Water for fruit fly media?

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No, The ideal mold environment is 32°-104°F, pH 3 to 8. (c.f, for example, http://cool.conservation-us.org/byorg/abbey/an/an23/an23-4/an23-402.html. ).

Since pH is the inverse log of hydrogen ion concentration, mold will thrive in water between melting to over 100F that contains 1/10 the hydrogen ion concentration of distilled (pH7) water to 10,000x the H ion concentration. This sounds a bit technical, which is why i gave such a short answer earlier. :D

 
I filter our tap water for my whole family to drink, including pets.

If I don't, it is nasty.

When we turn on the tap it smelles like a swimming pool! I am sensitive to chemicals and it is a shame that I can't afford to filter the water that I bathe in. It is much worse since they are replacing the sewers and pipes for our neighborhood as they really like to spike the water more often at these times.

Around here, they plan on recycling waste/sewage water for us to use, and we will have to pay extra for it too. DISGUSTING! I am glad I am moving.

I drank normal, unfiltered, S. Florida tap water throughout my childhood and liked it. After living in the mountains for a couple years using water from springs on our property, I noticed the difference right away when we moved back here.

Tap water can definitely vary, depending on location. To think that I was all freaked out the first time I drew a bath of spring water(which we also filtered), I thought it was "unnaturally blue" in the tub. :blink: I guess I was too used to the yellow water down here. :mellow:

 
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Eww you guys use water. My fruitflies prefer the breakfast of champions so I use orange juice for my cultures. :stuart:

 
Some of us are lucky enough to have good, low TDS tap water.

I am not so lucky, so I buy distilled water.

Boiling your tap water will only remove the volitile chlorine, not the TDS (like potassium, sodium, etc.)

If you keep venus flytrap plants, then you already know what tap water can do. It can kil the plant in only

a few days.

Anything that's alive, I feed it distilled water ;)

You can test your tap water with a cheap kit to find the total disolved solids and pH.

 
We have a PPM/TDS meter and tested out tap water at something like 300+ PPM...of what? God knows, but we know we can't make our silver spray with it. We use only distilled water, for cultures, colloidal silver, misting and our own "raw" drinking water (I use tap water for cooking & washing, though.) Beware, though, of your distilled water NOT being distilled (or at least not PURE), we have gotten the occasional bottle of "distilled" water, from Walmart, and noticed it tasted or smelled odd. When tested, we found that it had between 3-15 PPM of some unknown substance. Funny that at such a low rate, we detected it without the TDS meter first! (Steve's palate is much more sensitive than mine, but even *I* noticed the taste difference!)

Now, I have, on accident a few times, used tap water to make my cultures, and even though I COOK them in the microwave to kill any bad stuff, they had a red mold/algae/WHATEVER start growing in them, which doesn't happen when I use distilled. The "red stuff" doesn't seem to harm the culture any, they still do very well, but it is unsightly, and I can't help think that it may adversely affect the flies and in turn my young mantids, even if it isn't obvious.

On another note: since using distilled water (over a year now), I haven't had a single mantis die from "black stuff".

So Phil, maybe in the UK the tap water is filtered well & treated properly, but there are just too many "ordinances" here, which vary wherever you are. *I* don't trust our local tap water...and I have yet to be in a state/region where I DO! (This, after having lived in Indiana & California, too!) If you pay careful attention (at least here in our area), you will from time to time catch "alerts" from the local water treatment facility, at times when the water tested outside their "safe" zones. Funny that, they don't often tell you it's NOT safe to use, just that it tested outside their "safe" range. o_O

 
For what it's worth, I think that you are doing the right thing, Carey,but I have been using American tap water for the past 50 years, so that, rather than English water, is my normative experience. The "300+ ppm" refers to dissolved solids, anions and cations of calcium, sodium and potassium chlorides and carbonates, etc and 300ppm puts you right in the middle of the average "hardness" of US tap water. In terms of health, I think that the EPA is still comfortable with levels up to 500 (and i spend a lot of time looking at pix of C19th British soldiers when i should be keeping up to date on these things!) and above 1,000ppm is non-potable.

It is interesting that your tap water apparently contains red mold spores. They are readily eliminated with a commercial mold inhibitor like Paraben, but the cost of the inhibitor may be greater than that of maintaining you filtration system.

