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Chloramines - gassing off is not enough! · Hydroponics Daily

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Hello and welcome to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and today we're diving into a critical yet
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often overlooked topic.
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And I often say that, but this is definitely true for today's episode.
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It's definitely often overlooked and ignored, I would say, and it's dechlorination.
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So tap water is convenient, but its gut contains the disinfectants chlorine
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and chloramine in most civilized developed countries.
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If your tap water is safe to drink it probably contains chlorine and chloramines.
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It might also be fluorinated but the good news is that fluorine does not affect plant growth.
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It is only a problem if
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you're growing cut flowers because the root can block fluorine
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from being absorbed top fact not a lot
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of people know that as who would say that michael kane
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he's famous for saying that not a lot of people know that so fluorine
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not a problem chlorine and chloramines as a disinfectant yep they
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can be a problem they can harm your crop and beneficial microbes
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sounds like i am scaremongering but
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it's true repeated independent scientific studies
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have shown there's a significant drop in
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growth when plants are treated with chlorine and when chlorine is
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removed that growth returns so we'll explore
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different removal methods their pros and cons timing
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global chlorine levels and whether rainwater makes
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sense for your system whether gassing off makes
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it off so chlorines versus chloramines fleek
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free chlorine is added by utilities often
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turn and and tends to dissipate quickly once it's out of the tap typically typically
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within 12 to 24 hours and that can be accelerated by aerating so a lot of people
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put water into their tanks and then aerate it with an air stone and then they say it's chlorine free.
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Chloramines mono dye or tri chloramines they
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are more stable they can stick around for weeks if not
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treated so this is the big problem and this
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is another thing not a lot of people know that yes
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you will gas off your chlorine but you won't gas off your
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chloramines they still could be impacting plant growth and
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the growth of beneficial microbes in your growing media and on your plants if
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you spray on your foliage if you spray them so most tap water worldwide contains
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0.2 to 1 milligram per liter of free chlorine and in north america it can go
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up to more than that so 0.4,
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four milligrams i think even but yeah don't quote me on that,
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So that's important. What was I going to say there? So chloramines,
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they don't gas off. And so you probably want to treat them.
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Before I talk about that, also, it's important to note that when we talk about
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chlorine, we're talking about the reactive form.
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We're not talking about chlorides.
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So like sodium chloride, or calcium chloride, or magnesium chloride,
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which you may find as an ingredient in fertilizers.
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They're not reactive, they're not a disinfectant. So chlorine,
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not chloride as that's very important to note so if you have got those in your
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fertilizer they're not it means you're not using a very good fertilizer to begin
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with because anything containing.
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Chlorides are rubbish fertilizers they're the cheap ones we talked
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about this on why garden center fertilizers suck they
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suck for a number of reasons but it won't be because they're disinfecting and
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harming the plant directly in this way we're talking
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about chlorine which is a disinfectant it's a dissolved gas
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of two chlorine ion atoms
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sorry not the chloride atom gets a
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bit confusing but basically don't worry if too much
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if your fertilizer contains chlorides that's
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not going to be disinfecting it's chlorine that's added in tap
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water it's the sort of thing that's in the chemicals that
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disinfect swimming pools you will notice and
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i shared with some people in our company a video
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of people mixing chlorine with coca-cola
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and they get tablets so swimming pool tablets
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and they put it in a bottle of coca-cola and then
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the coca-cola bottle just explodes in
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their face this is not like putting mentos in a
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coca-cola this is unbelievable and then they get smashed
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with a the plastic in
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their face and then they get exposed to chlorine gas in.
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A massive amount really really effing stupid
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but yeah there's loads of videos of people doing that on the on the
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internet on youtube should really be taken down off youtube really because it's
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a little dangerous practices have to be removed so chlorine and chloramines
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they if you don't remove them they will damage your plant roots causing browning
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and reduced uptake of other nutrients they'll kill the beneficial microbes in
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your substrate if you're using the living soil.
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Or even if you're just using beneficial microbes, if you're using a mycorrhiza,
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lots of mycorrhiza will be harmed by chlorine, and also the beneficial microbes
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are often associated with these.
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Very rarely now you'll buy a mycorrhiza in a grow shop, and it won't contain
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beneficial bacteria as well, things like Bacillus subtilis, and Trichoderma,
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a beneficial free living.
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Fungus, they'll all be harmed. And chlorines can also degrade enzyme activity
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in the root system and the microbial communities.
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So if they don't kill them, they can upset the balance and the growth.
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So even in low levels, you'll find this.
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So what can you do? You can use natural gassing off. It's free.
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No chemicals are needed, but it is time consuming. So you have to leave your
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tank water for 24 hours before using it.
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And also it's ineffective against chloramines. And that's the reason we don't recommend it.
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There are a number of compounds out there that use ascorbic acid or vitamin C.
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That neutralizes chlorine instantly and also chloramines effectively, so that's great.
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Pros, it's safe, it neutralizes it fast. Cons are that it needs correct dosing,
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it adds acidity to the system, and also these have got a shorter shelf life.
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So if you see a product that is designed for
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dechlorination and it's gone orange or
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brown that means it's oxidized and so it won't be as effective as it was when
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it was first made then there's products like dr hydro dechlorinator and they
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bind chlorine fast they're sodium free and they're low cost they treat a lot of product.
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And so yeah they're a good option that's what
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we recommend if you're not using gold leaf or liquid
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gold in the in the in the uk is liquid gold in the us it's gold leaf and that
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instantly dechlorinates anyway it's got inbuilt dechlorination technology if
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you're not using that though use something like dr hydro dechlorinator that's
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our best option and obviously.
