changed the water with some rainwater I had. Down to 17 PPM now. Better now. I also went ahead and cut them down to submerge into the fresh water and sealed the top.

I changed the water yesterday and delicately moved the cuttings about. Surely that wasn't the problem, was it? Their dew they produced from the 3 days before was gone.. it was RO triple cleaned water that read 12 PPM with my TDS..

Now, I did spray water some nearby regular plants with tap water. My tap water is around 155 PPM and I make sure I am at least 5 feet away when I spray the other plants in the opposite direction. Is it possible that somehow the tap water particles may have contaminated the open water? I've been very careful about cross contamination.

Re: Airborne water contamination?

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:57 pm
by vaprovo
This is an interesting question for sure. The only thing I could think of is if the dish that you are using maybe has some kind of remnants of what was in it before? That might be what's going on. Besides that no idea.

I do not think the tap water spray, even if it wandered a little would be that big of a problem, but who knows.

Re: Airborne water contamination?

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 5:00 am
by optique
would a TDS of 47 matter? i am trying to propagate d. filiformis tracyi in water now for the 3rd time. 1st was outside in full sun 2nd was in window with direct sun, now i am using a LED grow light thinking the full sun was over heating the tiny bottles i am using. i am using distilled water but has a PPM of 4. my past success was just sliding cuttings halfway under live moss in my sarra pots but that only seems to work in spring before it gets hot.

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Re: Airborne water contamination?

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 1:49 pm
by vaprovo
Full sun probably would heat it up too much. What I have always done is use test tubes with distilled water, and put them in a window that receives partial sun throughout the day as to not heat them up too much.
My distilled water reads as 0 when tested also, not sure if a ppm reading of 47 would make a difference or not.

Personally if I had past success in LFSM, but no luck with the water method I would just stay with that.

Hope this helps a little.

Re: Airborne water contamination?

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 3:30 pm
by CarnivoresUnite
Curious.. my Tracyi I was trying to propagate also with the Florida Red was my first "loss" so I'm wondering if they are a bit more sensitive.. The Florida Reds have seemed to recover and still waiting on sprouts of some sort.

47 PPM is on the high end, so perhaps a little too close to the red line of 50PPM? Just a thought..

Re: Airborne water contamination?

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:29 pm
by vaprovo
Just a funny side note. I had put down leaves of Drosera natilensis in a test tube. They germinated and I had totally forgot about them for more than a year. By that time they had just been sitting in room lighting which wasn't much. I went to look just for the heck of it and the little plants were still alive in there!

Some just keep on chugging it seems :)