New grower here question about white powder in reservoir..

Hi everyone.
I'm new grower and have started out with Coco Coir and hand watering for now.
I followed some journals and setup guides from here and YouTube. Having decent results so far and good plant growth. This forum has been very helpful.

I'm trying to setup a automatic drip system for when I'm out of town for a week at a time or so. The drip system is pretty simple to set up, but the resivoir is so far giving me an issue.
My problem is a fine white powder that has been forming in the reservoir when air stone pump is running.
I read that air stones are good to keep the nutrient solution oxygenated and mixed for the period of time I'll be gone and see almost all hydroponic grows using them.
I'm testing with a 5 gallon bucket as a reservoir for now and running a small water pump to keep water moving and a couple small air stones. I will go bigger when I figure this all out. I got a white fine power building up after running the air stones for only a day. I tried same setup with no airstone and no powder formed.

I'm running Canna Coco a and b with cal mag. Also the additives boost, rhizotonic, canazyme etc. pH always between 5.5-6. I also ran the same setup without additives and still got the powder when using the air stones. I have hard tap water with ppm of about 200-250.

Does anyone else have this issue? Is it the calcium maybe settling out of nutrient solution?

I emptied the reservoir and the powder is so fine, like baby powder and no smell. I'm afraid this is bad for the plants and they won't get proper nutrients and I don't see anyone else with this problem from what I can find.
Sorry if this question has been answered already. I couldn't find the topic in a search so far anywhere.
Does anyone have any advice for me? Would the just circulating water pump be ok to run or do I need to keep the reservoir oxygenated?
Any advice would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

Could you post some pictures to help people understand a little better?
Is the powder on the bottom of res or sides?

Hi thanks for the reply. I'll post something later. I'll have to run it again with the air stone and recreate the problem to post a pic. The powder basically settles on bottom and coates anything it can settle on.

It's calcium. No biggie I have hard water where I live and unfortunately when I run the humidifier with tap, I get white calcium dust all over everything in my tent. It was even clogging my carbon filter, so I had to switch to distilled water

KanaGirl said:

It's calcium. No biggie I have hard water where I live and unfortunately when I run the humidifier with tap, I get white calcium dust all over everything in my tent. It was even clogging my carbon filter, so I had to switch to distilled water

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Agreed

Turbogrow said:

Agreed

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Thanks so much for the info. I was super worried I was doing something wrong.

Here are some pics I took today of the issue. This was a freshly washed tote with the air stone and pump running for 24 hours. I cleaned out the pump beforehand also. Looks like no one else's pics of their reservoirs I've seen.

That looks like a lot of mineral sediment. Do you have municipal tap water or well water?

KanaGirl said:

That looks like a lot of mineral sediment. Do you have municipal tap water or well water?

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It's tap water from a municipal source. But the source for the tap water is from a variety of wells. The water is treated and chlorinated by the city.

I will say that does seem excessive... I would usually get that much after a whole run or less in fact. So it still does this without nutrients? Iv seen people mix nutrients incorrectly before (as in mixing them all together out of the tank) and elements just settle to the bottom instead of mixing with the water when introduced. The airstone is useful so keep if you can. Water doesnt really go manky during a week unless it's super hot. Definitely odd...

In the above pictures you posted was this just water in the res and nothing else added ? ...just water + pump + air stones running ?
Now mind you I don't use air stones myself because I hate the humming noises made by the pumps mainly, but that could very well be the problem in this case...the pump is drawing fine particles from the room its in and pumps through the stones into the water. Try to filter intake on the pump.
Or if its from something being added to the water you'll have to do many tests to track down which nute/additive is the problem
Tests to try: (X = the 24 hours you say it takes to show up)
-Water by itself for X (I think this is the one above...so its done...which leads me to believe its a hardware device issue...air pump)
-Water + Canna Coco A for X
-Water + Canna Coco B for X.
-Water + Canna Coco A + Canna Coco B for X.
-Water + CalMeg for X.
-Water + Canna Coco A + CalMeg for X
-Water + Canna Coco B + CalMeg for X.
-Water + Canna Coco A + Canna Coco B + CalMeg for X.
...and so on...I'm sure you see the pattern...lol
Best of luck and happy growin'

Hi

Mak'er Grow said:

In the above pictures you posted was this just water in the res and nothing else added ? ...just water + pump + air stones running ?
Now mind you I don't use air stones myself because I hate the humming noises made by the pumps mainly, but that could very well be the problem in this case...the pump is drawing fine particles from the room its in and pumps through the stones into the water. Try to filter intake on the pump.
Or if its from something being added to the water you'll have to do many tests to track down which nute/additive is the problem
Tests to try: (X = the 24 hours you say it takes to show up)
-Water by itself for X (I think this is the one above...so its done...which leads me to believe its a hardware device issue...air pump)
-Water + Canna Coco A for X
-Water + Canna Coco B for X.
-Water + Canna Coco A + Canna Coco B for X.
-Water + CalMeg for X.
-Water + Canna Coco A + CalMeg for X
-Water + Canna Coco B + CalMeg for X.
-Water + Canna Coco A + Canna Coco B + CalMeg for X.
...and so on...I'm sure you see the pattern...lol
Best of luck and happy growin'

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Hi. Thanks for the detailed response.
When I posted the pics it was about 24 hours after adding all nutrients in reservoir.