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There's a cost to that a bottle will cost you you
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know anywhere i don't know what the cost
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of that is but basically if you're using gold leaf or liquid
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gold the cost of that is already in the bottle that's why
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it's not a cheap fertilizer because it's already got the
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all the base nutrients the dechlorination the ph technology the biostimulation
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everything you need to go from seed to harvest it's already in the bottle so
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don't you don't need to worry about it you as soon as you add gold leaf or liquid
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gold to your water, it instantly de-chlorinates.
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And you can test that. So don't take my word for it.
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There's something called a DPD tablet. You can buy them on Amazon and you put
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them in chlorinated water and it turns pink.
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And then if you add a de-chlorination agent or you add gold leaf or liquid gold in the UK,
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it will instantly go from pink to yellow
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or clear and that shows you that it's been all the chlorine and chloramines
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have been deactivated so that's a great way of testing it another way is to
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use a carbon in line filter on your water that's effective about against chlorine
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and chloramines the carbon will react with them it's hassle-free once installed.
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The disadvantage is that it needs to be changed regularly.
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There's an upfront cost and they are part of a reverse osmosis system.
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So one of the filters on an RO system will be a carbon filter normally.
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And obviously there's a significant cost for that. So it depends on how much
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water you're going to be using and whether you can automate that and install it easily.
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And they need a power supply as well.
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So that's an extra plug you need in your grow room if you're going to use one of them so
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you talked about chlorine takes 12 to 24 hours
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chlorine you need to leave your water for weeks for that to
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naturally dissipate and deactivate so that's really
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not an option gassing off is really not an option if you
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want to fully get rid of chlorines and chloramines and especially in
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north america where your water levels can be very can be
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very high and especially when the weather is hot
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so at the moment it's above 30 in
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the uk and the water companies will be adding more of these chemicals just because
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they the worst case scenario is they get bacteria and people start to get ill
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or even worse die because of bacterial contamination so they don't care about
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your plants they care about keeping everyone alive they don't want to undead.
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Anyone and so undead or
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unalive anyone so they they bump
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up the levels of chlorine in the summer and that's annoying
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because that's when most people are growing plants and need irrigating and
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those plants need irrigating so definitely dechlorination or
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using a fertilizer such as gold leaf that contains it
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would be definitely my my recommendation
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world health organization allows
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up to five milligrams per liter
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considered safe for human that's nowhere near what's
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safe for plants though you would start to smell
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that consistent considerably so i would
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either use reverse osmosis or something like
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liquid gold or dr hydro's dechlorinator the other advantage reverse osmosis
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is you're removing other impurities and you are removing heavy metals walls
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you will need to add more CalMag there if you are using reverse osmosis because
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you're removing all the hardness from the water as well.
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Don't use water softeners. Water softeners won't act against chlorine and they
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will basically add loads of sodium to your plants and sodium is like arsenic to plants.
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It is directly poisonous and it will really harm them so definitely don't use water softeners.
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You could use rainwater and there are pros and cons of using rainwater.
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It's naturally free of chlorines and
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chloramines and most of the arable farmers
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the farmers growing wheat and barley that i speak to on a daily basis they don't
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worry about chlorine and chloramines because they're using rainwater harvested
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from their farm on their barns and things like this but now because we've not
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it's not rained in the uk for a long time and they're still spraying their crops
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with biostimulants and things like potassium silicate they're now having to add.
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Dechlorinator because they've got no water in their in
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their wells in their silos and things like this another advantage
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is it's slightly acidic rainwater so useful for
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ph adjustment it's not going to be too high high and
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it can it's softer and not going to be hard water
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it's not going to be containing calcium the disadvantages of
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using rainwater there's contamination risk of
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pathogens and particularly things like
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phytophthora and pythium so
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damping off disease they can thrive when there's
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leaves and other vegetative material algae
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growing in the the tank so you need
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to be careful of that there could be heavy metals coming
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off galvanized roofs things like zinc there could
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be pollutants from the roof you know you could be some lead
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flashing and things like this could be contributing
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to the heavy metals always you know that's always something to consider you
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don't want you don't want too much zinc and you definitely don't want lead in
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your crops that you're consuming or your plants and there's obviously the initial
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costs of setting up a catchment and storage system you know very large growers
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might even have ultrasonic.
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Bubble or nano bubble makers in their storage tanks
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to get rid of algae and things like that crazy things you can do and there
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are obviously make sure that it's legal and safe and
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within the laws to to harvest rainwater
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in your area because there are some some strange laws
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out there so of the options gassing off don't think it's a really if you're
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really concerned about chlorine and chloramines it's not really an option because
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of that the chloramines won't won't be removed scorbic acid it's an option if
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you've got a bottle lying around but they don't store it for too long.
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Because it will degrade over time i think
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something like a normal dechlorinator like dr hydro
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and make sure it's sodium free it's cheap
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and effective and then liquid gold and gold leaf
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is a great option because it's already in the base fertilizer so you
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don't need to worry about it it's a stress-free growth ro systems
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once they're installed they can be hassle-free but there's
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initial upfront cost and rainwater chlorine
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free but just make sure you're not getting contaminants of
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all moldy things and mosquito larvae
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and other sorts of larvae and leaves
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algae and then things that pithium and phytophthora can grow on so they're my
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options i think dechlorination is a good way of if you're looking for an increase
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in yield and quality it's a great one because it's additive to anything you
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do with nutrients, anything you do with pest and.
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An additional bump in yield and quality you can
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get on your plants and who doesn't want to increase yield and quality
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for basically it's just one step when you're adding
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whenever you add fresh water to your system just add dechlorination and away
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you go as i say using gold leaf or liquid gold don't even need to worry about
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that you're already getting the benefits of removing chlorine so i'm dr russell
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sharps sharps sharp thank you for tuning in to hydroponics daily.
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And if you want to know more just get in touch
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