Just realized I was killing my desk plant with tap water

Had this little succulent on my desk for about 3 months and it kept getting brown tips no matter what. Felt like a total idiot when my buddy who works at a nursery told me the chlorine in our city water was building up. Switched to letting the water sit out for 24 hours before watering and it's green again in 2 weeks. Anyone else had a plant problem that turned out to be something simple like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

ellis.victor1mo ago

I've heard that letting tap water sit out actually works because the chlorine evaporates. My neighbor uses a Brita filter for her ferns and swears by it, said her leaves stopped curling up within a week. Guess it's one of those basic things nobody thinks about til it messes up your plants.

julia921mo ago

Gotta push back on this a bit, @ellis.victor. I tried the letting it sit out thing for months with my pothos and still had brown tips. Turns out a lot of tap water has chloramine instead of chlorine now, and that stuff doesn't really evaporate. My buddy down at the station used a Brita for his peace lily and it actually got worse, think the filter stripped out some minerals the plant needed. Ferns are just sensitive little things, maybe your neighbor got lucky or actually changed something else without realizing it. Honestly I just bought a cheap gallon of distilled water for my fussy plants and called it a day, way simpler than guessing about the tap.