Sand

[Oleksii 6]

Hi!

I'm preparing mix for tuberous Droseras (near 3:1 sand:peat). I boiled quartz sand in distilled water few times and now it is held in cold water. My TDS-meter shows 6ppm. How do you think is it enough or it would be better to wait some time or repeat boiling?

Thanks for all thoughts.

Oleksii

[Dieter 90]

Hi Oleksii,

I use (quartz) sand as sold for aquariums without any additional (pre)treatment. I never measured the ion concentration, so sorry, I can not help you with your question.

Best regards

Dieter

[Oleksii 6]

Thanks for answer. It is quite problematic to me to find quartz. My previous packet of it was really perfect and could be used without any doubts, but this has some additions in small quantities. I know that sundews are quite sensitive to salts in mixtures, so I decided to do some work with it.

But this is can't be compared with some previous treatment, when I used hydrochloric acid

Oleksii

[Milos Sula 4]

6ppm is very good value. Common distilled water does have about 5ppm here. So it does look the sand is free of soluble salts.

But if you bought sand with limestone ( nearly insoluble in normal conditions - in pure water ), you cannot measure it with conductometer and you cannot remove the calcium by boiling it in water.

[billynomates666 76]

I agree with Milos, 6ppm ids fine and as quartz sand it should be fine, if you want to test for limestone drop some of your sand in vinegar and look for bubbles, if it bubles it containes alkaline material.

Cheers

Steve