Mineral Burn
Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:26 pm
Here's a photo of a fly trap with mineral burn. I thought this might come in handy for comparison in the future.
I was testing out some unwashed pool sand in the soil mix with this plant. I found out later that on the first wash of pure pool sand (Quikrete brand), the TDS of the water washed through was nearly 500 ppm. The second rinse actually gave me 700, but not sure if it was a false reading cause it was after the first wash. After discovering that, it confirmed my suspicions that this plant was reacting to the sand and not cool nighttime temperatures. The water from my first rinse through this pot was about 270 ppm (somewhere around there, I can't remember). I did several rinses to get it down in the 30s and I expect it will be ok now.
P.S. I added the sand Jan. 11 and this photo is from today, Feb 15 so this is after about 1 month of exposure. It didn't seem to stunt the growth as it awoke from dormancy, it just poisoned the leaves. When I did the rinse, they looked like maybe they weren't able to be triggered too as a lot of dirt, water, and perlite was moving in and out of the traps.
I was testing out some unwashed pool sand in the soil mix with this plant. I found out later that on the first wash of pure pool sand (Quikrete brand), the TDS of the water washed through was nearly 500 ppm. The second rinse actually gave me 700, but not sure if it was a false reading cause it was after the first wash. After discovering that, it confirmed my suspicions that this plant was reacting to the sand and not cool nighttime temperatures. The water from my first rinse through this pot was about 270 ppm (somewhere around there, I can't remember). I did several rinses to get it down in the 30s and I expect it will be ok now.
P.S. I added the sand Jan. 11 and this photo is from today, Feb 15 so this is after about 1 month of exposure. It didn't seem to stunt the growth as it awoke from dormancy, it just poisoned the leaves. When I did the rinse, they looked like maybe they weren't able to be triggered too as a lot of dirt, water, and perlite was moving in and out of the traps.