Tap water vs. distilled

[ScaredStupid]

First of all thanks to Crop King for a great selection of product, fast shipping, and great service!

So my last grow was over 30 years ago so I'm basically a newbie here. I'm trying Afghani, NYC Diesel, and Haze Extreme.

I'm wondering about the effects of tap water on germination. For my first attempt I used regular tap water and only saw a 50% success rate with 13 seeds. For the other half (ish) I used distilled water on 12 seeds and saw a 100% success rate. I did everything exactly the same other than the water source. I know my city water supply has chlorine and ammonia added to it. So I'm wondering: is this the root (pun intended) of my lower success rate? I realize what I'm doing is is too small a sample pool for anything definitive, but the difference is hard to dismiss...

 

[ShiggityFlip]

I use tap water and so far this year have had 2 out of 40 seeds not germinate.

 

[TanR]

Hi Scared Stupid.

Welcome to the 420 Magazine site and community of members that gathers here.

I'm with ShiggityFlip in that I have used tap water almost exclusively for both seeds and cloning and never had any failure issues that I could attribute to the water. It may very well be something in your water that isn't present in ours though.

Be well and happy growing.

 

[ScaredStupid]

Thanks for the response! Yes, my suspicion is that there is something in the water here (Victoria BC) such as a higher concentration of ammonia or chlorine that is killing the seeds. In any case it was an easy fix to just switch to distilled water have complete success.