Anorganic vs Organic

To refer to this Post

I use a seven stage RO that removes all traces of whatever the council add to our drinking water,and add organic minerals to the purified water,for my household needs(Drinking and Cooking)

My question.
Now is anorganic minerals as bad for plants as it is for humans or not?

 

In reply to this, the first thing that I would say is that the title of the thread is wrong it should read:

Inorganic vs Organic

There is no such a thing as "anorganic". Maybe you have in mind the Afrikaans for inorganic which is "anorganies"?

Then all minerals are inorganic not organic. Organic substances contain carbon, inorganic ones do not. Water coming from the tap will normally contain inorganic ions, for example Calcium, Magnesium and Sodium as positively charged ions or so-calles cations, and chloride, carbonate and bicarbonate as anions. It can also contain organic compounds such as humic acids (they make the water brown but these are removed by municipalities here in the Western Cape by flocculation) and additives such as chloramine T instead of chlorine or hypocloride (the last two are inorganic again).

When you use an RO system you remove all ions from the water as you correctly indicate. What one then adds for human consumption are inorganic substances, Calcium and Magnesium normally as Calcium Chloride or Calcium Carbonate or Magnesium Chloride or Magnesium Chloride and perhaps a few more inorganic ions.

Your aquatic plants need a certain amount of Calcium and Magnesium in the water and also a certain amount of carbonates in other words inorganic components. Your plants however also need a large number of other inorganic substances as well. In addition all these, the RATIOS or relative amounts of these sustances must be correct, and then the plants use these components at different rates or speeds relative to one another.

The relative amounts and what humans require differs considerably and that is why we have to add fertilizers which are effectively inorganic ions to the water in our aquaria, so this has not so much to do with whether these components are bad, but whether all the components that you need for plant growth are there (which they are not) and what the relative amounts are.

However, if your company selling you these salts to add to your RO water is calling them anorganic, then there is a huge mistake (con job) here.

Kind regards,

Dirk