Hello sakmeht,

What you will want is the basic hardness report of the water in your area. If it is at about 50 or less, it is safe enough to use on Carnivorous plants in general. If it is over 100, don't even think about using it. Try calling (or doing a search for) the cities water supply and asking about the general hardness rating of the water from your tap.

An environmental laboratory can test your water. The trouble with data, though, is the interpretation of it. I do not know offhand what conecntrations of each analyte are a CP safe, but I think I've seen a topic with similar questions and there may be some guidelines.

Dumb question: For what purpose are you trying to procure this data? Is it for school, curiosity, CP's,....? Do you need CP safe water? Deionized, distilled, RO, and usually rainwater is safe.

Any other ideas? The couple people I talked to at my water company were clueless - although I've yet to ask for a specialist, which I suppose I need to do. On my water report it just lists elements like so:

Copper 1.3ppm
Fluoride 4.0ppm
Barium 2.0ppm
Nitrate 10.0ppm

There's also some other stuff, but do I just need to add the stuff with ppm after it up? Is that how you get the ppm? I might end up buying one of those tds meters... Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

It looks like what you will want is this kind of site to help you interpret your water quality report:

http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d001201-d001300/d001228/d001228.html

Basically just search for ppm water hardness tables and you will get a list of sites that talk about interpreting water quality.

The calcium and magnesium are the main hardness measures in water. Your repoert should have those elements listed together as hardness or CaCo. That number is the hardness in parts per million.

In my area, it says I have 204 ppm of CaCo in the tapwater, indicating very hard water.

Thanks guys,

I'll try that site. I'm using it just for CP's, and am currently collecting rainwater but our area can be dry for long spells... if I can use tap water, I'd just like to know... I looked at my water report and it doesn't even list Calcium or Magnesium! I didn't see "CaCo" referenced, either. I'll check out that site or maybe take a sample of water to Culligans or something. I may even just order a TDS meter, who knows... Thanks everyone!

If you don't have a big collection, I'm sure your local grocery store would sell distilled water, for ~75 cents a gallon.

Your water report may just not be testing for "salts". It depends upon what they are authorized to test, which can be as little as Cu, or Cu & Pb, or those plus Hg, and/or a the salts analytes, or...

I worked for an environmental laboratory, Metals Department, and while numbers are a nice thing to know, it's the interpretation of those numbers that are important. A low value for one may have more deleterious consequences than that of a high value of a different analyte. If I can come up with a previous water test, with respect to CP's, I'll post it for you. Not sure if one exists, other that raw numbers.