Water

Nan's Nook : Archives : Substrate : Water
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By Open (Open) on Thursday, September 27, 2001 - 07:23 pm:

Should natural or distilled water be used for misting the terrarium?

By Brettiejams (Brettiejams) on Thursday, September 27, 2001 - 08:13 pm:

Distilled is what I prefer, but pretty much any clean water should work.

By whoever (Livedangerous) on Friday, September 28, 2001 - 02:59 am:

does the type of water in the mixture make a difference(mineral,tap,spring,distilled,etc.)? how about the water for dunking for next flushes?

By jim brown (Shrhobbyist) on Friday, September 28, 2001 - 03:07 am:

It is said that natural (out of a pond or lake) works well when mixed with the substrate, just make sure you sterilize properly. When dunking, it is important to use distilled water. Tap water can work if you live in an area with clean water.

By Saney (Saney) on Friday, September 28, 2001 - 06:34 pm:

I've used spring water, pond water, regular water and rain water. Don't bother, use Bottled spring water. Usual colonization time is about 10 days for me. I've done 2 batches of jars with pond water, one time all 12 jars contamed.. I guess it was dirtier then a 45 minute steaming would clean. This time around, the jars havn't contamed, but it's taken 22 days so far and only 1/4 of the jars are done.. Mazatec strain btw, and EQ's contamed. Rain water did about as well as tap water, and spring water is fantastic... 9 days to colonize these hawaiians that are fruiting nicely :)

By Nan (Nanook) on Saturday, October 13, 2001 - 06:41 am:

Most grocery stores carry distilled, de-ionized, "RO" or Reverse Osmosis water somewhere, all of these work great: basically the same as distilled (no mineral or salt content). Look in the section with laundry detergent and bleach, or in the drinking water section of the grocery store for gallon or 2-1/2 gallon plastic containers of water with one of these terms specified on the label. Some brands add minerals back into the RO water for taste, but this is better than tap in most cases.

Reverse osmosis water from those purifier machines popping up everywhere works very, very well... And it's cheap. Most grocery stores and Wally Marts now have these water machines and it is perfect for this use. Bring your own Sanitized container.

Use distilled, good clean purified, or bottled water (read labels) and you can't go wrong for: Misting & Spraying (prevents contams, scale & salt buildup); Humidifier Tek (trust me), Fish Tank Heaters (scale, contams), Pressure Cookers (prevents deposits & scale); Dunking (contams); mixing Substrate (what is the pH & how hard is your tap water?); mixing Honey/Dextrose Jars (clarity); Cloning (purity); soaking down Verm Casings (salt, chlorine, florine ) Resevoir Tek; Agar; Spore Syringes... Really, I can go on, but good water covers all your mycology needs. There is no need to doubt.

You can use Pond Water, well water, creek water, etc. for mixing up substrate, but you have to use a Pressure Cooker in order to sterilize. You simply can't go wrong with good purified water.

Stamets reports that high levels of Magnesium inhibits mycelial growth, and I wonder about the magnesium content of spring water.

Go RO Purified.

How To Dunk : Shroom Glossary

By XUnkyHerbX (Notapplicable) on Wednesday, November 07, 2001 - 04:32 pm:

I *USED* to use tap water.. until i parted with $1 for a gallon of spring water, and it was the best investment i've ever made. Every goes fast, looks healthier, and makes me feel much better.

By Nan (Nanook) on Wednesday, November 07, 2001 - 06:54 pm:

Yup distilled, RO, or other bottled water is the way to go. But beware of a little nugget I picked up awhile back. Magnesium inhibits both mycelial growth and fruiting... And some spring water is high in Magnesium... Now I don't know if there is enough in the water to affect shrooms, I kinda doubt it... But I have a choice, and after reading the labels, I went to de-ionized water. Regardless, good water is essential to the process. Tap does not cut it except for substrate and washing cakes. I prefer bottled for substrate.

By quote: (Quote) on Wednesday, November 07, 2001 - 11:11 pm:

i dunno...
i've made hundreds of cakes with tap water,
alongs with many pounds of birdseed, rye, etc.
all done right out of the faucet.
suit yourself, of course,
but if money's tight,
then tap water works fine.

By Nan (Nanook) on Thursday, November 08, 2001 - 02:30 am:

Tap water is cool for substrate. You can use shit water for substrate if you pressure cook, but tap sucks for other uses.

The water here is very hard. When used for misting it leaves deposits on the plastic & glass as it evaporates off, and I have seen mildew growing on these deposits. All the mineral salts cannot be good for the casing. Lawd you should have seen the mess the tap water made out my first pickle jar incubator: nasty crusty stuff with mildew and bacteria growing on it. Hey if your tap water is good, more power to you.

But it sucks here, and I have no way of knowing about the quality of water at your house... So it becomes a variable, changing from one location to another, and I don't see this variable as desirable. Then there is Chlorine, Florine, and "acceptable" bacteria and spore counts.

I won't use it when I am brewing or vinting either. In beer recipies calling for "hard water" I use RO water and add the salts in pure chemical form.

And people get kind of picky... They want to do things _exactly_ the _best possible way_ (at leasting judging from the questions... "What's the "best" way to....?"

Those water machines are pretty cool. I have seen them on both coasts. They use a semi-permeable membrane under pressure in order to squeeze individual water molecules through the membrane barrier (Reverse Osmosis). They start with your tap water. Water is pre-filtered for particulate, carbon filtered to remove organics, then passed through the RO membrane and irridated with UV. It is very clean, has no detectable salt content, and it is under $3.00 for five gallons if you bring your own container. Five gallons lasts a long time, several cases of jars. It's a good investment, and it is the best way. Many Teks specify water, it's not just my advice... It eliminates a variable.

Sure there are many ways and places to cut corners and shave a penny here and there... But people ask me "What's the _best_ way?" By and large the homebuilt Teks here are designed and focused on the fastest, simplest, cheapest and most effective way to obtain fruit from spores back into fruit again. My personal motto is "go cheap" throughout.

By relic (Relic) on Thursday, November 08, 2001 - 03:53 am:

i used tap water forever w/o any contamination problems with cakes. for some reason i started using bottled water and found that it did seem to work better faster than tap and stuck with it. it's only $1.20 a gallon for spring water, which is what i use, distilled and 'drinking'(reverse osmosis) are even cheaper. and then there was the thread where someone tested his city tap water against spring and distilled types on agar. that was scary. the tap consistently contamed