A few days earlier I did add just parts a and b without additives and the color of the powder is very white and looks like calcium and has no smell.
When I added Boost and Rhizotonic in thi batch it was pretty nasty.

Never had drop out using Rhizotonic, use that in veg in every grow.

I fixed my issue on accident.
I was doing what Mak'er Grow recommended with all the different combinations of nutes. I had 4 different buckets testing at a time. Each with same type of pump and airstone combination.
I had no luck with the solution staying stable for more than a 24 hours without the calcium separating from the solution and sediment building up on the bottom and sides. Even without cal-mag added I had this. I was about to look into a RO water system but don't have the funds for that at the moment.

As a work around that I started doing for a couple days was mixing a+b and cal mag in the reservoir then pouring into a one gallon watering can and putting in the additives at that point because the solution was less funky. I did this a couple days until I had a glitch in my pH pen and the pH reading was very high like 7.5. I was like oh shit that's really high, maybe the additives did this to the pH? So I put in some ph down and the pH went to 3.5 way too low. I then tested again with my other pH pen and was also at 3.5. I re-calibrated both pens, but the pH was correct at 3.5. I said fuck it and dumped the water in the watering can back into the reservoir and the pH went to 4.7 when it all mixed together. Now I have a solution with Chuncks of calcium sediment floating around and a low pH.
i grabbed some ph up and added that and almost immediately after adding the pH up the solution cleared up completely and even most of the sediment on the sides and bottom dissolved. I used Bloom City pH up.
Previous I have only needed to add pH down to correct the pH. My water has been a constant 6.5 or so after adding nutes to the tap water.

i have now done this with 2 more 5 gallon batches of nutes where I added all nutes together Rhizotonic, Bloom, and canazyme additives and pH it down to about 5 and then brought it back up to 5.5-5.7 and the reservoirs have been clear with no signs of sediment or anything. I am no chemist and have no idea why this worked but for now I'm going to keep doing this as it's been all good. I've had a nice boost in growth in the last day or two also.
i have much more respect now for those who have mastered growing. I've got a lot to learn but I'm finding all this fascinating.

Still makes no sense really. Never had this. Very odd.

Maybe someone can elaborate a little on how water is treated. I know treatment(s) are slightly different from location to location, but how is the pH 'fixed' or is it?
I'm wondering if maybe the 'down' or 'up' used by OP's local treatment plant differs from the product he/she is using and the 2 don't interact well.
Just a thought and I don't know much on how the plants do water treatment, but going to start looking into my areas treatment(s) and chemicals used...is it as simple as something in the water...lol
@Billybudthorton what is the chemical used in your down & up ?

Turbogrow said:

Still makes no sense really. Never had this. Very odd.

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Mak'er Grow said:

Maybe someone can elaborate a little on how water is treated. I know treatment(s) are slightly different from location to location, but how is the pH 'fixed' or is it?
I'm wondering if maybe the 'down' or 'up' used by OP's local treatment plant differs from the product he/she is using and the 2 don't interact well.
Just a thought and I don't know much on how the plants do water treatment, but going to start looking into my areas treatment(s) and chemicals used...is it as simple as something in the water...lol
@Billybudthorton what is the chemical used in your down & up ?

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I'm using Bloom City pH up that's uses potash-potassium hydroxide derived

pH down is phosphoric acid.

I am running a bucket now with the same nutes and bottled distilled water. I had to use pH up because the solution was at 4.3 after adding nutrients. I'll see what it looks like tomorrow. I'm guessing it will be fine though.

I wonder how much sediment is in your hot water heater.

Billybudthorton said:

I'm using Bloom City pH up that's uses potash-potassium hydroxide derived

pH down is phosphoric acid.

I am running a bucket now with the same nutes and bottled distilled water. I had to use pH up because the solution was at 4.3 after adding nutrients. I'll see what it looks like tomorrow. I'm guessing it will be fine though.

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Pure water has no ability to buffer pH changes, therefore pH drift will occur without alkalinity to stabilize. Acid plus base equals a salt (calcium)

I have a question I want to shoot at you guys for an answer anyone! So here goes our water is coming in from well when tested it was extremely high in ppm (almost 3000), I choose not to use and have bought water since. I’ve located the well in question but don’t know much about well setups to know if I can just have r/o connected to the well intake? If would it be the standard r/o or different?