Ah, good news. I see that i have just used enough tap water, instead of the distilled variety, to allow me to buy another 1.75L of whiskey, so off i go! :D

 
angelofdeathzz said:
@ Phil:

I need only smell and taste the difference between tap water and a filtered(from my sink) or bottled "SPRING" water to know that me and my family don't drink from the tap, no parts per million meter needed

This would be be why I stated this before in a post, its bad if you look at the number's?!!!
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I won't go irate like some "steviehifaction" 420 break dude does, but normal tap water is bad to drink in most places in the world, not just the USA... filter it or feel the wraith of common law makers in your town. :p

 
O.K. Nick, enough rhetoric; lets fight this out like men. I have drunk tap water in Europe (including some of the dingier countries) Africa (Kenya) when beer wasn't handy, in Asia (in Northern Malaysia they drank water from a rain water tank that I was scared to look into), North America, including Mexico and Canada, Hawaii,(what continent is that in?) and a few spots that i was probably too "relaxed" to remember. You, I guess, have drunk bottled, filtrated or otherwise messed around with water for most of your life and will continue to do so. When i die, I shall have my son post the fact on this forum; perhaps you can have a relative do the same when you kick off, and Young Alex can judge who lived longer. and which form of water is therefore the better, and may the best man win! :D

 
Phil, I do use methylparaben in my homemade mix, and the commercial mix I've been using of late (Repashy's Superfly), has at least *4* different mold inhibitors. Combined with the fact that I "irradiate" it until it boils, I'm confused as to why the "red stuff" still appears, but...as I said, it doesn't SEEM to harm the cultures, so I don't worry TOO much when I forget & use tap water. It just annoys me when they turn red.

Also Phil, have you ever read about how, when the soda companies first started using their "carbonation systems" (i.e. modern soda fountains), that whenever they cleaned the tanks, folks would complain about a "bad taste" in the sodas, however, when they left them be (i.e. uncleaned...natural organisms allowed to grow), folks relished the taste? I forget where I read/heard this, but I know it was a long time ago (probably in my teens when I worked at such establishments that used these systems)...I always kind of wondered if there was any truth to it, or if it was just another "urban legend". Food for thought, in any case. (And I thought it would pique your curiousity.) :p

 
What evs on this! Come on! It's a fruit fly culture, not the end of the world. I use tap water and my cultures produce well enough for me. It must be my "well water". That's what I hear we have here. I prefer to drink Mountain Dew. At least i know I won't be finding any mice in my soda. :lol: BLAH BLAH BLAH. I feel sorry for people that worry about the water. What about that burger you just chucked down your gullet. Water?....get over it.

 
Well I guess I lose and you win Phil, this whole topic comes down to "freedom of choice" after all, and I'm sure the government takes great measures to make sure ALL our water is safe to drink, and being so worldly and brave enough to drink "Mexican" water you would surely enjoy a glass of this to quench your thirst and may even chill a glass for Sunny? lol.

http://youtu.be/qYJj-1jNOxE

This is not a one time thing and is just one example of what is allowed to happen to our water?

Can you just see a house fire happening, the fire fighters plug into the hydrant to put out the flames and then ...

 
Ha! They were lucky. Years ago, when i lived in Chicago, the river in nearby Oak Park caught fire and burned down their wooden bridge! :D

@Patrick A lot to what you say, but on the other hand, mate, if we used all our energy discussing things like what kind of water we should use on our FFs instead of whether our neighbor should marry her girlfriend or whether the girl next door should terminate her pregnancy or where Muslims can build a place of worship, the world might (just might) be a more pleasant place.

 
GreenOasis said:
Phil, I do use methylparaben in my homemade mix, and the commercial mix I've been using of late (Repashy's Superfly), has at least *4* different mold inhibitors. Combined with the fact that I "irradiate" it until it boils, I'm confused as to why the "red stuff" still appears, but...as I said, it doesn't SEEM to harm the cultures, so I don't worry TOO much when I forget & use tap water. It just annoys me when they turn red.

Also Phil, have you ever read about how, when the soda companies first started using their "carbonation systems" (i.e. modern soda fountains), that whenever they cleaned the tanks, folks would complain about a "bad taste" in the sodas, however, when they left them be (i.e. uncleaned...natural organisms allowed to grow), folks relished the taste? I forget where I read/heard this, but I know it was a long time ago (probably in my teens when I worked at such establishments that used these systems)...I always kind of wondered if there was any truth to it, or if it was just another "urban legend". Food for thought, in any case. (And I thought it would pique your curiousity.) :p
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Two interesting points, Carey. I know nothing about soda fountains (non alcoholic, right?), but a friend who owned a microbrewery in Chicago claimed that over carbonation made beer taste bitter, another reason to stick with whiskey.

I wonder if the appearance of red algae when you use tap water is related to your microwaving your medium to boiling point in the microwave. It might (just might) be that yr tap water contains red algae together with all the other algae, molds and yeasts, and that boiling the medium kills off the less hardy microorganisms that might normally out compete the red stuff. Do you "nuke" the medium before or after you add the yeast? I'm sure that you know that the tiny maggots with their very tiny mouths live on the microorganisms, not on the potato flakes. I cannot see any benefit to microwaving the medium, since it will kill any microorganisms already their except for the red mold. It might be fun to make up a batch with tap water and leave it at room temperature and see if the red mold still appears.Good luck!

 
I get red mold in my humidifiers even though I use an antimicrobial concentrate which is supposed

to kill it!!

Of course, distilled water would be nice to use, but I would need to buy like, 4 gal. a day for 3 humidifiers!

Re. tap water safety; I'm sure the water filter manufacturers have spent millions trying to make people

believe their water is not safe without one ;)

 
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